Frankie Hambone/IF-54.98

==History==
Frankie Hambone grew up on the streets of New York City. He and his siblings were raised by a single mother in a neighborhood controlled by the Crime Family. At the age of 14 while he was walking to the butcher shop he was stopped by a member of the Family who offered him 75 cents to carry a message across town, he agreed and spent most of the extra money at the butcher. He would later find out this is why they gave him the nickname “Hambone”. When his mother pressed him about how he bought so much he claimed he’d found the money on the street. From that day on he worked for the mob, at first just as a courier and messenger, or occasionally a lookout. As he got older he was brought in for more hands-on work. Eventually the man who recruited him moved up in rank and Hambone became part of his personal entourage. All the while he used his earnings to help support his mother and siblings.
Things were stable for Hambone for a while until eventually during a period of conflict with a rival family, a young neighborhood kid who’d been paid to act as a lookout got hurt. Hambone later recounted:
“When I looked at that kid I thought I’d see myself, someone who was doing what he had to do to support his family and earn respect in this world. But instead I just saw a kid who was in over his head, being put in harm’s way by grown men who didn’t give a damn. Then I realized I’d been that kid, and in a way I still was.”
Later that night he got in a shouting match with the Boss’ son who’d paid the lookout, it escalated and he ended up breaking the man’s nose before he was restrained. The Boss felt that it was important Hambone be made an example of so in the dead of night his feet were encased in blocks of concrete and he was rowed out into the middle of the harbor and dropped in the water.
The details of his story become fuzzy at this point. He himself has no memory of the events, and the fractured nature of Atlantis’ reality means that any or all of the explanations of how he survived could be considered “true.” Some say he died but his soul was shepherded back to his body by an Atlantean mystic instead of passing on. Others say Atlantean magic granted him gills and fins and allowed him to survive. Still others claim he was found by an Atlantean research vessel shortly after being dropped. In any case he survived and began a new chapter in his life.
==Life in Atlantis==
Shortly after his arrival in Atlantis, Frankie attempted to remove the concrete from his feet. After hours of labor he was able to move freely but it was short lived, he found that the fractured reality that permeates Atlantis would always return the concrete within a few hours. He spent a few months acclimating to the city, contemplating what to do with his second chance at life. When he heard Atlantis would be forming a professional Blaseball team he jumped at the chance to try out, or he would have if he weren’t weighed down by two enormous blocks of cement. He’d played Blaseball regularly in his youth, at one time holding his neighborhood’s record for home runs, as well as for broken windows. Due to his inability to run he wasn’t able to make the team as a batter but he was accepted as a pitcher where his ruthlessness and ability to keep cool under pressure served the team well for many seasons. 
During , however he would be given an unexpected opportunity. When a particularly devastating Reverb event occurred during a game, Hambone was moved to the batting lineup in place of Flattery McKinley. Initially there were concerns about his ability to run however when he stepped up to the plate his concrete shoes were conspicuously absent.
In an interview after the game team captain Niq Nyong'o stated that she believed the Reverb must have interacted with the fractured reality of Atlantis to “refresh” Hambone allowing the removal of the concrete to finally take hold. A competing theory, voiced by then-teammate Siobhan Chark, suggests that self-image plays an important role in the way Atlanteans manifest and that the change may have come from within.