The Great Flood of 2039

[Arroyos]

THE GREAT FLOOD OF 2039

Just as the 2039 PEBA season was warming its way into summer and speculation about All-Star selections was on the rise, a large—well, gigantic, really—block of ice broke off a glacier along the coast of Greenland. The tsunami wave it created flooded the eastern coast of the island immediately, drowning all the residents of Tasiilaq before they knew what had happened. Because the wave was moving south away from the island, the populated west coast of Greenland had time to prepare for the wave’s arrival, though the capital city of Nuuk (approx. 18,000 residents) was devastated by flood waters.

The Danish Folketing interrupted its proceedings when the legislators learned of the disaster in Greenland. They voted emergency relief funds for the Greelanders only minutes before learning a tsunami was headed for Copenhagen. The city began evacuation procedures, but without sufficient time to move the more than 800,000 residents plus another half million tourists, the death toll was staggering. Or will be, when they finish counting. The entire country of Denmark, with the exception of Mill Top and the countryside adjacent to the nation’s highest point (170 meters), was buried under water.

The same wave that buried Denmark flooded all of the northern and western coastlines of Europe and swelled rivers in France, Germany, Poland and England. It took just one hour for the wave to move from the mouth of the Thames to the London Bridge, which collapsed under the force of the swirling waters and the debris the flood pushed ahead of it. The entire Danube Valley was quickly underwater, and the valleys of the Loire, the Seine, the Rhine and the Elbe were similarly inundated. Europeans not living on the coast had time to evacuate, so the death toll in central Europe was minimal compared to the 75-90% death rate along the coast line of the North Sea.

With the cities of Amsterdam and London under water, the PEBA teams who make those cities their home were effectively wiped out for the 2039 season, their stadiums destroyed, the fan base dispersed. Fortunately, neither team was playing at home when the tsunamis hit.

In Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth was flooded within hours of the initial collapse of the glacier in the north Atlantic. The three iconic Firth of Forth bridges all collapsed and the coastal areas of the city were destroyed. But the high ground of New Town and central Edinburgh remained undamaged by rising waters, though Princes Street Gardens were flooded, reminding some folks of the original swamp that was drained to create the gardens. Though undamaged by water, downtown Edinburgh was flooded with refugees from the neighborhoods adjacent to the Firth or the North Sea. The Edinburgh Castle, including the grounds where the famous Military Tatoo is performed each summer, was converted into a refugee camp. The stadium belonging to the Scottish Claymores was likewise turned into a temporary refugee camp and all baseball games were cancelled for the remainder of the 2039 season. With only Gloucester still fielding a ball club and having a stadium to play in, the Transatlantic Division of PEBA’s Imperial League was shut down for the remainder of 2039.

It took the tsunami several hours to work its way across the Atlantic to the northeastern sea coast of North America, where it completely wiped out towns and villages in New Foundland and Prince Edward Island. The entire St. Lawrence Valley, from Gaspé to Quebec to Montreal to the first of the Great Lakes, Ontario, was inundated with sea water, hundreds of miles inland. Waters in each Great Lake in turn rose precipitously, flooding lakeside villages and reaking havoc to Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and dozens of smaller cities. But because the Great Lakes region had the better part of 24 hours to prepare, the number of lives lost was kept to a minimum.

But the Seaboard and Great Lakes divisions of the PEBAverse were put out of business by rising waters, evacuations and, in a few instances, the collapse of stadia under the enormous pressure of rising and moving waters. Chicago was a ghost town even before the wave came ashore, its residents fleeing east to higher ground. Madison, Wisconsin doesn’t even sit on the shore of Lake Michigan, but its twin lakes of Mendota and Manona were flooded when rising waters poured over the banks of Lake Michigan and into the tributaries that feed the twin lakes, ending the season for the Madison Malts. Kalamazoo was spared major damage because of its distance from the lake as well as its elevation, nearly 300 feet above Lake Michigan, but the Badgers had few opponents to play. Duluth, Minnesota, sits in a unique location as the westernmost city on the shores of a great lake, Superior. By the time the wave traveled the length of the St. Lawrence River, crossed Lakes Ontario and Erie, and filled the basins of Lake Huron sufficiently to pour through the narrow channel at Sault Ste. Marie into Whitefish Bay at the eastern end of Lake Superior, the residents of Duluth had been evacuated. And though the wave had dissipated much of its strength crossing all the Great Lakes, still the waters came, not so much as a wave as a gentle rising, gentle but persistent, until all of Duluth was flooded, including the Warriors’ ball park. In the Great Lakes Division of the Sovereign League, only Fargo—in remote North Dakota—and Crystal Lake, Illinois were spared. Ironically, as the rising waters reached the southern end of Lake Michigan and backed up into the lakes tributaries, Crystal Lake itself rose a couple feet, which pleased the residents there, since they had paid mightily to have Colorado River Water shipped to the lake during the drought just a few years before. No more Colorado Water shipments for Crystal Lake!

The teams situated along the Atlantic’s southern coastline in North American—New Jersey, Gloucester, Arlington, Charleston and Florida—did not fare so well. The waters came, hitting these cities hard. Roughly half the citizens living along the eastern shores of the U.S. were able to evacuate inland, but millions died and tens of millions were homeless. The ball clubs in those areas simply abandoned business. Even the teams located inland from the Atlantic—Manchester and Hartford—found their rivers flooding downtown areas and closing, at least temporarily, all businesses, including the ball clubs in residence. In the Seaboard Division, only the West Virginia Alleghenies were able to continue playing baseball. And with so few opponents to play against, they struggled to maintain their schedule. After a few weeks of such troubles, the players voted to suspend the remainder of the 2039 season and volunteer to help with the relocation of refugees from the Atlantic coast.

In the Dixie Division, Florida and Charleston, as noted above, were shut down immediately. San Antonio (whose home stadium is in Laredo) and Kentucky, both inland far enough to be unaffected by the tsunami, continued to play limited schedules, until the players joined the Alleghenies in voluntarily calling a halt to the season in order to volunteer in relief efforts. New Orleans, of course, was hit hardest, simply because most of the city is below sea level. The tsunami struck New Orleans like a freight train, wiping out many of the barriers and buildings restored after Katrina. The waters rose so quickly and so high, that none of the buildings in the French Quarter could be seen except by boat, floating above them. The entire Mississippi Delta region disappeared. Lake Pontchartrain simply merged with the Gulf of Mexico and more than half of the area of the state of Louisiana was underwater. Those with boats survived. Hundreds of thousands are missing and presumed dead. The New Orleans Trendsetters are no more.

Ditto in Havana. Without the resources of the United States, the Cuban capitol was wiped from the map. Millions died, those that didn’t escaped to the mountains in the center of the island where the awaited help that would never arrive. The government, housed in Havana, disappeared. So did the Havana Leones, though one rumor suggested some of the team’s players packed up bats and balls and gloves and headed to the mountains hours before the tsunami hit. So maybe baseball will be reborn in the mountains of Cuba.

Finally, management of the Imperial League of the PEBA was forced to suspend business until next season. Too few teams remained and so many needed help, it seemed mad to continue to pretend baseball was worth the effort.

And what of the Sovereign League? Their story will follow.

[Arroyos]

The Great Flood of 2039, part 2

Waves, even those the size of tsunamis, have a tough time making the trip around Cape Horn and into the southern Pacific Ocean. The force of the wave is greatly diminished by the land mass of South America, the islands around Tierra del Fuego, and the narrow channel between those islands and the Antarctic. So by the time the tsunami reaches the South Pacific several days after Greenland dropped an iceberg the size of Rhode Island into the North Atlantic, the wave is no longer the largest ever seen by humans. It is now merely a moderately large tsunami, one capable of doing considerable damage along the coastline but no longer strong enough to reach far inland.

The wave will reach the Gulf of California just before it crashes into Okinawa, on the opposite side of the Pacific. It will swell up between the narrow banks of Baja California and the Sonoran shoreline, destroying several small fishing villages and a few holiday resorts on its way to the mouth of the Colorado River. A few miles up the Colorado, the sleepy burgh of Yuma will be surprised by the sudden rise in river water which will overwhelm Old Town, the Arroyo stadium, and the Colorado River Water bottling company which supports the Arroyo ball team. For Yuma, a desert town completely unprepared for a massive flood, the rising waters will spell death and destruction, essentially wiping the town off the map. Survivors will move elsewhere after the flood, leaving a ghost town with strange water marks high on the walls of the tallest building in town, the new county jail. The Arroyo ball club, ironically named for the many dry river beds scratching the surface of the Sonoran desert surrounding the town, and its management, players and infamous owner Taffy Slummings will take up residence together in a cluster of trailers on a bluff outside town. One of the trailers, it’s rumored, used to be the home of David Goode, the $12 Million Dollar Man—back in the days of PEBA when 12 mil was a HUGE salary. (Whatever happened to David? Well, that’s another story, coming soon to your Kindle.)

Minutes after a tsunami wave reached the Gulf of California and began its march toward the Colorado River and Yuma, Arizona, its twin wave reached Okinawa, on the western side of the Pacific. Residents there have elaborate safety measures in place for tsunami, which are relatively common because of the frequency of earthquakes along the Pacific Rim. So most of the one and a half million residents of the island were able to move up the mountain slopes that form the backbone of the island. From there they had a bird’s eye view of the destruction of their homes and businesses. The eastern facing shore of the island was devastated, while the western facing shore was damaged by heavy flooding but not destroyed by the force of a giant tsunami wave. Still, the island and its accompanying chain of islands that make up the Okinawa Prefecture have been severely damaged and it will be a long time before residents can rebuild homes along the coast. For the time being, they will live in shacks and shanties, tents and cars along the hills beneath the mountain peaks. The Okinawa baseball team, the Shisa, will not be playing in Okinawa for a very long time, obviously.

The wave rushed north of Okinawa into the many bays and harbors along the Japanese coast. And we all know what that means: compromised nuclear reactors. If Fukushima was a Pacific Rim disaster, the release of radiated water from Japan’s several coastal reactors will eventually trigger a world-wide disaster. But for the moment, we can take small solace in the fact that Japan is perhaps the best prepared country for tsunamis in the world. They evacuated all the coast towns and villages well ahead of the wave, except Tokyo, of course, which is just too damn populous to evacuate completely. Those forced to remain moved into the dozens of tsunami-proof buildings Japan has built over the last decades, all on ground higher than sea level, so when the wave did finally reach them, the force was dissipated and the new buildings withstood the rising waters. Tokyo is reporting no loss of life—though that will undoubtedly have to be revised when the waters recede—and damage only to older structures directly adjacent to the coastline. The country and its people have survived, but millions have become homeless and much of the national infrastructure remains underwater. The baseball teams of Neo-Tokyo, Shin Seiki, and Niihama-shi have all been put out of business. Only the Toyama Wind Dancers, located on the west side of the island, will be able to resume playing baseball when the waters reside. The tsunami could not circumvent the island, so only the general rise of water in the Sea of Japan caused damage along the western shoreline of the country.

And in the western half of North America, only the coastal cities of California, Oregon and Washington witnessed the rising waters. As the wave moved north along the American coast, it lost much of its force. San Diego, protected by the Coronado peninsula, suffered flooding but little more. Long Beach was hit hard, especially the Port of Los Angeles area, but the city of LA is far enough inland not to be affected directly. The famous Santa Monica Pier was damaged badly, but the city of Santa Monica, sitting high on the bluffs was untouched. The richest town in America, Malibu, was flooded badly, but most of the rich residents of that town live high above the ocean in the Santa Monica Mountains. Cut off by the floods, they partied their way through the disaster, broadcasting images of their indifference and arrogance and wealth to the millions of displaced persons on the East Coast. Though the tsunami and floods had little effect on the lifestyles of the rich and famous Californians, the anger and resentment spawned in the suffering of most Americans would eventually cost the Malibu who-whos a great deal.

Further up the California coast the force of the tsunami damaged coastal towns but did not move inland to where most Californians lived. San Francisco Bay suffered some flooding, but little more. And cities north of San Fran, like Portland and Seattle, only saw a nominal rise of water.

Meanwhile, the PEBA teams of the Desert Hills—except Yuma, of course—played on, their stadia unaffected by coastal flooding, the games against each other played on schedule. The PEBA Commissioner cancelled the 2039 season for every division except the Desert Hills, which meant no playoffs, no championship, and a very difficult time ahead to restore so many teams in time for the 2040 season. It appeared to be an impossible task.

[Borealis]

I guess Tempe is High Desert enough, and the tidal surge through the Golden Gate wasn't enough to flood the Central Valley and reach Bakersfield...

[Arroyos]

I guess Tempe is High Desert enough, and the tidal surge through the Golden Gate wasn't enough to flood the Central Valley and reach Bakersfield...

Tempe is near no river, so it was untouched. And by the time the tsunami reached the Bay Area, it was so reduced in force it cause only moderate flooding along the coast. No tidal surge up the Sacramento River toward the central valley.

[Borealis]

I guess Tempe is High Desert enough, and the tidal surge through the Golden Gate wasn't enough to flood the Central Valley and reach Bakersfield...

Tempe is near no river, so it was untouched. And by the time the tsunami reached the Bay Area, it was so reduced in force it cause only moderate flooding along the coast. No tidal surge up the Sacramento River toward the central valley.

Bummer, Man...

[Arroyos]

At least your ball club and stadium sit high in the Rockies foothills.