Jack Torrance - contributing reporter
They say the baseballs are sleeping now. Resting in their transparent chamber, each one identical — polished, numbered, waiting. But we know better. We know they feel the tension, the electric hum that creeps through the studio like static on old wallpaper.
It’s Draft Lottery Night in Hardball Stitches, Season 4. Sixteen teams. Sixteen chances. One truth: somebody’s luck is about to change, and somebody’s dream will dissolve under bright lights.
The stage glows sterile and silver, all glass and steel and reflection — the kind of place where destiny doesn’t whisper, it hums through the floorboards. On the monitor above, the league’s insignia spins like an eye that never blinks: HARDBALL STITCHES — SEASON 4 DRAFT LOTTERY
There’s applause, of course. Polite. Nervous. Manufactured.
But underneath the surface, you can feel it — the quiet, desperate heartbeat of sixteen front offices waiting for salvation. The contenders stand still in their rows, each team clutching its little share of probability, its fraction of fate.
Durham. Charlotte. Nashville. Cincinnati. Louisville. Scottsdale. Vancouver. Arizona. Baltimore. Philadelphia. Los Angeles. Rochester. Colorado Springs. New York. Helena. Salt Lake City.
Sixteen names, strung like rosary beads. Each one has whispered their prayers to the same cold machine.
Behind the glass, the lottery drum waits — immaculate, mirrored, heartless. A glint of chrome catches the overhead spotlight, and for an instant it looks alive. There’s something almost holy about it. Or maybe hungry.
The host smiles the kind of smile that belongs in hotel portraits and fever dreams.
He says the words everyone’s been waiting for: “It’s time to begin the draw.”
A mechanical hiss. The first baseball trembles. They begin to spin — a white blur, a storm of motion, all hope and chaos compressed into one transparent sphere.
Around the room, tension crackles like lightning over snow. Some stare straight ahead. Some can’t bear to look. The numbers blur together — 16 chances to be rewritten, 16 doors that lead to entirely different futures.
You can hear the soft clink of baseballs colliding — the rhythm of fate, the soft percussion of anxiety.
And then… silence.
One will rise.
One will break the symmetry.
One will wear the crown of the Season 4 Draft.
But not yet. Not yet.
For now, they spin.
And every GM in the room is thinking the same thing — the same, desperate line, scratched somewhere deep inside the skull:
“All work and no luck makes for a long, cold season.”