It has been exactly one month to the day that the Florida Featherheads pulled off an improbable Planetary Extreme Championship victory.  The Florida red & blue took on all odds to defeat the Aurora Borealis three consecutive games to capture their first ever Rodríguez Cup.  In the middle of all this hoopla were two unsung heroes.  Both men traveled similar yet different paths.  One man’s journey started in Japan, while the other in mainland China.

Taisuke Endo, who batted .625 with a homer and three RBI in the PEC, began his baseball journey with a Featherheads minor league contract.  Game 7 emergency starter Tu-an Sima – who held the Aurora lineup to a .129 batting average in the PEC – started his career as a Calzones inaugural draft selection.  Starting their career paths in two different countries, both players found themselves at the same place, time and team last November – Game 7 of the PEC, playing for the Florida Featherheads.

Call it fate, destiny, luck, coincidence or whatnot, but it was just meant to be.  It took a series of events that not even Hollywood could write.  Just look at Endo’s journey to the big leagues and one would realize the path was just as improbable as Florida’s PEC win.  Back in 2007, the 22-year-old Endo opted to start his career in the foreign lands of America with a baseball league that no one knew much about.  Rather than play in Japan for the League of the Rising Sun, Endo took a leap of faith and set his heart on the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance (PEBA).  Major League Baseball had recently collapsed in 2006 and prognosticators were positive the PEBA would be an unsuccessful successor.  They were almost right.  Shortly before the grand opening of the PEBA, its commissioner inexplicably gave up on this daunting project and an inexperienced man by the name of John Rodríguez stepped in.

In a new league and country, Endo found his way to Baja California, playing for the Mexicali Shmoes.  Nothing seemed to faze the young Japanese ballplayer.  Endo zoomed through Florida’s minor league system.  In 2008, Endo earned honors as a minor league All-Star and was awarded with Florida’s Minor League Player of the Year Award.  The following year, Endo received a Glove Wizard Award and racked up 100 RBI in the Global Baseball Brotherhood.

Despite his accomplishments, Endo’s path to the big leagues looked unlikely.  The first roadblock was that Florida had a glut of young, talented infielders, including Mark Richardson, Kevin McNeill and Tsumemasa Morimoto.  Other GMs around the league agreed with this sentiment and never thought Endo would ever see the light of day.  Endo’s second hurdle was that many experts and scouts simply did not believe in his ability.  GM Kevin Lewis was even on record as saying Endo was nothing more than a minor league player.

As bleak as it may have looked for Endo, the Florida Featherheads would encounter bleaker news.  On the 25^th of September, 2009, one innocent pitch turned the franchise upside down and inside out.  On that day, Mark Richardson suffered a brutal fractured cheekbone from an errant fastball.  This injury and his pending free agency prompted an historic trade that would forever reshape the franchise.  The departure of Richardson and Florida’s now uncertain infield opened the door for Endo’s opportunity for the big leagues.

Like Endo, Sima’s ride to the big leagues was a precarious one.  Unlike Japan, where baseball is king, baseball in China was just an afterthought.  Over in China, kids watched Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and their very own Yao Ming.  Basketball has quickly become the international sport of choice over in China and youngsters dream of being the next “b-baller”.  While Japan had Ichiro and Godzilla – and before that, Nomo – China had no one.  In American professional baseball history, there has only been one man born in China that played professionally in the United States.  That man is none other than Harry Kingman.  Yes, the only China-born player was not even Chinese.  What about Chien-Ming Wang?  Nope, he’s Taiwanese.

Unlike its predecessor, the PEBA has had a handful of Chinese-born ballplayers.  As of this writing, the PEBA has seven active Chinese, including 2009 Wunderkind winner Yong-zhan Hu.  But not even Hu can claim the popularity and fandom that Tu-an Sima has obtained.  Drafted in the 92^th round (2190^th overall) of the inaugural draft by San Antonio, Sima spent the majority of his time in the minors.  He pitched decently early on and eventually broke through with a fine 2009 minor league season where he compiled a 6-2 record, 2.79 ERA and 0.92 WHIP.  But just like anyone in the Calzones organization, Sima was eventually shipped to Tempe in a blockbuster Winter Meetings deal that landed Octávio Pexego in December of 2009.  It was in Tempe where Sima got his first real shot to taste the big leagues.  With the exception of Markus Hancock, the Knights were in desperate need of pitching help.  Sima was thrust into the big league action and performed admirably.  In 2010, he finished the season with a 7-5 record and 3.87 ERA.

Just like Endo, one fateful injury would indirectly impact Sima’s career path.  During the 2011 offseason, the Featherheads placed All-Star pitcher Bill Taylor on the trading block.  Taylor was recovering from a shoulder injury and Florida had concerns about Taylor’s future with the ballclub.  GM Kevin Lewis had already penciled in the emerging Franklin Browne for Taylor’s rotation spot.  With Lewis’s blind faith in Browne, Taylor was made available.  Starved for pitching help, Tempe rolled the dice and traded for Taylor.  One of the players included in the deal was Tu-an Sima.

Unlike the situation in Tempe, Florida’s pitching staff was full of talent, and therefore Sima was destined to toil away in the minor leagues.  Seen as a setback at the time, little did Sima know that this move would change his life.  It was at AAA Chesapeake Bay that Sima met pitching coach Noboru Sano.  A renowned pitching instructor and coach, Sano helped reshaped Franklin Browne’s career earlier.  Sano urged Sima to change his pitching delivery to the submariner style.  Through Sima’s hard work and Sano’s coaching, Sima successfully altered his throwing motion.  This change helped Sima to induce more ground balls and serendipitously turn him into an overnight sensation over in China.  His unorthodox delivery was widely spread through viral YouTube videos.  Rather than watch a LeBron windmill dunk, kids all over China searched for “the video“.

The new pitching delivery took Sima some time to get accustomed to.  Sima open up his AAA season with four walks and four hits in 4.1 innings pitched.  Opponents hit .300 off Sima.  Before Sima could work on his mechanics, another fateful injury took place.  Florida’s setup man António Delgado suffered a tendon tear in his elbow that effectively put an end to his season.  Just like in Tempe, Sima was thrust into action.  Sima arrived onto the big league scene and took on the role as long reliever.  The role allowed Sima an opportunity to work out the kinks of his newfound mechanics.

Another series of events would ultimately impact Sima’s career path.  Former ace Chris Saunders, who was making his injury comeback, found himself demoted and eventually traded after struggling in the rotation.  Saunders’s departure left the door open for minor league veteran Mike Vaughn.  While Vaughn showed flashes of brilliance, his inconsistency led the Featherheads to give Sima an opportunity in the starting rotation.  Sima’s time in the bullpen proved to be invaluable, as he was a perfect 4-and-0 with a 2.02 ERA in five August starts.  Sima finished his whirlwind season with a 10-3 record and 3.37 ERA.

Now flash forward to late October, 2011.  It’s the Featherheads and Borealis in a PEC showdown.  Down 3-to-2 in the series, Florida’s championship hopes looked to be a distant dream.  Manager Jaime Sánchez resorted to desperation.  He shook up the batting order and inserted Taisuke Endo over the struggling Roberto Merán.  Call him crazy or not, Sánchez had complete faith in Endo.  Then in an odd chain of events, it was discovered that scheduled Game 7 starter António Rivera would be unavailable due to injury.  With no other starter to turn to, Sánchez handed the ball to Sima.  Just like the story of his career, he was once again thrust into the limelight.  Sima, who struggled mightily in Game 1 of the series, made an improbable start in the series-clinching win.  Despite walking seven batters, Sima held the Borealis to one hit and one run.  It was the imperfect “perfect game“.  Sima was the Game 7 winning pitcher and Endo contributed with two hits, two RBI and a homer.

The story ends here.  Unlike a movie or book, the significance is not the ending but the beginning.  This story took four years to complete.  It began in 2007 in two different countries and ended on the same playing field on one fateful November evening.  The PEC outcome was improbable but not as unlikely as the journey.

What if António Rivera was never injured before Game 7?  What if Roberto Merán was not struggling and the team was not behind in the series?  Would Sánchez have inserted Endo into the lineup?

Before we answer these questions, we would have to go further back.  What if Chris Saunders never got injured?  Would Sima ever receive his opportunity in Florida?  Or better yet, what if Bill Taylor was never injured?  Would Florida have traded Taylor to Tempe for Sima?  What if Sima never met pitching coach Noboru Sano?  What if Mark Richardson avoided that ugly fastball to the face?  Would have Endo received his big league opportunity?

To go even further back… what if John Rodríguez never took over a disoriented PEBA?  Would Endo have chosen the PEBA over Japanese baseball?  Would Sima have a baseball career if not for the PEBA?

Was it all luck that these series of events happened, or was it destiny?  Coincidence?  Fate?  Is it a classic case of being at the “right place” at the “right time”?  Or how about “things happen for a reason”?  Who knows?

The only thing I know is that this is baseball’s way of showing all of us how delicate life can be.  Call it the “butterfly effect” or what have you, but one event can set off a chain of unforeseen events.  Life is beautiful and complicated like that.  Two kids born in different countries with totally different cultures find themselves on the same path.  Who would have guessed that these two would have met, possessing the same goal?  That’s life for you.  Luck or fate – life is extraordinary like that.  Life is too magical to be outclassed by a fictional movie or book.  No screenwriter could come up with this story, not even Steven Spielberg.  Unlike movies, life is full of unpredictability; you just simply cannot plot out events on a storyboard.  Although Hollywood fails in comparison, credit Hollywood for getting it right:

Life is indeed a box of chocolates.