Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen

I want to start by thanking Rich for devoting an entire Monroe Doctrine to my retirement from the ownership ranks of the CFCL. Wow, if I had known I’d receive a tribute like that, I would have bowed out a long time ago – I haven’t had that many nice things said about me since … well, ever, really. Before I get all Sally Field on everyone, a couple other reactions to Rich’s piece:

• 9900 days? Really? Geez, if I had known we were that close to 10,000, I might have played another year (or at least held off on announcing my retirement until next February). “10,000 Days of Fantasy” would have made a great title for my memoirs…
• It’s phrases like “vile, despicable scum” that make the CFCL so special. Now that phrase probably means nothing to anyone other than Rich and I (and maybe The Professor) since it harkens way back to the earliest days of the league, but it’s something that’s entered our permanent vocabulary, ready to be broken out at anytime, but also reserved for very special uses. CFCL lore is littered with similar phrases and memories.
• Good god, I had forgotten that I used to actually type out the standings on my mom’s old manual typewriter – it wasn’t even an electric! I don’t know what’s more amazing: that I actually had the time to do that each week, or that I was such a loser/geek that that’s how I chose to spend the time I did have.

Pretty much everything Rich wrote is true, though I wouldn’t say it exactly tells the full story, because I had plenty of help all along the way, from Bob Monroe (who, as the CFCL’s original “Computer Mole-Man”, was the first to compile Draft Day lists and assisted with early computerization of the stat process, up to Michal C. and Matt G. (who took on some of my Front Office responsibilities over the past couple years.

And of course, there’d be no CFCL without Rich. All I did was show him a book – he’s the one who actually said, “hey, we should do this!” The league has been a true partnership from the very beginning, and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner – y’all are in good hands, as you’ve seen for the past couple years.

Speaking of which, I also want to thank Rich for giving me those. As I’m sure you’ll all recall, I had originally decided to retire before the 2009 season, but it was Rich who suggested I step back on my League Office duties and focus just on the team management aspect. It did give me one last shot at a Championship in 2009, but I could have seen the writing on the wall when I couldn’t even show up at the right damn place for Draft Day in 2010.

Thanks to all of those 39 different CFCL owners who partook in the journey over the years – many of whom I did not know before the CFCL, but who I still call friends, and especially to the current group of 9. And thanks to Rich for the Monroe Doctrine tribute, the chance to play a couple more season, 27+ years of incredible experiences and indescribable fun, and for the many years of friendship still to come.

Nick, Rich, and Jacque

Now that in-season publication has started, if you're not checking out The Monroe Doctrine on a regular basis, you're doing yourself a great disservice.  Rich is once again making quality weekly posts about the CFCL past and present, the Cubs, MLB, and life in general.  You subscribe via a news reader, or at a minimum be sure to click the link over in the sidebar to the right of this post on a regular basis.

If you haven't read his Bring Me Your Torch post casting "Survivor: Heroes vs Villians" using current and former Cub players, go check it out, then come back here for a little treat.

Well done, don't you think?  The reference to the Jacque Jones moment from the 2006 CFCL Draft was a nice touch.  For those who would like to relive it or experience it for the first time, here's the video:

The Ramon Martinez Incident

Continuing our look back at the CFCL's first 25 years, we return to the 1992 Draft for another classic incident.

It's every Roto player's nightmare -- getting stuck with a player you didn't want, usually while trying to drive the price up for other owners. In the case of Six Packs owner Kelly Barone, that player was Ramon Martinez - a name Kelly had tossed out because he wanted to wait a while before nominating the Dodger pitcher he really wanted, Tom Candiotti.

Ending up with Martinez put Kelly into a funk that lasted the rest of the Draft - as the video shows, he was still visibly upset about it - not just 10 minutes afterwards, but over an hour later.

Of course, Kelly's leaguemates were very sympathetic and supportive...

The following video is a long one - nearly 9 minutes - but that's just a fraction of the time that Kelly's grief lasted, and there's some additional fun stuff inlcuded as well. Enjoy!

The Darryl Strawberry Incident

As we approach Draft Day 2009 and prepare to kick off our 26th year, I thought it would be nice to celebrate our 25th Anniversary with a little trip down memory lane.

If you've spent any time in the History section of the CFCL Internet Headquarters, you'll know that we're rather fond of documenting our Draft Day "incidents". The very first incident that we we had actual documentation for was "The Darryl Strawberry Incident" from the 1992 Draft.

Here's the way I described the incident in the 1992 Draft History:

Kelly Barone nominated Darryl Strawberry at .05. There was a noticeable reaction from some owners at Kelly's "audacity". You see, it's kind of an unwritten tradition in the CFCL that players get nominated at the minimum (.01) and then bidding proceeds at penny increments for the most part.

OK, it's not the quickest way to run a draft, and no one was prevented from starting the bid at more then .01 or raising it a nickel at a time, it's just that it was surprising when it happens.

Well, the bidding continued to Dem Rebels, who jumped all the way to .08. The next owner up was Pat McGuire, a CFCL rookie, and he wasn't having any of this "penny or two at a time" crap. He shot the bid all the way to .25, which was still cheap for Strawberry. The reaction it caused in the other owners was astounding -- a stunned silence, a quick anonymous whistle, and then, in a random and inexplicable coincidence, Tom Clark and Dave Holian both turned and looked into the kitchen, as if asking "Where the hell did THAT bid come from?"

The sheer randomness and total spontaneity of the act of looking into the kitchen made it a funny moment. It became hilarious, and an instant CFCL classic, when two owners simultaneously and independently chose to do it at the same time.

The video clip below includes not only the incident itself and ensuing commentary, but the completion of the bidding on Strawberry, and the continuation of the McGuire insanity with the bidding on the next player, Shawon Dunston.

So, without further ado, the CFCL Archives presents... The Darryl Stawberry Incident:

Congratulations, Stones!

Steve's Stones capped off a commanding 2nd half performance by winning the second championship in franchise history, joining David's Copperfields, Dem Rebels, David's Ruffins, and Eric's Lambchops as the only two-time league champs.

At the season's halfway point, the Stones held a slim 1.5 point lead, only recently having moved into the top spot. A week later, the lead had grown to 12.5 points, and for the rest of the season never fell below 8.5 points. The Stone's final 12.5 point margin of victory was the third highest ever, and marked just the 4th time in the CFCL's 25-year history that the Champion finished with a double-digit lead over the second place team.

Speaking of the second place team, back when the Stones were beginning their second half surge, Mo's Red Hots sat in 8th place. However, while teams above them in the standings turned toward next year and started dumping, the Red Hots went to work on their current squad, adding talent via trades and free agent acquisitions, and began a surge of their own. Over the next five periods they picked up 20 points and injected themselves into the pennant race. They fell short in the end, but deserve kudos for their attempt.

Congrats to the Stones, nice try to the Hots, and thanks to everyone else for taking part in the CFCL's 25th season.

Yoo Hoo to Arms!

In this week's Monroe Doctrine, Rich writes about some of the minutia in the CFCL Consitution. He even mentions something that's missing from our rules - the Rotisserie League's Yoo Hoo Ceremony.

He writes about the Doctrine's namesake, Bob Monroe's, experience undergoing the ritual at the hands of his son Ryan:

Bob Monroe was out of town at the end of the season in which he won the title. So he had his kids dump a bottle of Yoo-Hoo on him while his wife took photographic evidence for the league.

Here, for your enjoyment, is that photographic evidence:

Ok... I realize there may be some cleansing of the pallate needed after viewing the above, so here's a link to something to take your mind off of it: an excerpt from the original Rotisserie League Baseball book: A Yoo-Hoo to Arms

Hmmm. These reminiscences have me a bit nostalgic. Now that it's pretty darn clear that the Copperfields have no chance at the 2008 title, maybe it's time we reinstate the Yoo Hoo ceremony...

Period 10

We're coming to the end of 2008's 10th reporting period, which is a significant milepost in the CFCL season.

The standings in Period 10 are what we use as the benchmark for the Dallas Green Award, which goes to the CFCL team that gains the most points from Period 10 until the end of the season.

The award is named for the architect of the Cubs' near-championship season in 1984, which was due in a large part to in-season acquisitions of players like Rick Suttcliffe and Dennis Eckersley.

The goal of the award is to recognize the CFCL GM who does the best job of improving their team during the season. We chose Period 10's standings as the starting point because it eliminated much of the flukiness of early-season standings, but also left enough of the season for GMs to have an impact on their team's fortunes.

A look at the Dallas Green Award winners from seasons past should be very encouraging to nearly all of the current CFCL GMs. Since the turn of the century, Dallas Green Award winners have averaged a gain of over 22 points from Period 10 until the end of the year.

And in the past two year, the Dallas Green winners have gained 25.5 and 30.5 points respectively. A look at the live standings while I'm writing this, shows the gap between the first place Revenge and the 11th place Copperfields to be 29.5 points, indicating that a Copperfield championship in 2008 is still within the realm of possibility - or certainly at least a money finish.

In other words at this point in the season, really only one team has fallen out of the race.

Gaining twenty-some points in the final 16 weeks is one thing, but can a team really come from 25-30 points behind to actually win?

Ask the Ruffins, who won the Dallas Green Award (+30.5 points) and the CFCL Championship in 2006. Or ask Kenndoza Line, who won the Dallas Green Award (+25.5 points) and the CFCL Championship in 2007. Can it happen again?

Food for thought...

Online Gator

When I stumbled across the Brad Morris podcasts the other day, I started poking around for info about his filmmaking partner, Nick Barrionuevo. That eventually led me to the page at MSN Video where Nick had posted a couple segments of Trading the Gator, the documentary he and Brad made featuring the CFCL. I had linked to those segments from the main CFCL page a while ago, but it looks like since that time Nick has posted nearly the entire film (almost everything is there except for when a couple segments are prematurely cut off).

I found the MSN Video page rather difficult to navigate and work with, so I put together a page embedding all of the segments in order for easy viewing. If you joined the CFCL after our brief moment of fame (or simply haven't revisited the film in a while), here's your ticket to an online viewing:

Trading the Gator

The Twenty-Fifth

About this date 24 years ago (give or take a week or two), a little green paperback made its appearance on bookstore shelves. From that time on, the lives of baseball fans everywhere -- and two of them in particular -- would never be the same.

That book was the first edition of Rotisserie League Baseball, and your truly was one of those fans intrigued enough by the tag line "The Greatest Game for Baseball Fans Since Baseball" to pick the book up up in Kroch's and Brentano's. A quick browse through it was enough to hook me, and I bought the book, little realizing what I was letting myself in for.

Of course, one can't experience Rotisserie baseball alone, so I lent the book to my best friend, Rich Bentel, who became equally intrigued by the concept. We quickly decided we had to start a league, and scraped together four other baseball fans who agreed to join us in the endeavor (yes, we freely admit that we were such nerds that four were all we could find -- Dave Holian has never forgiven Rich for not inviting him in for the inaugural season).

Now, nearly a quarter of a century later Rich and I are preparing for our 25th season of CFCL baseball. I'm sure Rich will agree that neither one of us imagined back in 1984 that we'd still be playing this game in our 40s, with wives and kids in tow.

We didn't want this occasion to pass without some kind of commemoration, so we asked the CFCL's resident graphics expert, Nick Hansen to cook up a logo to help up celebrate our 25th season, and I think you'll agree that Nick did a bang-up job:

You too can join in this historic celebration. We've taken Nick's designs (there's a square version of the logo as well), slapped them on some products at Cafe Press, and made them available for purchase.

Visit the CFCL Souvenir Stand at http://www.cafepress.com/cfcl and browse through the selection of apparel, mugs, and assorted other goodies. If you see something you kind of like but would prefer a slight variation (for example, a shirt with a small logo over the heart rather than the large logo centered), let me know and I might be able to set that up for you.

Order soon to get your goodies in time for Draft Day!

NOTE: We certainly don't want to trivialize our 25th season by commercializing it. We did want to make things things available to those who might want to partake, but there's no pressure to participate. Tempted as I was to add a mark-up to the items and make a little cash on the side, the prices listed are the base price of having the items made -- neither I nor the CFCL will be making any cash on this deal.