Hardball

Hardball is a canon Marvel character who first appeared in Avengers: The Initiative #1 (June 2007). The fictional character history below is specific to the setting of the New X-Men game.

Background
Shortly after the passage of the Superhuman Registration Act, a young Roger Brokeridge surfaced as a street-level hero in Los Angeles. He came to the attention of the Initiative after saving a young girl from being run over by an armored truck, and was invited to train as a recruit at Camp Hammond.

Given the codename "Hardball", Brokeridge completed his training and was eventually assigned a position on the Heavy Hitters, the Initiative team stationed in Las Vegas, Nevada.

New X-Men
Hardball was one of four Initiative agents chosen by David Alleyne to join his new 52nd Initiative team, dubbed The Wildcards. It's believed that David chose agents he knew to be sympathetic to mutant rights, and who may have assisted him to protect mutants after the Superhuman Registration Act was expanded to include the criminalization of the X-gene. However, Hardball's motivations for risking his position and potentially betraying orders for the sake of mutants is unclear.

Powers and Abilities
The origin of Hardball's powers is not a matter of public knowledge, but it's been established that he possesses the ability to generate spherical force fields, or "hard balls", of varying sizes. Brokeridge will often cover his fists with his force fields, lending their super-hardened strength to his punches, or completely encapsulate himself or others as a means of defense.

Due to his training at Camp Hammond and years of experience in the field, Hardball is a veteran hero, skilled in hand to hand combat, familiar with advanced technology, and capable of piloting a variety of vehicles.