“You need to see this before it goes upstairs.” - Cal
Yesterday I showcased the big-league roster from the depths of movie/TV hell.
Today is Part Two: the AAA club.
Halfway, Kansas, is less a farm team than a holding area. We got Crash Davis speeches, Steve Nebraska problems, Cerrano curveball trauma, and Ham Porter posting elite dWAR chatter metrics.
If Part 1 was the ultimate roster, this is the depth chart underneath it: the players too useful to cut, too strange to promote, and too close to the phone to ignore.
Read Part 1 here:
AAA Affiliate — Halfway, Kansas
Internal Use Only
Call-Up Potential Key:
why aren’t they here now? = should already be with Port Dominion
later = useful, but let him cook
if someone dies = injury depth, spiritually and literally
when chaos is required = do not call unless the room is already on fire
DEFCON 1 = the sport has collapsed and we are making phone calls from a bunker
Front Office
Owner: Walter Harvey 🎞️ A League of Their Own
AAA Reason: Has big-league money, minor-league emotional intelligence, and the attention span of a man who just found a new tax loophole. Cares about grass.
Call-Up Potential: not on your watch, my watch, or her watch
General Manager: Uchiyama 🎞️ Mr. Baseball
AAA Reason: Could build a winner, but every meeting somehow becomes a lesson in discipline, shame, and paperwork.
Call-Up Potential: later
Field Management
Manager: Joe “Skip” Riggins 🎞️ Bull Durham
AAA Reason: Knows the game cold, but the big club is nervous he’d manage Game Seven like he’s waiting on a horse race result.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
Bench Coach: Larry Hackett 🎞️ Bull Durham
AAA Reason: Ideal bench coach for a team that needs one more grown man staring into the middle distance like baseball personally betrayed him.
Call-Up Potential: if someone dies
Hitting Coach / Player: Cecil “Stud” Cantrell 🎞️ Long Gone
AAA Reason (Coach): Teaches hitting like a man, explaining a bar fight he technically won, but didn’t.
Call-Up Potential: when chaos is required
Pitching Coach: Gus Cantrell 🎞️ Major League III
AAA Reason (Coach): Knows pitching, knows damage control, and appears to have been hired by a committee that had already given up.
Call-Up Potential: if someone dies
First Base Coach: Ham Porter 🎞️ The Sandlot
AAA Reason: Elite chatter, questionable professionalism, and a real chance he yells “you’re killing me” at a Dominican winter ball veteran.
Call-Up Potential: if someone dies
Bullpen Coach: Leon Carter 🎞️ The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings
AAA Reason: Too much wisdom for AAA, but the big-league bullpen is not emotionally prepared to be told the truth so early in the morning.
Call-Up Potential: why aren’t they here now?
Broadcast Team
Play-by-Play Announcer: Teddy Collinane 🎞️ Bull Durham
AAA Reason: Perfect minor-league voice because he can make a 6-2 loss sound like a civic event and a hostage situation.
Call-Up Potential: later
Field Reporter: Millie 🎞️ Bull Durham
AAA Reason: Turns “how’d it feel out there?” into three divorces and a waiver claim.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
Starting Lineup
CF: “All the Way” Mae Mordabito 🎞️ A League of Their Own
AAA Reason: The tools and instinct are ready; just ask Miss Cuthbert.
Call-Up Potential: why aren’t they here now?
3B: Billy “Downtown” Anderson 🎞️ Major League III
AAA Reason: Has corner infield swagger and could help tomorrow, but player development wants to make sure he knows third base is a position, not a birthright.
Call-Up Potential: later
C: Crash Davis 🎞️ Bull Durham
AAA Reason: Too wise to release, too verbal to promote, and one more rain delay away from turning the clubhouse into a spoken-word seminar.
Call-Up Potential: AAAA player
DH: Can’t Get Right 🎞️ Life
AAA Reason: A DH-only profile, somehow still feels like a defensive adventure while sitting down.
Call-Up Potential: later
RF: Pedro Cerrano 🎞️ Major League
AAA Reason: The curveball lives rent-free in his head, but Tanaka has apparently been collecting rent, utilities, and late fees.
Call-Up Potential: later
1B: Max “Hammer” Dubois 🎞️ Mr. Baseball
AAA Reason: He’s in Halfway because the bat still makes noise, and noise gets remembered when a contender runs out of ideas.
Call-Up Potential: later
2B: Doris Murphy 🎞️ A League of Their Own
AAA Reason: Absolutely belongs, but the organization is still debating whether second base should come with a warning label or a hot dog.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
LF: Isuro “Kamikaze” Tanaka 🎞️ Major League II / III
AAA Reason: Does not play left field so much as declare war on it.
Call-Up Potential: when chaos is required
SS: Pat Corning 🎞️ Little Big League
AAA Reason: Solid, competent, useful- which in this organization is apparently how you get buried.
Call-Up Potential: if someone dies
Bench
C: Rube Baker 🎞️ Major League II / III
AAA Reason: Big-league frame, big-league arm, and a brain that requires lingerie-adjacent meditation before routine baseball tasks.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
UTIL: “Home Run” Jack Banning 🎞️ Hook
AAA Reason: Massive name value, but the player-development staff remains concerned he might still be twelve years old.
Call-Up Potential: later
UTIL: Kit “Hit or Die” Kesey 🎞️ Angels in the Outfield
AAA Reason: The nickname is doing a lot of work, and HR would like everyone to stop using it in email signatures.
Call-Up Potential: why aren’t they here now?
OF: Mickey Scales 🎞️ Little Big League
AAA Reason: Classic fourth-outfielder energy: good enough to help, not famous enough to explain at a press conference or to crack the big league team.
Call-Up Potential: if someone dies
Pitching Staff
Rotation
SP: Steve Nebraska 🎞️ The Scout
AAA Reason: Has the tools of a franchise savior and the emotional calibration of a vending machine after an earthquake.
Call-Up Potential: later
SP: Kit Keller 🎞️ A League of Their Own
AAA Reason: Big-game arm, terrifying competitiveness, and a real possibility that every mound visit becomes family court.
Call-Up Potential: later
SP: Miles “Big Poppa” Pennfield II 🎞️ Hardball
AAA Reason: The nickname is big-league. The command is still negotiating.
Call-Up Potential: later
SP: Ryan Dunne 🎞️ Summer Catch
AAA Reason: Has the arm, has the dream, has the exact emotional stability of a beach-town summer job.
Call-Up Potential: if someone dies
SP: Jack “Deuce” Cooper 🎞️ Ed
AAA Reason: The organization scouted the arm, then remembered the monkey, then quietly moved him to the back of the board.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
Bullpen
LRP: Mike McGrevey 🎞️ Little Big League
AAA Reason: Long relief arm built to absorb innings, losses, and whatever happens after a 13-year-old changes the defensive alignment.
Call-Up Potential: later
MRP: Gus Matthews 🎞️ The Benchwarmers
AAA Reason: Two-way player, though the second way appears to be making everyone in the room quietly agree that vibes are, in fact, a measurable tool.
Call-Up Potential: when chaos is required
MRP: Andre “Ray” Peetes 🎞️ Hardball
AAA Reason: Can get outs, but the organization still hasn’t solved the “why is Keanu Reeves in our bullpen again?” problem.
Call-Up Potential: when chaos is required
MRP: Joe “Coop” Cooper 🎞️ BASEketball
AAA Reason: Left-handed enough to be interesting, unserious enough to make the pitching coordinator age in real time.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
MRP: Doug Remer 🎞️ BASEketball
AAA Reason: Competitive, fearless, and absolutely the reason why postgame anything now has supervision.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
SU: Kenny DeNunez 🎞️ The Sandlot
AAA Reason: Big moment confidence, neighborhood legend-ish résumé, and the body language of a kid who forged his birth certificate.
Call-Up Potential: later
SU: Miguel “Sugar” Santos 🎞️ Sugar
AAA Reason: Everything plays except the part currently wrapped in ice.
Call-Up Potential: why aren’t they here now?
CP: Cecil “Stud” Cantrell 🎞️ Long Gone
AAA Reason (Player): The arm still plays, but every save opportunity feels less like bullpen management and more like sending a raccoon into a church.
Call-Up Potential: DEFCON 1
Yesterday was the big-league roster from hell. Today was the continuation in a more minor form- pun intended. This is the AAA layer: not quite the show, not quite exile, just another holding pen for players too useful to cut, too dangerous to promote, and too funny to leave alone. Halfway, Kansas, exists because every baseball universe eventually needs a place to hide the evidence. Which means, regrettably, there may be more evidence.
This is the kind of absurd baseball nonsense I’m apparently committed to now: fake rosters, fake memos. I’ve got alternate Mets universes, baseball bands, batting-stance investigations, and whatever the hell the Order of the Hidden 9 is becoming. I have two more members ready for that, by the way, so please understand this is not a phase. It is a worsening condition with uniforms.
If your team, brand, league, school, athlete, or mildly unstable baseball operation needs content that does not look like everything else on the internet, I do this.
Photos. Video. Graphics. Features. Weird campaigns. Real stories. Fake scouting departments when necessary.
Hire 9inningnomad before I build another farm system.
DM or email: crod@9inningnomad.com
Hahaha you just took it to a whole new level with the images — so good.