Cudi Di Batterino/IF-97.818

Rumor / Community Lore
This article contains lore created collaboratively by the Blaseball community. It is just one of many Rumors that we've found in the Interdimensional Rumor Mill. You can find more Rumors about Cudi Di Batterino at their Rumor Registry.

Early Life

Born in Belén de Escobar, Argentina, Cudi Di Batterino is a Japanese Argentine woman who hails from a long line of horticulturalists. Despite a fraught relationship with his family and a clear resentment of the heavy expectations laid on his shoulders as the only daughter of the Di Batterino family, he shares the enthusiasm in plants, and eventually went as far as going to school to become a botanist specializing in arid plant communities. However, on the side Di Batterino had a passion for splorts such as powerlifting and pitching for his university’s sloftball team. His side hobby blossomed into what was looking to become a promising start to a side career in competitive powerlifting, and he eventually took part in an international match in Tokyo. He later credited this match, along with increasingly fraught family relations, in inspiring a move from Argentina to Japan to take on a research position there and better connect with his Japanese roots.

Joining Blaseball

Di Batterino spent a few years spent in Tokyo, where he comfortably settled into his identity as a butch lesbian, researcher, and athlete. After volunteering in the Urayasu Gymnasium and Community Center as a personal trainer, he was eventually recruited to a position in a new blaseball team by the owner of the Gym, the late Stijn Strongbody. Assuming Strongbody knew about his history as a sloftball pitcher and wanted him to try his hand at pitching for the Lift, he accepted. It was only on the first day of Season 11 when he was handed a bat that he realized that Strongbody had signed him on as a batter instead of a pitcher, potentially due to a miscommunication regarding his surname.

Career

Although Di Batterino was not an experienced batter, he was confident in his ability and willing to learn, and his strong, caring personality quickly marked him as a pillar of the team. However, he had built his identity around his athletic ability and after suffering a drastic allergic reaction to a peanut in Season 12, his self-confidence was shaken. Instead of accepting help from those around him, he retreated to the shadows, visibly demoralized. When he finally had recovered enough to return to active play, he did so as a pitcher, and former pitcher Val Hitherto agreed to cede his position as a pitcher to work in the Lift’s newly reopened beefwing stand. Di Batterino’s start as a pitcher was rocky: After a few years working with team physical therapist Arda Zephyr, his physical health had greatly improved, but his mental state was still poor and as blaseball is quite a different splort from sloftball, it took him some time to get used to the feel of pitching. It was only after three seasons of intensive effort and self-reflection that he was able to fully hit his stride as a pitcher, and has since become one of the team’s most competent pitchers, as well as a happier, healthier person.

Personal Life

In his offtime, Di Batterino continues to follow his botanical interests as a hobby and takes care of a large collection of succulents, all of which have been named and have separate social media accounts. Additionally, his experience as a personal trainer for weightlifting has proved useful for training teammates, and he encourages some of his less athletically inclined teammates such as Rylan O'Lantern, the currently absent Wyatt Quitter, and Hitherto to join him in some more basic introductory exercises. Of his teammates, he was closest to Ayanna Dumpington, with whom he was reported to bake and flirt, and Lance Serotonin. After they ended up on other teams, he has since grown closer to his replacement on the lineup, Engine Eberhardt; Silvaire Semiquaver, a “good friend and confidant”; and Mags Banananana, who is “exactly what [Di Batterino] hope[s] to be like when [he’s] that age.” Di Batterino is also a competent barber from years of cutting his own hair, and is who gives most of the Lift players haircuts. Team photographs from the years Di Batterino was absent show many of the players with notably longer hair.

In the first interview he gave, more than three years after his return from the shadows, Di Batterino stated that a large part of his performance drop had come from deteriorating relationships with his team due to a refusal to accept any form of help. It was only after forming healthier mental pathways and internalizing that his worth did not come from his physical ability or “being everybody’s rock” and allowing his friends to give back the support he had given them in the past that he was able to fully concentrate on doing the best he could in the splort.