CRL
News
February 10,
2012
I concluded last season with a newsletter where I
ranked all CRL owners in history and made a comparison to “our” Hall of Fame.
Synchronicity.
I was scanning the off-season headlines a month or so
ago and came across a tidbit while looking to see how many Hall-of-Fame votes
Jeff Bagwell got this year (321 or 56% of the vote, in case you were
wondering). When I reached the bottom
of the list, I got to the section where the players dropped from the ballot are
listed. As you probably know, a player
must be named on 5% of the ballots cast to be included on future ballots. Here’s this year’s list of who didn’t make
the cut (with vote totals and percentage of the vote):
Juan Gonzalez 23 (4.0%), Vinny
Castilla 6 (1.0%), Tim Salmon 5 (0.9%), Bill Mueller
4 (0.7%), Brad Radke 2 (0.3%), Javy
Lopez 1 (0.2%), Eric Young 1 (0.2%), Jeromy Burnitz 0, Brian Jordan 0, Terry Mulholland 0, Phil Nevin 0, Ruben Sierra 0, Tony Womack 0.
I think I owned at least half those
guys at one time or another.
And what the hell is that 4 doing
after Bill Mueller’s name? I think
that’s the price I had him for one year and was struggling on whether to bring
him back. (On a positive note, I did
have Barry Larkin for awhile – although not as long
as Otis.)
But on to more important things – pitchers and
catchers start reporting next weekend!
So I’ve some news, notes, and important dates to get
us off and running, and, hopefully, get me back in the mood.
(Maudlin
alert, if you don’t want to read about my personal angst, skip the next few
paragraphs. You can pick back up again
when you see the next bolded parenthetical statement.)
It started with the announcement that Houston would
be moving to the AL in 2013. The team I
grew up following (they started play in 1962 when I wasn’t quite two) was
moving to a league I care nothing about.
I grew up following not just a team, but a league – something that was
only magnified by the CRL. I’m such a
National League fan that I’d prefer to watch a Pirates/Nationals game than
watch the Yankees/Red Sox (despite the fact that ESPN seems to have them on
Sunday Night Baseball at least a half-dozen times a year – and, as there are no
other games on at that time, I end up watching the Discovery Channel or
something).
Now they are trying to get me excited by saying I
get to watch the Astros play the Rangers?
I don’t give a rats @$$ about the Rangers. And boy, those tilts with the Royals or Mariners
will sure be fun. In fact, I probably
won’t even follow Houston anymore. With
no NL teams in Texas, I don’t even know how many games I will get to watch –
and watching my players is part of the fun for me.
Not only that, but how am I supposed to get excited
about watching a lame-duck team with a bunch of minor-leaguers struggle through
another 100-loss season?
I read recently that new Astros owner Jim Crane said
he was lowering ticket prices this year.
He should lower them a lot. I
remember saying to some of you last season that, if I lived in Houston, I’d
feel ripped off – just a couple of weeks earlier, you could have watched a
third of the starting lineup play in the AA ballpark here in Corpus Christi for
five bucks.
And if that wasn’t enough, here’s an email I sent to
a couple of you late Friday night/early Saturday morning (depending on your
point of view):
From: Jim
To:
Sent: Sat Feb 04 02:30:52 2012
Subject: Contract ended today
So now I’m unemployed again and I’m sitting here getting
quietly drunk (I’m not buying any more when this runs out – but I think I
deserve it tonight).
After working hard all my life, this is the second time in three years. And, unlike last time, I don’t have unemployment as a safety net – employees do, but contractors don’t.
Funny thing is, I’m happy.
It took a while (I lost my job, my wife lost her job, I bled my 401K down to nothing, my wife died – it seemed like life handed me a shit sandwich), but I’ve gotten optimistic recently.
And, no, I can’t explain it.
My 25-year-old stepdaughter moved back home (along with her boyfriend) and my other stepdaughter (22, soon to be 23) is now over here 4-5 times a week. I never had kids, but, damn, it feels like I have a family – and it feels good. I know that 50+ year olds aren’t supposed to think that way, but …
No, I don’t have a job lined up, but my mindset is almost (almost)
So what?
What’s next?
I’ve seen everything life has to throw at me (knocking heavily on wood) …
For some reason, I feel my next challenge is just around the corner. I just don’t know what it is yet. Maybe it’s just the combination of being around young people and their ideals and not being constrained by a company and its structure. But for some reason, I just have this feeling everything will be OK.
I can’t explain that either.
Just wanted to let you know because, if I’m wrong, Vegas (which is already paid for) may be my last hurrah. Or it could be the start of something really great.
Stay tuned …
(Life is way better than American Idol)
Jim
In short, my mind has been on everything other than
baseball. And when it has been on
baseball, it’s been involved in coming up with new and profane ways to curse
the powers that be.
Sorry to vent, just had to get that stuff off my
chest (I wasn’t as happy when I started writing tonight as I was Friday night –
something to with paying the first round of bills for the month and watching my
bank balance shrink by $X,000 earlier today).
Anyway, starting to feel better now – I’ve almost
finished my second beer (stepdaughter bought beer) – so now …
(Back
to our regularly-scheduled program.)
Some bits of news:
With Jim Fraser’s retirement from the CRL, we are
now down to 11 teams. Since I can’t
renumber the teams on the All-Star Stats site, I “traded” Weve & Vern’s
entire roster to team 10, changed the owner info for team 10, and deleted team
12. No other teams were impacted by the
change and it won’t make a difference to most of you. But, because I reference them that way
multiple times below, I wanted you to know what was going on.
I’ve updated all the rosters and contracts on the
All-Star Stats site. That means all the
guys who played out their option or contract are gone (and all remaining
players’ contracts have been reduced by a year) and all linked players have
been unlinked based on your responses last fall (remember, if, on Roster Freeze
Day you keep a guy on your reserve list, it will cost you a $5 activation
fee). It also means, with the scratch
draft year, I get to skip my annual discussion about long-term contracts (in
fact, I get to skip it the next three years).
The following teams have credits left over from last
year (if you have a credit, you can subtract the amount below from your initial
payment of $250):
Team 2 - $154
Team 3 - $241
Team 4 - $225
Team 7 - $46
Team 9 - $500
Team 10 (used to be 12) - $38
Team 11 - $500
Draft order – 8 / 1 / 10 / 7 / 6 / 4 / 2 / 3 / 9 / 5 / 11
ML Draft order – 4 / 6 / 7 / 10 / 1 / 8 / 2 / 3 / 9 / 5 / 11
(Yes, Terry, I double-checked it. You really do have the first ML pick this year.)
Draft Day is Friday, April 6. The place is Parlor B at Harrah’s. We’ll start about 10 am.
Most of you will remember my (several) previous years rants about not bringing in outside food or drink to the draft room. They want to sell us catering. We decline. It’s a heavy union shop and they want $$$. So, no outside food or drink. If you do and they demand payment, you’re paying.
I get in Wednesday night around 10. Not sure about the rest of you, but Thursday night at Batista’s Hole in the Wall was great and I’d like to do it again. Let me know if you agree (spelling out the obvious here, but that statement also means, let me know if you are in/will be there in time/want to go, etc.) Because I don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in two months, I can’t commit to making the reservation. (Any volunteers?) If somebody will take this on, I’ll get them a count.
Likewise, because of the “don’t know where I’ll be or what I’m doing” comment above, I can’t commit to golf at this time. Yes, I’d like to play, but won’t know if I can for a bit. Please let me know if you will take this on.
You may get an email from Ron Merkt inviting you to join his roto league. It’s been going three years longer than ours, but is down to six teams and they are trying to breathe new life into it (the Rons apparently have separate teams in that league). He asked me in an email tonight if it was kosher to ask you all to play in that league in addition to the CRL. I told him it was fine. I told him I was not interested at this time (for reasons outlined above) but he could feel free to contact all of you. I don’t know their rules or format, but if you are interested, his email is rmerkt@cox.net. I do know his draft is the day after ours, and, I’m guessing, in somewhere in Southern California.
Now that I’ve got my juices flowing (into the last of the scotch now, didn’t want to drink all of Quincie’s beer) and am ready to kick your collective asses (with what? – I don’t have crap coming back and with Seth Smith in the AL I have even less) it’s time for some important dates:
March 15 – Have your initial $250 to Glenn. His address is:
8561 LaSalle St. #53
Cypress, CA 90630
March 30 – Roster Freeze Day. Have your keepers to me by 10 p.m. Central time, so I can get rosters updated and out to everyone so you’ll have the weekend to study once you know who is available.
April 5 (maybe) – Golf.
April 5 (hopefully) – Group dinner at Batista’s.
April 6 – Draft. (Sorry Ken, Albert is no longer available. But you can watch him play the Astros starting next year.)
Harkening back to the HOF balloting, who will be this year’s Tony Womack? (Yes, I owned him, too – just glad neither Tuffy Rhodes nor James Mouton were on the list.)
See ya in Vegas.
Jim