Name: Eileen Borden
Team: Leira City Aardvarks
Position: Left Fielder
Age: 29

Something’s gone horribly wrong with Leira City.

It’s been like this for 82 years, ever since the storm that flooded their ballpark. The inaugural game was postponed until the end of the 100 game season. The Aardvarks ended up losing badly to cap off their meager year with only 18 victories. Rest assured, no one would ever face this humiliation again.

Leira City’s had ups and downs, mirroring that of their peers. However, while everyone has had some moment of triumph, or consistent failure, the Aardvarks have always posed a threat, but never once claimed a championship. Other clubs with their pedigree have won three, four, or even ten times; meaningful baseball is routine to these teams. To the Aardvarks, a playoff game represents an existential struggle. Those who manage to watch have long since stopped caring. Those who still care have yet to witness a patented Aardvarks collapse.

For Eileen, it began in a bet between her friends. She was the only member of the group enthused with the statistical side of the game rather than its sentimentality. She watched impartially instead of cheering for the ‘Varks, but the Curse remained an outlier on her chart. As she blitzed through school, winning mathematical awards and statistics degrees, that dot fell further away from the pack. The kangaroo remained steadfast that there was nothing magical about losing, and that eventually the team her friends lamented would luck into a championship.

Through these years, Eileen spent each summer split between her studies and the amateur park, her success in one field mirrored by dominance in another. While her friends wore Aardvarks uniforms during their games, she refused to pledge allegiance to anyone. She was too stubborn to root for the anomaly, but too hot-headed to let the Curse win.

She knew recruitment was improbable even when she chose to try out for the team, but her boyfriend of five years encouraged her to register. He always believed in the Aardvarks, and chose then to believe in Eileen too. To this day, only one side of his conviction has been rewarded.

The Aardvarks, year after year, wear the veneer of a championship team: they have talent, support, and kids growing up every year watching with bated breath, hoping this year their city won’t make a joke of itself. Those kids hope, when the Aardvarks inevitably fall short, that they'll suit up one day to win it all and pose for a statue eternally marked for construction in the middle of town. Perhaps the idea of it forms the basis of Leira City's hubris.

But they don't simply lose. Regardless of players, coaches, or era, the Aardvarks fail in bombastic, heartbreaking ways. They build tremendous leads only to squander them at the final hour, and storm back from daunting deficits to only fall one run short. The one year they looked indomitable, their best players got hurt. The night before the deciding game of the only finals they’ve qualified for, their marshland stadium once again flooded, forcing a move that shook the whole team's confidence. They’ve tried every strategy and system, erecting stadiums with new dimensions and redesigning their uniforms. Some liken them to a stage play running long through these decades, ever shuffling their cast and setting, erasing every plot point and rewriting each line of dialogue. No matter what they do, their performance ends in tragedy.

No physical cause explains it. If it's psychological, then four different generations have endured this same mental block. Most have accepted it as an act of fate.

Even as a player, Eileen asserts it’s no divine deed. Her tenure isn't defined by pride in her home or loyalty to her teammates. She’s a scientist, and her work is a field experiment. Its hypothesis? The Curse is nothing more than mythology. The Aardvarks cannot be predestined for embarrassment.

Here she is to put an end to it all: not to fulfill a childhood dream, or to earn a statue outside the team’s palace-like stadium. She’s promised her boyfriend that when they win, she’ll quit on the spot and settle down with him to start a family. While she won’t admit she believes in the Curse, it’s played an instrumental role in her life.

Only a couple years into her effort, sitting on the fringe of thirty, a bit of urgency has set in. Her big fish still lurks in the wild as she prepares for another year with an Aardvarks squad once again projected to finish near the top. Eileen can’t help herself from looking at their statistical chance. She doesn’t believe in miracles, but now, wearing the pinstripes herself—perhaps to her detriment—she believes in the Aardvarks too.

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