The Sixth Stage of Grief: An Oral History of the Tokyo Lift

Author: Spotter Pandora

The Stages of Grief as defined by the Tokyo Lift are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance… And Deicide. We have only lost one player, and we are already out for blood.

But how did we get here? How did we go from PARTYTIME Speedrun to 2-3ing the Tigers in quarterfinals?

And why does it matter?

To talk about the history of the Tokyo Lift, first I’ll have to talk about Season 10’s Elections. To talk about the Elections, I’ll have to talk about the PODs. To talk about the PODs, I’ll have to talk about the Baltimore Crabs. To talk about the Crabs, I have to remind everyone about Rule 6b, now retracted: If a team wins three championships, they, and Blaseball, shall ascend.

The Crabs were the first team to ascend and that’s all that needs to be said about them. Season 10’s Internet Series saw the Crabs go Up, but not before losing to the Shelled One’s PODs on Day X, who were then defeated by the Hall Stars.

The ascension of the Crabs left a power vacuum in a newly fractured Wild High— The Mexico City Wild Wings were only two seasons into the Division, and the Hades Tigers had just entered. With Crabs gone, this left two original members of a Division missing its most dominant team.

After this, the Shelled One’s PODs fell to earth, leaving the Lift with Wyatt Quitter— the very batter that did the Crabs in. In one shot, mind you.

With the stage set, we can now enter Season 11, the Lift’s first. The first (and only) season in the non-Crab era, Season 11 was the Lift’s biggest tank year.

The Lift’s first home run was by Ayanna Dumpington, the first win was pitched by Coolname Galvanic. Tokyo tied the speedrun record at 73 and ended up with the least games per game of any ILB team, past or present.

Part of this was, of course, due to Wyatt Quitter. Quitter is a long and storied player in their own right. But, as NaN proves, plot relevance doesn’t give you good batting stats, and their legendary Day X power was a thing of the past. They weren’t our worst player, but they did their part— lengthening our lineup so that better batters were farther apart, hitting ground outs, being absolutely beloved by the Lift, the Tacos, and the league as a whole— the usual star player things. 

The Coffee Cup saw them lose in round one on Light and Sweet Electric Co., and they weren’t the only one. Of the Lift players active at the time, only 4 made it to round two: Stijn Strongbody, Lotus Mango, Cudi di Batterino, and Yusef Fenestrate. Of these, only Lotus and Cudi made it to round three, both with Club de Calf, and they lost their series, leaving the Lift with no one in the finals and no chance at Perk players.

But that’s fine! Season 12 was going to be more of the same. The Lift’s party rate in Season 11— about one in every two games— left us primed to lose once again, even if the Tarot Card Blessings didn’t make the good teams better. A record was out of the question, but surely they’d be first, right? As long as the Strength tarot didn’t do anything major, of course. And since we’re losing so hard, we’ll definitely get the tag-team Blessings, right?

Alas, Blaseball never goes as we intend. Season 12, Day 72 came and went. Crabs came down, along with three new, worse teams. With 0 Wins, they were suddenly the worst teams in the ILB. And thus, the Lift was removed from contention.

But, before Day 72, there was Day 6.

Season 12, Day 6 was the first in a long line of awful events of the Lift’s Season 12. Cudi di Batterino, previously a middling 3-star batter with 2 stars in baserunning, ate a peanut, reducing those stats down to a star and a half and zero, respectively. It’s frankly astonishing that he wasn’t the team’s worst batter, and the fact that he wasn’t tells you everything you need to know about the Season 12 Tokyo Lift: they sucked. 

The Lift entered PARTYTIME first, but much later than anticipated. They partied a total of five times that season. Nandy Slumps, a pitcher the team was trying to get rid of, took two of those. Due to poor voting discipline, we might’ve had three parties that season. Due to the Descension, we definitely should’ve had reduced voting power.

But we didn’t.

Instead, the Season 12 Election entrusted Wyatt Quitter with Flippers and Foreshadowed Concrete Mandible, the worst batter in the league, for Silvaire Semiquaver, the pitcher we were trying to change Nandy for. In addition, members of the Yellowstone Magic helped us by Fluting over and voting on Blessings for us. We didn’t win any, but it was more than enough to account for departing Crabs. Not a bad Election, and with the Worms in Wild Low, this was clearly going to be the last time we were first to the Party. 

Even so, Season 13 started off strong… depending on who you ask. Fans were still hoping to lose harder than the Worms, so an early series against them, in which the team went 2-1, was a bad start. But that one loss against them was at the tail end of the series. After that, we had a reverse of these results against our friends the Dale, 1-2, with the Win at the very end of the series. But then, something unexpected happened. The Lift lost again, and again, and again. 

At the end of Day 24, after sweeping the Worms, the Lift had five wins, counting a black hole from the Jazz Hands during a game that we still lost. Despite having a winning record against them, they were, briefly, losing better than the Worms… 

…and getting even worse.

Day after day after day, Tokyo was losing. First, two 0-3 series against the Tigers. Then one against the Hellmouth Sunbeams. Then one against the Chicago Firefighters. Then, finally, one against the Boston Flowers. Five straight series of losing. The series against the Georgias looked prime to continue the streak- the Lift lost the first game, but won the second and third. The magic was ruined.

For the rest of the season, the Lift was in second to last place. They had an amazing PARTYTIME, but the streak was through. We were no longer the worst team in the Wild League. After pulling the Wildcard, we got swept by the Wild Wings.

We started planning for a third Will since Free Wills was our primary strategy— basically ignoring Blessings to make sure it happened. 

We planned to infuse Coolname Galvanic. Already our best pitcher at one star, Galvanic was vital to our rotation but vulnerable to less informed fans that didn’t realize that they overperformed their stars HARD. It was a psychological play as much as it was a tactical one. 

We planned to Foreshadow Silvaire Semiquavier for Engine Eberhardt. They really should’ve been pitching, not batting, and Engine was an amazing baserunner and promising batter.

We didn’t really know what to do with our third Will. Trust someone, probably. We would be damned if we didn’t get it, though.

Exchange wasn’t in the cards.

The election rolled around, and our Decree passed. We won a Blessing that a subset of fans wanted- Spare Flippers to match Quitter’s. We even got one of our Wills exactly right— Coolname was Infused.

But that’s where the intended results stopped. Our Foreshadow brought Engine Eberhardt in for Cudi di Batterino instead, a better swap on paper, but possibly not in the long run. Our third will went completely wrong. We Exchanged Lotus Mango for Goodwin Morin. One of the best batters in Mild, certainly the best on our team. Goodwin Morin.

Wild.

Season 14 was a wild ride, but there isn’t much to say about our performance. What’s far more interesting is the story of Wyatt Quitter.

Our best bad player, beloved Wyatt Quitter: Participant in many major events throughout league history— from the first Wyatt Masoning to the PODs. They came to us before we even played. To the Lift, there wasn’t a time before Quitter. 

But there sure is a time after.

Wyatt Quitter was given Receiver modification during the Season 14 Earlsiesta Tarot Reading. Until Latesiesta, we were checking their pregame ritual for messages from the Microphone. Then Latesiesta hit and we were too busy being obsessed with our new Wyatt Mason to wonder what it meant for Quitter. 

Season 14, Day 79.

Beams at Lift.

Wyatt Quitter became an Echo.

There were already pairs Staticking out. We knew what this meant. 

We went into PARTYIME Day 98.

Wyatt Quitter Staticked Day 99.

We pulled the Wild Card.

And the Sixth Stage began.

Deicide was on our mind as we beat the Flowers in three games. After that was a tense series against the Tigers.

We didn’t think we’d win, which is why it was a surprise that we even won two games— two games against the Tigers. It was remarkable. The Lift went from PARTYTIME contenders to losing in five to the best team in the Division in a single season.

Deicide continues to be on our mind. The Sixth Stage carries on.