Jode Crutch/IF-12.135

Jode Chaska Crutch Naupari is a second-generation Peruvian Quechua immigrant in her 50’s who grew up in Miami. Since season 21, Crutch has played as a batter in an official capacity for the Miami Dale, but she had orbited in the same sphere as many Dale players for years before that. 
Before Crutch joined Blaseball, she was a member of a renowned organization of expert pilots and engineers who operated giant mechs to rescue people from monsters and natural disasters. Crutch’s former team, known as Rescue Squad 0305, assisted people in emergencies ranging from the mundane to the fantastical, and regularly drove back monsters and phenomena that manifested from Biscayne Bay’s Oolite deposits. 
Crutch was the pilot of a mech called the Lacerta, which bore a remarkable resemblance to a giant bipedal alligator. Lacerta was powered by glowing batteries, forged from the same Miami Oolite deposits that formed the dangerous phenomena the team was created to defend against.
At some point before the start of the Discipline Era, disaster befell Crutch’s squad during an operation to rescue fishermen from an Oolite-infused storm. Few details are publically available about what happened, but one of the members of the squad didn’t make it out. Crutch reportedly quit the squad after that, docking Lacerta in her backyard and swearing never to pilot it again.
==Jode’s Neighbors==
Ever since she moved into the house overlooking the cliff over the bay, Crutch has been next-door neighbors with noted DJ-scientist Dr. Melvin Ochoa. The two first met at a bar when Crutch was still a member of Rescue Squad 0305, and being a daredevil of sorts himself, Ochoa was impressed by Crutch’s choice of career. The two became close, and supported one another in times of trouble. 
When Ochoa accidentally summoned future Dale players Raúl Leal and Riley Firewall into audiophysical manifestation, and subsequently took responsibility for taking care of them as an adoptive dad, Crutch was often around to entertain and hang out with the two young soundwaves, and to give doubtfully useful advice as they got older.
After the death of Leal, Crutch was sighted visiting Ochoa more often, helping him keep going after the loss of his son. She reportedly offered some manner of mentorship to Firewall, though some say he initially rejected her reaching out. Crutch remained in contact with Firewall after his feedback to the Jazz Hands, and the two sometimes exchanged letters.
==Personal Life==
Crutch wanted to continue helping people in the community who were in need, even after her initial change of careers. She became known in the city as a volunteer at local community centers, and as a tutor on engineering topics for area schoolkids.
Crutch has also built a reputation as a caretaker and trainer of show alligators. Crutch raises alligators in her backyard, and has built an elaborate hutch system and series of agility courses around the deactivated Lacerta to provide them with shelter and enrichment. Her gators have won numerous ribbons in awards in alligator dressage competitions, and have also proved talented in managing the invasive nutria population around the city. They have taken to wolfing down the occasional Blaseball salmon in Salmon weather, are also trained as therapy animals, accompanying Crutch to local nursing homes and hospitals. At least one gator is always following Crutch around at all times.
The loss of her former friend and squad member motivated Crutch to spend more time with her family members. She regularly visits her extended family, who live in Lima, Peru, showing off her gators’ talents to her cousins, brother, nieces and nephews. Reportedly, they are quite impressed.
==Joining the Dale==
Crutch was called up to join the team in season 21, a move she felt less than confident about. In an interview after signing her contract, she confessed that the dangers afforded by the weather and other obstacles of Blaseball made her uneasy, but she resolved to give it her all.
She and Dale team captain Qais Dogwalker reportedly do not get along. Dogwalker shares an affiliation, though not a currently active one, with another team in the mech rescue organization Crutch once worked for, and rumors claim the two have a long-running disagreement on something related to their former work.
Crutch gets along with Stout Schmidt, and Schmidt considers her gators honorary “Rescue Gators,” though ze has jokingly said kie is a “bad influence” on them, admitting to “teaching them how to wrestle.” When asked by a reporter, Crutch had no comment on the matter, and the reporter was chased away by a very buff gator. 
When Firefighters player Isaac Johnson joined the team, Crutch and Johnson bonded over their knowledge of emergency safety protocol and community organizing. Johnson and Crutch worked together to organize a book drive for books in multiple languages for the library Crutch volunteers at.
==The Iffey Jr.==
On the evening of Gods’ Day at the end of Season 23, a bolt of blue-green lightning was sighted striking in the backyard of Jode Crutch’s house. Miami Gerald reported that Jode was spotted by a press photographer, emerging from her backyard, singed with electricity, looking very alarmed, and proceeding to knock frantically on the door of her neighbor Dr. Ochoa’s house, while clutching something glowing and crackling in her hands.
Later that night, around midnight, those living in the neighborhood witnessed tremors and rumbling emanating from Crutch’s property, and were shocked to see the massive form of Lacerta rising from the ground, apparently active again after its long dormancy. The gator mech stepped all the way over Crutch’s house and stomped down the street to Worldwide Field.
Since receiving the Iffey Jr. Crutch has started using her mech to play in games, though to little athletic advantage, due to the impacts of the Iffey’s Minimization. She is rarely seen outside of Lacerta during games, though she tends to dock and exit it afterward. Crutch has been asked multiple times by Miami Gerald what convinced her to start piloting Lacerta again, but she has declined to comment, and chastised a reporter for “poking his nose into her business.”
In an exclusive interview, one of Crutch’s other neighbors noted that she has spent a lot more time with Dr. Ochoa lately. The two have been spotted working on Lacerta in Crutch’s backyard, as well as rebuilding the gator hutch to be more modular and easily moved away from where it sits at rest. Eagle-eyed fans have noticed that Lacerta now sports a back-mounted sound system speaker attachment that occasionally sparks in neon colors.
Few have seen Crutch wield the Iffey, or seen it at all since it was returned to the Dale in season 24. Some theorize that it may have been incorporated into the power mechanism for Lacerta.
Crutch avoids talking to the press for the most part, but made a rare appearance at a team press conference after Season 24, Day 3, following the sudden incineration of the Breath Mints."Listen up. I know everyone’s been talking about me, and I know everyone has their own opinions about all of this, but it’s my job now to protect this team, and I need you all to trust me that I will. I will. You’re not going to die.”Onlookers at the conference remarked that they were were struck by the sense that Crutch seemed more to be trying to convince herself of what she was saying than anyone else.
==Trivia==
* Crutch speaks Spanish, English, and Quechua. When she volunteers at the library, she often helps translate homework and documents between English and Spanish for students.
* At least three of Crutch’s gators have earned their driver’s license.
* Crutch’s parents passed away before she joined the Dale, and they are both buried in Lima, where they first met.
* Crutch is bisexual. She and Dr. Ochoa have described their relationship as “complicated.”
* Crutch has been quoted as saying that Qais Dogwaker’s habit of feeding their snake, Mirielle, whole sandwiches is “irresponsible.” Notably, when she said this, she was in the middle of feeding one of her gators an entire hot dog.