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February 3rd, 2006
It's 3 AM in the Bronx, NY. Do you know where your children are?
The phone rings...
“Hello?” a groggy, awakened Matthew Brown answers his cellular phone.
“Matt, what kind of front office are we?”
There is a brief pause. On the insides of Matthew Browns brain, little neurons are firing up and connecting, sending signals through his body, advising him to throw his fist through the telephone at whoever is on the receiving end.
“What?” Brown asked in a daft, half-asleep confusion.
“What kind of front office do you suppose we are?”
“The—er, Dan? Dan is that you?”
Dan Pfeftloft is the Assistant General Manager, a classmate of Matthew's at BGSU.
“Yeah, so what do you think? Aggressive front office? Passive front office? Sabermetrics heavy? Small ball reliant?”
“Wh-what Dan? It's like 3 AM.” Brown stammered and sat up from his pillow.
“Just asking.”
“We're a “needs some god damned sleep front office” Brown replied.
Dead silence. Apparently Dan Pfeftloft didn't catch the late-night irony.
“Look,” Matthew sighed and rubbed at his temple. “I hope this isn't the only reason you're calling.”
“I just got a call from Steinbrenners office.” Dan started.
“At 3 AM?”
“Yeah, and apparently he woke up in a cold sweat and has more demands besides the Championship. I was told by one of his attendants that we have to make the playoffs. This year. Or we're fired.”
Brown rubbed at his temple again and leaned back.
“I didn't suppose it to be any different if he hadn't said it,” Brown replied, forcing his sarcasm again.
“Honest question Matt, how do you plan on cutting payroll, winning now, winning later, salvaging the farm system, and doing so all within a salary cap that we will have to dismantle our team to get under?”
“I don't know man. But this is the big time. Things were easy sitting in our dorm room playing OOTP. This is real. This isn't going to be easy. It's not supposed to be, but I guess that's why they're paying us so much. They have to have faith in us.”
There was a short silence again, and then Dan started back up, “Brian Cashman couldn't fix this mess and we're just out of college.” he said.
“Yeah,” Matt began “George has apparently gotten too dumb and senile to realize we're not supposed to be here. And maybe we're too young and dumb to realize it just the same.”
Dan chuckled a brief bit, and then sighed.
“Get some sleep Dan. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow. It's gonna be a long day every day.”
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