At Long Last! Emeralds Get Their Ring

[AndyHustle]

SEATTLE, WASH.; Inside of his cozy corner office on the southwest side of Seattle inside of the Ballpark of Budget Sound, GM AndyHustle sits on a balcony couch overlooking downtown Seattle and Elliot Bay. To the west, you can see the snowcapped mountain range of Olympic National Park. The journey for the first World Baseball Association championship in Northwest Emeralds history has not been an easy one. It's a story of heartbreak, determination, and staying the course. This is the franchise's first official championship - the Twin Cities Millers 2102 championship was famously vacated after the entire team was found to be using illegal PEDs. That led to the sale of the franchise and four brief years in Tampa Bay as both the Tocobagas and Florida Hurricanes before the eventual relocation to Seattle, Washington to represent the entire Pacific Northwest.

"It's been 17 seasons since we got here and this fan base has had to go through a lot. I wasn't sure that this year was going to be the year but I'm so glad we finally got our first one," said Hustle. The 2124 Ems were not the best or most talented team in franchise history. For most of the season, the offense spun it's wheels while the bullpen gave up late lead after late lead. The team was carried by it's starting pitching, led by 17-game winner Everett D'Abernon, young phenom Dimas Olival, a season veteran Luis Fernández that was looking for redemption as the sun sets on his career, and homegrown Erasmus Bierbrodt. The '24 Ems were well on their way to being another victim of Northwest's late-season struggles. Northwest was 2-9 in playoff series before this season, leading AndyHustle to the longest Championship drought in ABL history. A season after shocking the ABL with 87 wins and being dubbed the "Baby Ems", Northwest struggled to get any type of winning streak together. While Mexico City ran wild in the North American Division, the Emeralds struggled to a 84-72 finish, 11 games under the pythagorean record expectation. A 6-18 skid in June didn't help matters much. "We really had to come together as a team to get through that. We could have folded over and packed it in but I'll give credit to those kids - they didn't give in," Hustle said. To help get his team over the hump, Hustle decided he needed to make a midseason move to boost his offense. He traded a draft pick for ABL veteran and star third basemen Norbert Rhodes - who provided the much-needed spark that lit the fire for the Emeralds postseason run. Rhodes hit .359/.400/.577 down the stretch for Northwest while collecting September ABL Batter of the Month and American Championship Series MVP honors. "I felt like Rhodes was the only guy I was going to make a move for at that point so close to the deadline. We had already upgraded the bullpen and I knew the offense needed some attention. I felt like Norbert was the only guy who could make the type of impact we needed - so I went and got him."

The Emeralds season would come down to the final three weeks - barely leading the Wild Card race with ABL traditional powerhouse Sao Paulo Toucans and divisional foe Los Angeles Stars right on their heels. On September 9th, star outfielder Jose Rios went down for the rest of the regular season with a torn hamstring. Hustle called this a "gut check" for the club. The Emeralds would go 11-8 in those final games without Rios - just enough to squeak into the playoffs by three games and hold off the charging Toucans. However - a familiar foe was awaiting them in the playoffs, the Buenos Aires Dolphins.

"The Dolphins have always been the team we need to get through. Thinking back at "The Catch" (referring to Vinícius Caruma's diving catch up the middle in Game 5 of the 2109 ACS) and their run of dominance in the WBA - it felt like an uphill battle going into the playoffs this year," Hustle said. Uphill battle it was - but not for the Ems. The Emeralds swept the Dolphins, who were undergoing franchise turmoil amidst protests over ownership hopes of building a new stadium, in four games to set up a ACS matchup with another long-time postseason foe - the historic Santo Domingo Palmchats. Six games later, wit the Palmchats fighting off elimination two nights in a row in Seattle, the Emeralds celebrated their first ABL championship on the mound in Santo Domingo.

Every underdog story needs to end with a storybook ending. To get that ending, the Ems would need to go through the Cairo Pharaohs - who had beaten IBL favorite Mumbai and outlasted Rome to reach the WBA finals. "It felt like nobody could stop us at this point. I really thought we were going to win it all," Hustle said. Over the course of one week, the Emeralds dismantled Cairo five games to one - finishing the series with a home win in Seattle setting off a celebration in the PNW that hasn't been seen in decades. Decades of playoff heartbreak forgotten on one starry October night in Seattle.