Yes, your boy goldencane is finally in his summer break, where he should have a bit more free time to spend on LoCo. We present you the IFA stories for the class of 2024!
1B/3B Heimir Sigurðsson, Iceland (ISL), Age 28:
DOB: 8/17/1996
Height: 7' 0"
Weight: 260lbs
Pluses: great raw power as a result of his Icelandic build
Minuses: is also a doctor, so he takes lots of days off to tend to his other profession.
Story: The 28 year old hails from Reykjavík, Iceland and will soon come to the United States in hopes of playing as a first baseman in LoCo. He also has another ambition that is nothing like we've ever seen - to treat patients as a doctor at a major hospital and eventually open his own hospital.
Heimir grew up wanting to be a doctor and was well on his track to become one after having been accepted into Yonsei University, which is a top three institution in Korea. After having spent a year adjusting to the new country, he wanted to sign up for the intramural soccer league to get some exercise in the small downtime he had, but it quickly filled up and wasn't taking any more people when he tried to sign up. It was then when Heimir signed up for the intramural baseball league, after having followed his friends to watch a few KBO games and quickly became invested in the sport. He only needed some five intramural games and smashing an absurd 15 homers before the word spread to the baseball team. He smashed the tryout and became the #4 hitter in the lineup in no time, where he posted a slash line of .270/.334/.850 with 10 homeruns in 10 games in his sophomore season, .329/.374/1.003 with 36 home runs in 30 games in his junior season, and a ridiculous .375/.410/1.696 with 67 home runs in 42 games in his senior season and led Yonsei to the Korean College League title in all three seasons.
The KBO scouts quickly picked up on Heimir's natural talent after his sophomore season, where several teams begged him to declare himself for the draft and forgo becoming a doctor. Heimir declined their pleas with no hesitation, stating that his original dream was to become a world class doctor and that he must finish out college and graduate school to have a chance at achieving his goals. He was also hesitant at becoming a professional baseball player because he feared that he wouldn't have the time to study for exams and carry out his residency. However, Hanhwa Eagles, who picked him first overall in the 2019 KBO draft, made guarantees that he would have access to all the resources he needed and only need to play around half the games per season to complete graduate school, which allowed Heimir to grow both as a baseball player and a future doctor during his 4 year (2019-2023) KBO stint. He led Hanhwa to 2 Korean Series titles by hitting a slashline of .345/.391/.823 and 203 homeruns in just over 280 games, where he set a new single season record for homeruns with 63 home runs in 72 games during the 2023 season, smashing the previous single season record held by the Korean legend Lee Seung-Yeup and his 56 home runs during the 2003 season. He also completed Yonsei's graduate school with the highest honors in just 4 years, having successfully performed multiple arthroscopic and ligament surgeries during his candidacy. At the conclusion of the 2023 Korean Series, he asked to be posted to the IFA class to take the next challenges of playing in LoCo and becoming a full time doctor in the United States.
SS/2B Andries 't Hooft, Netherlands (NED), Age 24:
DOB: 10/25/2000
Height: 6' 5"
Weight: 220lbs
Pluses: 5 tool player
Minuses: does nothing exceptionally well
Not much is known about Andries 't Hooft other than his birthplace of Groningen, Netherlands and a career slashline of .418/.523/.678, 2 MVPs and 3 Gold-Glove equivalent awards over 4 seasons in the Honkbal Hoofdklasse, the highest level of Netherlands professional baseball. This is because Andries is known to keep personal matters to himself: he has hardly said anything to the press or really appeared in the spotlight at all during his professional career. Scouts say he is an unpolished 5 tool player who has a chance to become pretty good at everything at the height of his career. They also say that he has a couple of weird in-game routines, as he was filmed to have snatched a couple of strands of grass and munched on them during innings. He also apparently wipes the dirt in the batters box with his hands before settling into his stance. Whatever his actions on and off the field may be, we should have an intriguing player who could turn into a star really quickly.
SP Abubakar Mohamed, Somalia (SOM), Age 17:
DOB: 4/4/2007
Height: 5' 10"
Weight: 159lbs
Pluses: puts all his pitches into the strikezone
Minuses: sure does get hit a lot
Mohamed was born in Mogadishu, capital of the still war-torn nation of Somalia. He tried to live as normal of a life Somalia would allow for a child, but the death of his father forced him to take responsibility of his mother and 4 younger siblings at the still so young age of 13. Somalia's social infrastructure was long decimated due to internal strife between regional militias, so Abubakar turned to the dark to keep his family afloat. He joined a local Somali pirate group where he tended to his superiors by performing the menial tasks of wiping down the boats, preparing meals, and more. The work that his superiors did went against his conscience, but he had no other choice. This went on for a year or so before the pirate group bit too much than they could handle and subsequently brought on the involvement of US Navy SEALs. The SEALs found Abubakar before harm could be done and extracted him and his family away from Somalia and sent them into a military base in Okinawa, Japan to tend to their well-being and future after having heard what he and his family had been through. There, Abubakar was most importantly able to go back to school and begin his transition into a normal life and also learned how to play baseball by playing in the informal "Military League" at Okinawa, where he developed a peculiar habit of leaving nothing outside of the strikezone as a pitcher in fear of hitting someone with his pitches and triggering the trauma from the ungodly things he had seen back in Somalia.
He joined the HS varsity team in his junior year in HS and led the team to their first ever ticket to the "Koshien," an annual nationwide high school baseball tournament where the best HS teams from prefectures duke it out to become the national champion, by his senior year, where he led them to a quarterfinal finish by throwing a scoreless 28.2IP with 35Ks and just 10 hits allowed. Abubakar garnered national attention with his performance in the Koshien and life story, and was projected to be drafted by late 1st round in the annual NPB draft by the media. However, Abubakar turned down the offers by stating "America was the first nation that gave me a hope at a different life" and opting to become a part of the LoCo IFA class for the upcoming offseason. Abubakar hopes to become an inspiration for Somalians with his pitches and establish a baseball academy in Somalia when it's all said and done.