Alejandro Leaf/IF-55.492

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 Alejandro Leaf at their Rumor Registry.

Appearance

Alejandro "Aly" Leaf presents as a dense mass of green vines surrounding a large pitcher plant. She treats this green-orange-pink bell as her head, and it is a natural focal point for those regarding and addressing her. Leaf's sprawling thicket of vines sway, furl and bend in concert when under her conscious control, but retain a degree of independent motility; if her attention should wander they may stretch out on their own and begin crawling up table legs or wrapping themselves around a teammate's ankle. Lift player Val Hitherto has referred to her as a "trippy Vine compilation".

Journalists describe Leaf's tentacle-like growths as moving in "eerie and captivating ways". Some report difficulty carrying on conversations with Leaf in person, as the sinuous swish triggers migraines, seasickness and, in at least one case, a deep hypnotic trance lasting several hours. Nandy Slumps has suggested that Leaf should make more use of this trait in her pitching.

Blaseball Career

With the LA Unlimited Tacos

Leaf signed up for what she understood to be a community kickball league while protesting against raw milk regulations outside Ralphio's Market in Van Nuys, California. During Seasons 1 and 2, fans described Leaf as "mostly human shaped" and "just kind of normal looking." Following the Wyatt Masoning, Leaf's appearance began to change drastically, with reports that she was "hard to make sense of" and "shaped super confusingly."

Leaf was involved in Season β7's so-called Snackrifice, during which the team's entire pitching rotation became Shelled. She has not spoken publicly about her long confinement or her appearances with THE SHELLED ONE'S PODS, but a number of blackened shoots and cauterised growth tips appear to date from this period. Photographs taken throughout Leaf's ILB career support the perception that she has become progressively less humanoid and more vegetal in appearance. This process seems to have accelerated after Leaf was Unshelled, and at times little trace can be seen of her earlier form.

With the New York Millenials

Leaf made a nervy start to her Mills career, but her confidence returned and performance improved after an ice-breaking appearance on Winnie Mccall's podcast. She led the team in expanding the Apartment's peaceful rooftop garden, and cites this as helping her "rediscover her sense of fun". She dismissed claims that she had been seen crossing the city by "thwipping her vines about like Spider-Man" as "just plain silly".

Despite strong friendships with her teammates, particularly Patty Fox and regular flowerbombing partner Schneider Bendie, Leaf found it hard to put down roots in New York. After three seasons she left the team by mutual consent in order to branch out in new directions.

With the Tokyo Lift

Leaf arrived in Japan with a fresh bloom of Lift Pink flowers and a field guide to the local insects. Her signing coincided with the departure of batter Lotus Mango, and the newcomer immediately expressed interest in the now-vacant roles of Lift gardener and Head of Oxygenation.

During Season β14 she was pleased to reconnect with former Taco and sometime POD Wyatt Quitter. At the time Leaf considered herself among the more well-adjusted players to have endured Shelling, and felt some responsibility toward others still processing the traumatic experience. The two shared long conversations in the calm of the Conservatory before Quitter's shocking loss to Static on day 99.

The humid climate of Tokyo was more agreeable to her current form than that of New York or the Los Angeli. On warm nights she took to sleeping outside, often draping herself across the Legscraper's batting cages. She continued in this habit even after one night of troubled dreams meant a grueling twelve-hour procedure to untangle her tendrils from the netting.

Leaf’s comfortable time in Tokyo came to an abrupt end on Season 17, Day 14, when she   two Tacos players in one game: Felix Garbage and former teammate Basilio Fig. Leaf has refused to speak to anyone about the incident at all: not her Lift teammates, not the other Tacos, not former Pods, and not even current teammate and former pod Jessica Telephone.

Following the incident, Leaf seemed notably withdrawn and less comfortable around her teammates. Not even Yusef Fenestrate, who referred to Leaf as a surrogate aunt, could coax her into spending time with them. Leaf’s final public comment with the Lift was shortly after the team traded her to another team; she simply said, “I understand, and I’ll miss Tokyo.”

Personal Life

Leaf has a dry sense of humour, and the absence of facial features makes her famously difficult to read. On a few occasions she has accessorised her pitcher plant with sunglasses or googly eyes; whether this represents an earnest attempt to seem more relatable or simply a self-deprecating joke is itself a matter of continued debate.

She keeps in touch with many former teammates, including Fox, Bendie, Basilio Mason and Basilio Fig. She frequently sends seeds and cuttings of Japanese plants back to New York for the Millenials' rooftop garden. Among Lift players she is closest to Yusef Fenestrate, whom she is teaching to knit, and ecologist Grollis Zephyr, with whom she discusses her interest in gastro-entomology.

Beyond Blaseball, Leaf is well-known as an environmental and anticapitalist campaigner writing in both Spanish and English. Since Season 3 she has used splorting fame as a platform for her efforts against capitalism; in each of the cities she has called home Leaf has provided material and organisational support to grass-roots groups, encouraging budding anticapitalist activists in what she calls "sowing the seeds of our liberation".