Headliners: Hall of Fame Week 22
Hosted by SIBR, written by BNN contributors
Penelope Mathews
While currently in the Seattle Garages Shadows acting as their smithy, some may forget that Penelope Mathews was a top pitcher of their day.
Debuting in Season 1 as part of the Yellowstone Magic, Mathews Feedback swapped to the Millennials for Harrell back in Season 4. While Mathews was a fairly standard albeit mediocre hitter, the real magic was soon to come. In the Season 6 Elections, Bates Bentley and Penelope Mathews swapped positions, allowing both to thrive as a lineup hitter and pitcher respectively. Learning the craft on the mound, Lucky Penny could be relied upon for a Win roughly 40-50% of the time in Seasons 7-9. With the Forecast: Birds decree, Penelope Mathews would come into their own as a top prospect on the Millennials rotation.
An average ERA of ~2.76 from Season 10 to 15, Penelope Mathews, with Friend of Crows, rivaled the best pitchers in the Millennials rotation, often coming second behind Millennials stalwart Theodore Cervantes, and at times thriving as top pitcher. Lucky Penny racked up 11 shutouts in this period, with a ~0.88 WHIP and 64 quality starts. When Chorby Soul was Plundered by the Millennials, Penelope Mathews would be transferred to the Seattle Garages, where they would continue to post decent numbers amidst a deep rotation often jostled by the Big Garage’s Fax Machine.
Toss a Vote towards Penelope Mathews if you’ve got one, they’re worth every Penny.
Finn James
Ofttimes in Blaseball, the term ‘funny pitcher’ describes a player whose career is defined by notable RNG events or lore rather than performance. Not so Finn James.
In all but one season of her Discipline Era career, Finn put up an ERA of below 3.00. She led the team in ERA in her rookie pitching season (2.73), going on to repeat the feat in Season 6 (2.16) – where she outstripped ace pitchers Axel Trololol and Brock ‘Mr. Postseason’ Forbes, and then she did it again in Season 8 (2.25). Finn pitched the second recorded perfect game of the Discipline Era in Season 10 and narrowly missed pitching another in the Expansion Era by allowing a single walk in a no-hitter against the Canada Moist Talkers in Flooding, when the Talkers would later that week go on to win the Season 15 Internet League Blaseball Championship. She was the only pitcher not to lose a game against the Season 9 Charleston Shoe Thieves in the infamous Championship Series Reverse Sweep where the Crabs notably whiffed it and failed to Ascend. With a career WhAT of 50.7 and a career ERA of 3.23, Finn has put away great seasons across all Blaseball Eras, both early and late Expansion as well as Discipline.
Finn’s pitching career heralds the rise of Crab Good. Finn began playing Blaseball amid the embers of Combs Duende’s ashes in Season 4 and put a halt to Tillman Henderson’s egregious crimes against pitching by swapping positions with him via the Mutual Aid Blessing in the ensuing Election, taking Tillman’s spot on the rotation. For 18 seasons, Finn James has been a mainstay of the Crabs’ pitching staff and Finn remains the last pitcher of the Ascension rotation who has never left the Crabs. As a Heist Expert, she robbed her way to an extra star in pitching. And yes, she’s the incredibly funny pitcher who framed Axel Campbell for the worst ERA in Blaseball (286.2) by canny use of the Fax Machine, and played with fire by pitching a 40-minute game for the Unstable Crabs under a Supernova Eclipse after the untimely demise of the Kansas City Breath Mints and the Hawai’i Fridays.
Finn has got it all: performance, longevity, lore, and funny RNG. Vote for Finn James.
Sandie Turner
The game of Blaseball has many highlights, failures, and strange occurrences in the time we’ve been able to view it. Few splorts stories hold a candle to the spiciest eel merfolk in Blaseball, Sandie Turner’s. The rise and fall of Sandie Turner was a period of burning bright, then getting cut down with an injury as so many stories in splorts and sports alike have been. This is Sandie Turner’s.
Sandie Turner joined the ILB on Season 3, Day 14, after the incineration of OG Millennial Chorby Soul. While Turner didn’t seem to be a full on replacement for the incinerated Soul’s promising 0.840 OPS that Season, Sandie Turner would impress in other ways with time. On Season 4, Day 43, against the Charleston Shoe Thieves, Sandie Turner would hit a Single, then steal second, third, and home, managing to find the 3-Blood Blagonball. Such a strategy would be referred to as the “New York Home Run”, and cemented Sandie Turner as an important member of the Millennials Roster.
During the Season 7 Elections, Sandie Turner would become Spicy via the Hot Sauce Packet blessing, and “Sandie Turner is Red Hot!” was an oft-chanted Fan cry when they’d heat up. Millennials Seasons would, like clockwork, often be predicted and rely on when Sandie would go on a Hot streak. The one-two punch of Thomas Dracaena and Sandie Turner at the front of the Millennials lineup was a potent one. Sandie Turner would continue to impress when ey were part of the winning Inter Xpresso Roster of the Coffee Cup, alongside Theodore Cervantes and other League favorites, gaining Perk. In Season 12, Turner would be Infused by the Millennials roster. The rise from this point would be meteoric.
Season 13: 0.890 OPS/28 HR/61 RBI/34 SB
Season 14: 0.989 OPS/20 HR/39.2 RBI/22 SB
Season 15 would be the Season where all eyes were on Sandie Turner. Between Perk and Spicy, the Coffee in the air was roasted to perfection.
Season 15: 1.203 OPS/53 HR/105.2 RBI/43 SB
This Season, Sandie Turner broke the single season Home Run record, at the time.
The Millennials were Red Hot, and looking to get back to the Internet Series once agai-
CONSUMERS ATTACK SANDIE TURNER
The Postseason would end prematurely for the New York Millennials. Sandie Turner was, unfortunately, a shadow of eyr former self. Ey remained on the Lineup until the Voicemail sent Turner back, in the hopes of recuperating from the devastating and swift fall. Ey attempted pitching in Season 23. Ey came back to the Lineup again. Ey even helped Schneider Bendie nullify Sun 30. A never-give-up attitude for a 21 Season Millennial.
The competitive and often dangerous nature of splorts crafts excellent stories people tell to each other. For my money, Sandie Turner’s is the quintessential splorts narrative. Never a day goes by where I wonder what could have been, if those Consumers didn’t rob us of one of the shining stars of the Millennials franchise. All I have seen, and all that I hope, is Sandie Turner keeps trying, despite everything. If you’d like to Vote for Sandie Turner, I would certainly appreciate it. What I’d appreciate, perhaps more, is to Remember Before and check out some of Sandie Turner’s performance in Season 15. Remarkable, rip-roaring, and Red Hot.
Lars Taylor
By now you’ve seen a pretty large, sustained push for Lars Taylor of the Hellmouth Sunbeams for the Hall of Fame.
I’m here to tell you right now that Lars does deserve it. Traditionally, this would mean that Lars is good. Lars is not good, and I’m not here to claim that Lars is good. In fact, the one time Lars was better than average it was a MASSIVE shift in ability that to this day we are completely unable to explain.
But Lars is so important to the Sunbeams, and to many fans outside of the team. Lars may not be good, but Lars is Famous, and Lars embodies a lot of what Blaseball is and what makes it great.
Lars in many ways IS the Sunbeams. We started out so, so terrible. And we only got worse. Our top 4 batters in the early DE all died by season 6 (Rhys Trombone, Velazquez Meadows, Emmett Internet, Randall Marijuana). It felt like we were cursed. But the rock, the one who was always there, was Lars Taylor. No Stars Lars, one of the worst players in the league. But still, somehow, would go out and win a game. We always used to say that the team played harder for Lars, and it often felt true. As the DE went on, we started to come out of our hole a little. Our worst players started to become our best (Nagomi Nava, Nerd Pacheco, Dudley Mueller), but Lars pretty much stayed where he was. Getting his first star made him Lone Star Lars and launched a thousand cowboy-related versions of our players.
A lot of teams win, when they win, in spite of their bad players. Our worst player, one of the league’s worst, in fact, was WHY we won, pitching the decisive game 6 (one of the only games 6 in history) against the Dynasty-Strength Tigers, with Aldon at vis peak. Very few pitchers could have pulled that off, but Lars Taylor is the one that did.
Even after this, Lars stayed around longer than most bad players. The main reason we shadowed them was to attempt to buff their pitching (or batting, we’re not picky), and bring them up like we’ve done with so many other players in the past. This didn’t work, however, though we did give them flippers and two defense infuses over the course of several seasons.
And in one last iconic moment, Lars decided that the team shouldn’t face the end of the world without him. Lars shifted out of the shadows just 11 days before the end of Beta to rejoin the team as they stared into the expanding void.
Vote Lars Taylor, if not for what he means to the Sunbeams, then for what every low-star fan favorite means to their team.
