Today is April 22, but in the year 2076, it marks 200 years since a professional Major League Baseball game was first played. Back in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when the National League was inaugurated, 100 years after the United States’ independence.
But this year (2076), the baseball season will begin in October for the first time in two centuries because Major League Baseball is now a “winter” sport, although that season no longer exists. Due to high temperatures, melting glaciers, and a drastic rise in sea levels, the world is no longer what it used to be (and neither are humans).
It all began in the summer of 2023, when the hottest temperatures in recorded history were recorded, as far back as we know, since humans have inhabited this planet. Since then, temperatures during what was called “summer” have not failed to set a record every season. “A continuous hapax of heat,” scientists say.
There are now only two seasons in the world: the rainy and the dry (as in the tropics). Twenty years ago (in 2056), each of these seasons lasted six months, but now the dry season lasts nine months and the rainy season only three. Where will all this end?
For the 200th season of Major League Baseball, there will be 60 teams for the first time. 30 from the United States and the other 30 from the rest of the world, divided into two leagues: the National (which is the original and founding league) and the International. Baseball is no longer a game of the Caribbean—preferably played at sea level—and has become a sport of altitude and mountains.
The schedule will only have 81 games, but the same number will be played in total because there are now twice as many franchises. Surprisingly, baseball remains a box-office sport. Some things never change!
All games will be at night and in stadiums located in countries above the equator. The playoffs will be in Iceland in March 2078, and the World Series will be in a single venue: Taiwan, which is in fact the only “island nation” that hasn’t disappeared thanks to its innovative hydraulic technology that simulates the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Today’s baseball is very different from that of the 19th century, the 20th century, and the first decades of the 21st century. Nothing new, because the only constant in this life is change. Young people don’t question it because they live in their virtual reality, robotic assistants do everything for us, and Artificial Intelligence is our “supposed” Guardian Angel: a kind of hologram with a virtual life of its own that projects a balance between what we “should” and “want” to be.
Another thing that has never changed in baseball is that we, the elderly and those who now comprise practically half of humanity (today 10 billion inhabitants), remain MLB’s preferred target. Baseball executives have always liked “grandparents.”
We are still a productive sector thanks to the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advances in medicine that give us a better quality of life and health (although we struggle with a hostile climate). Standard baseball players now play until they are 50 years old, and it is estimated that new generations of babies will live to 120, just as the Bible said since the time of Moses!
How did we get to this point? One of the keys to understanding “this” is millennials, those of us born between the 1980s and 1990s, who handle documentary information and historical records that are not in the AI database. “The creators” wanted to erase and/or change part of universal history, but the few of us who remain who know how to write by hand continue to collect information outside the cloud.
Today, art and everything created by human hands is highly rewarded and highly valued. The world’s rich (those who live on the moon) pay very well for works of art, handwritten documents like codices, sculptures, and anything artistic. I think people are tired of 3D printers at home. A spelling mistake or a carving or painting error on a work is seen as authentic, and people can’t stop laughing at these “little mistakes” that seem to give meaning to their lives.
The 2030 Agenda and the Worst Version of Shohei Ohtani
At the beginning of the 1930s, significant changes occurred with a new economic order. Cash disappeared, and gold was once again traded, as it had been since the Middle Ages, as the backing metal for world currencies. Thus ended the era of the petrodollar and illegal cash transactions. Many sports franchises and international corporations went bankrupt and disappeared.
This decade also saw gender equality formalized. Although these changes generated much controversy at the time—and with consequences that are irrelevant here—something groundbreaking happened: women began to play more sports than men, and so in 2040, the MLB created a parallel women’s league where each of the 32 MLB franchises had a female representative.
The games in this women’s league were sometimes played before and sometimes after (but always on the same day) the men’s games, so women played and traveled on the same regular-season schedule as the men. In that same year, 2040, two new franchises were created: Nashville and Portland, marking the first time 32 teams played.
In 2030, Japanese player Shohei Ohtani also retired at the age of 36. Initially, he was seen as one of the best baseball players in history for his phenomenal throwing and hitting. But at that time, neither medical technology nor the standards required for a big leaguer (throwing 100 mph and hitting 60 home runs) were compatible with what a player could achieve as a human being.
Ohtani was a player ahead of his time, with an unbreakable competitive spirit and mental toughness, but the MLB “system” never knew how to take full advantage of him simply because they weren’t prepared for someone like him. The Japanese player’s statistics were ordinary, although he was an advertising phenomenon, setting a milestone in sports and sponsorship contracts.
The 2050s and the Best Version of Shohei Ohtani
In the mid-21st century, many other things continued to change. During these seasons, baseball remained a “summer” sport, but since this season (2050), it has only been played at night. People have long since stopped going out for walks during the day due to pollution, high temperatures, and solar storms. The younger generations increasingly have grayer skin. We look like aliens!
High daytime temperatures made it impossible to play any sport, putting the health of those involved at risk: players, umpires, and fans required first aid in previous years for dehydration, among other unstable health conditions, such as breathing polluted air in metropolitan areas.
Starting this season, the MLB implemented a project requiring all stadiums to be roofed and equipped with an air purification system. By 2050, no human beings in the world’s major metropolises and their surrounding areas would be allowed to engage in outdoor sports. Of course, gyms abound, and AI tells you what to do, when, and how.
Although MLB’s biggest infrastructure project this decade was covered up—at first and for as long as they could—because they began moving baseball’s most important franchises to cities much farther from the coast.
Flooding along coastal and ocean shores became increasingly frequent, so much so that 20th-century maps became outdated and obsolete. Hurricane and typhoon seasons have dragged on, and it seems the sea wants to cover the entire planet. It’s terrifying! But since not everything can be bad, we now have more seafood.
One of the most important people for baseball in these years was Japanese Shohei Ohtani, who many thought would be the greatest player in history, but ended up being the most influential figure in the history of the sport, albeit from an office.
Shohei Ohtani became the first foreign player to be MLB Commissioner and did so many masterful things in his role that virtually no one recognizes him as a player, but rather as a Major League Baseball executive.
Ohtani was the mastermind who reorganized the calendar, expanded MLB franchises to the world’s capitals, and interpreted the labor issue of baseball players to become professionals with an equal minimum wage for men and women, and with each player being paid based on performance and goals achieved immediately.
The changes Ohtani led were so far-reaching that virtually all baseball players began to improve their offensive and defensive averages, thus changing the criteria for entry into the Hall of Fame. Payments in baseball are now fairer, and everyone receives money based on production. Those who don’t play due to a sports decision or injury receive a base salary.
The 2070s, Steroids, India, and Women
For three years now, baseball has undergone one of the greatest revolutions in its history. The much-criticized and once-unhealthy steroids were legalized, and this brought consequences that changed the game. Of course, the steroids of today are not as harmful as those of the past.
There are no longer athletes, there are super-athletes, and that’s what people want to see. “The customer is always right,” and that hasn’t changed either. Women have reshaped the game, and with the legal use of steroids, they no longer have such notable physical disadvantages that marginalize them from competitiveness. Today’s baseball is “unisex,” like so many other things.
Since 2070, Major League teams have featured men and women without any distinction, including transgender and transsexual players. Gender no longer matters in sports, nor does having a bionic arm or eye. There are virtually no injuries in modern baseball. What would Ohtani have been like in this era? In his time, the Japanese player didn’t have the scientific and game-related advances we have today, but he, more aware of this than anyone, changed the game when he became Commissioner 20 years ago.
Women have become the best pitchers in MLB, since Sabermetrics, which has been trying to interpret this game, its variables, projections, and probabilities with mathematics for decades, doesn’t understand women. Who has been able to understand them? They are wonderful, beautiful, incomprehensible, and now indecipherable pitchers.
Another determining factor that brought women to the mound, even before the legalization of steroids (there is debate on the subject), was the entry into the baseball business of India, the most populous country in the world and where soccer never took off (the exact reason is unknown). Baseball took advantage of this disadvantage because soccer had never really failed in a market.
Incidentally, Ohtani was the forerunner of equalizing the rules of baseball to make it much more similar to cricket, which is in fact an original and primitive version of what Americans called “baseball” in the 19th century.
The fundamental rule adopted is that a pitcher (male or female) can deliver the ball to the plate in two ways: 1) the traditional way, which is by passing through the strike zone with a direct throw to the catcher’s mascot, or 2) the innovative way, which is by allowing the ball to bounce at least once before reaching the plate. If it passes through the strike zone, it’s a strike. This revolutionized the game and gave pitchers more options.
Basically, it’s the same thing a 3B or SS sometimes did when throwing to first base with a bounce to avoid hitting the ball into the stands or to give it more speed. Women are the best under this “Hindu Law,” as it’s known in the media, because it gives pitchers more options, and by managing the curveballs and spin commands, the ball makes unexpected bounces every time it bounces on the ground. And every now and then, they also throw you a 90-mile fastball.
Today’s baseball is more intuitive, statistics are little or more than a guideline, players (men and women) obviously play for money, but since all teams pay the same, the romanticism of baseball has returned. Only seven innings are played, and there’s even a shower clock in the locker room because drinking water is increasingly scarce (if you take longer than that, you get fined).
It’s said that more changes are coming to baseball. Well, this is normal now. There are rumors that they want to add a tenth defensive player who would be anywhere but off the diamond, and unable to enter it, that is, a player who could be used mostly behind the catcher to prevent so many steals at home. These players are just too fast now!
English 
Spanish 