Monday, March 23, 2015
Draft Day: Pablo, or The Elephant in the Room
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| Le Tampon (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Until his rant about the Giants tampon (as in toxic shock) clubhouse a few weeks ago, I thought drafting at 3B would be quite straightforward. The G4Gs - goofy for Giants - guys would bid him up pretty high, and then Marky Marko would buy another vowel for 9 bucks or so.
But now that Pablo's slandered the Men of Orange, I am really not sure the degree to which bruised feelings will counterbalance the possibility of bruised baseballs bouncing off the Green Monster - and I don't mean Peter's crunchy kale salad.
I had thought I'd bring Pablo out at once at a stiff dollar figure, just high enough to tempt the rest of you into leaving me hanging so that you could chuckle at my apparently misreading the room. That is a bidding strategy, based on the premise that most of us seem content to start low and boost the bid in quarter increments, hoping that enough of those at the table will be drunk, dumb or unfocused enough to let a player slip through at a bargain price. But what if you are immediately challenged and bumped offstride with an initial offer of, say, 5 dollars, which breaks the rhythm, the drumbeat of quarter-up, quarter-up until someone blinks?
(And someone is always blinking.)
Maybe I will make that preemptive strike, if only to see Mark snap to attention. I really do like Pablo after all. We both have clearly had a bellyful of Frisco.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
No First-Time Champion Since Fife in 2010
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| Peter Moore, Town Crier to the Mayor of London and The Greater London Authority. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The
Roll of Champions
Patrick
Finley Memorial Baseball League
1984
Patrick Finley
1985 Jeffrey
Pressman
1986 Jon
Carroll
****** Six-Time Champion
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Monday, March 16, 2015
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Sunday, March 15, 2015
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Pitching? I don't need no stinkin' pitching.
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| He's In there Pitching For Us^ - NARA - 534109 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I believe the late great Jeffrey Pressman most loudly celebrated the tier notion - here's a collection of players all about the same value. I will not bid early on those in this pool of talent, hoping to get a bargain when the bin is almost empty. But then one may end up in a bidding war with someone playing the same strategy, when only one player in a particular tier is left and the tier below is garbage.
Deep thoughts, right?
Saturday, March 07, 2015
One Shred Remains of the Greatness of the League
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| Left fielder position on a baseball diamond (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
It was truly a handmade league - draft prep done from a few magazines, standings put together once a month, sometimes by the league as a group and sometimes by various crazed fellows (usually me). Now, of course, so many websites (most run by 12-year-old boys) rank players by position that the power base has shifted and prep means nothing. Now it's all about draft day, a day ruled by those of cold and distant, even reptilian, intelligence, men like Berger and Moore, chilly men in whose gaze when it falls upon lesser mortals is always found the old Biblical judgment:
Thou art weighed in the balances, and thou are found wanting.
Yet there is one area left for vigorous debate. And that is placing players at positions. Though in some ways we are as sloppy as an old man in slippers easing down the porch stairs in mid-morning to bring in the morning newspaper - what is that old fool doing, the young neighbors think? what is that thing apparently discarded in his driveway? - in one aspect the league has rigor.
We do not qualify players at multiple positions. There is no last minute, "But he played second for two innings last September!" You have your list for left field and you have your list for catcher, and that's that. I am about to start working through the various depth charts in prep for the start of the actual season, though that's a waste of time, isn't it? Once the season starts we can rely on the USA Today "games at position" to guide, and, in the case of DH's like Big Papi who burned their gloves year ago, just rely on common sense.
Big Papi: first base. No, fuck you.
And if you don't want to worry your pretty heads? Let the BCL decide. And if you sometimes think,
O BCL, thou hast not humbled thine heart, but hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and thy servants have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified.
O put a sock in it
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