CRL NEWS

February 31, 2023

“A good pitcher will get out of two jams a game. A great Pitcher will get out of 3. An average pitcher will get out of one.”

Dusty Baker, after the Astros game 5 World Series victory in Philadelphia, quoting a comment made to Baker by Tommy John.

A couple of updates and a couple of questions.

As I said in my email a week or so ago, Glenn will be joining us in Vegas this year as Tina’s surgery has been postponed.

Jim Fraser will also be there, and he is bringing his wife Veneeta. For those of you who have not met Veneeta, she is delightful.

On the flip side, neither Otis nor Hutch will be at the draft. That means they will be drafting via an electronic hookup to the draft room. More on this in a bit because there are some dates and social activities I want to let everyone know about.

Wednesday night, several of us are gathering for a dinner at Ruth Chris’ steakhouse in Harrah’s. If you are interested, let Marcus know because he is setting it up. (512) 806-3317 mcathey@austin.rr.com

Thursday, we have a pair of activities. Farabee, Ken, Fraser and myself (and I think Weve – although I don’t have confirmation on him) are playing golf at the Legacy. If you would like to join us, please let Ken or Farabee know. You might want to wear a hard hat, because I haven’t picked up my clubs since Vegas last year. But since I get off at 12:30 in the afternoon now, I am going to attempt to go to the driving range a handful of times on my way home from work and hit a few buckets. Steve – (512) 658-9084 steve@txhometech.com, Ken (713) 598-3193 ken@eng-a-p.net of chiefwelder@att.net

Thursday night, Farabee is again hosting the pizza party in his room at the Cosmo. Everyone is welcome to attend. As a reminder, we usually always chip in $20-$25 to cover the cost of Pizza, snacks, beer and other libations. Time TBD and we won’t know the location until Steve checks in. If you plan on attending, please make sure Steve has your email so he can send out a group email with the room and time. Contact information above.

Don’t forget to have any pre-season payments to Glenn by March 18. Also, remember that Roster Freeze Day is Friday, March 31 (you can wait until midnight if you want). Since I get home a little after 1 pm now, I should have rosters updated by Saturday afternoon.

Now to the elephant in the room –how do we go about accommodating Otis/Hutch at the draft? Otis doesn’t travel and Hutch is not going to spend gobs of money and 24+ hours each way travelling from-and-to the Philippines.

Hutch and myself have had several email exchanges and have some ideas, since he is going to be the primary drafter.

Hutch has a professional zoom account (if someone else has Microsoft teams, that is also an available option). He would prefer to use that option rather than spend the insane amount of money it would cost for a 6-7 hour call from the PI to Vegas.

What we need is someone with a spare laptop. The laptop must have a webcam be Wi-Fi-enabled so it can connect to the resort Wi-Fi. It must also be capable of receiving email so Hutch can send the link to join the Zoom call. No special software is needed as clicking the link in the email will join the meeting.

I need to find out who has an available laptop that can be spared (I will be using mine to run the draft). Please let me know so I can get with Hutch. I want to get the two of you together a week or so ahead of time so you can download the link on your laptop before getting to Vegas.

Hutch has indicated he wants to set up the call in advance. To do this, he needs the date and time. We know the date, but we need to set a time. We always seem to draft between 9 and 10 am Vegas time. Because of the need for setup, I’d suggest we do 10 (I could be pushed to 9:30, but need to get Glenn’s buy-in because I do not know what time we can take possession of the room). Let me know your thoughts.

Hutch’s suggestion was to get a big-screen TV from the hotel and hook it up to the laptop. Not sure this is workable option (will defer to Glenn as he has the contacts), but experience has shown that they would charge us out the wazoo for that. (As an aside, they contacted Glenn and offered to video tape the draft for posterity – at a cost. It’s kind of like those videos you pay for at your wedding and then never watch. My answer was not no but &*^% NO!).

This also presents a different issue. Depending on the microphone and speaker on the laptop, we may need to have someone sit in front of the laptop as a relay for bids to-and-from Hutch. We may or may not need that and will have to do a practice run to see. My suggestion is, if a relay person is needed, each multiple-owner team will have an owner monitor one round. Once a round is completed, we will trade off. Alternatives to that are having some kind of mobile tray or table we can move to different team each round. We could also use any of the draft groupies that seem to show up every year for this.

Again, let me know your thoughts and especially let me know if you have an extra laptop you can bring along.

Looking forward to seeing all of you (well, most of you) in Vegas.

Jim