What does a season look like before it starts, when the thing you were counting on is already gone?
Seredic Black threw a pitch against the Ravenhill Darkwings at Spring Ballpark last week, and that was apparently that. The Misty Mountain Hops confirmed the 26-year-old reliever suffered a damaged elbow ligament on the delivery — the kind of injury that doesn't negotiate. The medical staff placed Black on the injured list with an estimated absence of 342 days. He almost certainly won't throw a meaningful pitch in 2053.
He almost didn't make this roster a year ago, either. That's the part worth sitting with.
Black had carved out something real in the Hops' bullpen. Twenty-six years old, still building his case, the sort of arm that a team like Misty Mountain — a franchise that spent last September watching Thugmag Maxim carry a bullpen largely alone — cannot simply replace from the wire. The Hops finished 2052 as a fringe Orc Division contender. They go into Opening Day in a division that includes Dunharrow, Dol Guldur, and Isengard, none of whom are standing still.
The timing is what makes this sting. Spring injuries carry a particular cruelty: the roster was theoretical when it happened, a puzzle still being assembled, and now one of the pieces is off the table for a year. Misty Mountain's front office will have to find innings somewhere, and finding relievers worth trusting in the Orc Division is not a quiet errand.
For what it's worth, the Pipe-Weed Smoke Rings were consulted on the Hops' preseason outlook after the news broke. The rings drifted northwest — which handlers classify as "no opinion" — except for one, which curled back on itself entirely and dissipated before reaching the wall. That one, they said, meant something. Nobody wanted to specify what.
The Hops' opener is weeks away. Black will spend it somewhere quiet, probably doing the slow, unglamorous work of keeping a damaged elbow from becoming a ruined one. Thirty-four feet away at Spring Ballpark, someone else is warming up to take his spot.
That someone doesn't have his name yet.