Cudi Di Batterino/IF-97.818

===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.
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 on the Lift===
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 , visibly demoralized.
When he finally had recovered enough to return to active play, , and former pitcher Val Hitherto agreed to cede his position as a pitcher to work in the Lift’s newly reopened beef wing stand.
Di Batterino’s start as a pitcher was rocky: After a few years working with team physical therapist , 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.
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.
===Career on the Moist Talkers===
When Di Batterino was transferred to the Canada Moist Talkers, it caught him and the rest of the Lift by surprise. However, Di Batterino was never one to be overwhelmed by changes, and decided to make the best of a strange situation. Di Batterino was immediately befriended by scientist and horticulturist Amos Melon, who introduced him to the Underarena in The Gleek and the garden within. Di Batterino and Melon have planned and completed several expeditions into the Underarena and the labyrinth.
Di Batterino also retained his commitment to athleticism and could frequently be found working out with Jenkins Good, who was excited to have someone to keep pace with them. The two also spent time with Lucien Patchwork. Di Batterino has commented that he valued Patchwork being able to work out, saying that “Sure, they’re a fun-loving stuffed alligator, but we all have different bodies. I’m an amputee [above the left knee], I know all about adaptive workouts. I can give them a hand.”
When Patchwork became Shelled, Di Batterino was notably shaken by the seeming loss of his friend, as well as by peanuts returning to haunt him. After regaining his wits, he began creating means to communicate with Patchwork inside the shell. These means have included variants on Morse code, knocking on the shell, and using technological means to try to amplify spoken words. Di Batterino also could be found playing loud music near Patchwork’s shell and singing along. When asked, he said that he hoped Patchwork was singing too.
===Return to Tokyo & Shell===
Despite Di Batterino’s growing bonds to the Moist Talkers, he found himself growing homesick for Tokyo. This feeling was exacerbated by the incineration of Gerund Pantheocide, leading him to worry about his former teammates and their wellbeing. Eventually he reached out to former teammate Freemium Seraph, who agreed to go to Canada so that Di Batterino could return to Tokyo.
The relief upon Di Batterino’s return to the Lift was short lived: just 25 days into , he was Shelled by Peanutiel Duffy. The Lift have done their best to keep Di Batterino’s caretaking private, saying that nobody deserves to be under media scrutiny when they literally can’t face it themself. The few reports that have come through suggest that Di Batterino is doing well, albeit a little cramped.
Di Batterino was still Shelled at the end of Season 24, when the Lift were nullified.
===Personal Life===
In his offtime, Di Batterino continued to follow his botanical interests as a hobby and took care of a large collection of succulents, all of which have been named and have separate social media accounts. All of the succulents were carefully transferred both to and from Halifax alongside Di Batterino. After he was Shelled, the Lift split up duties taking care of the plants, waiting for Di Batterino’s return.
Additionally, his experience as a personal trainer for weightlifting proved useful for training teammates, and he encouraged 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. These efforts later became the basis of his friendship with Patchwork.
Of his teammates in Tokyo, 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. The Lift have held half a dozen tournaments in various sports and games over who gets to assist Di Batterino with his first haircut when he exits the shell.