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At the inaugural big league owners meeting, the commissioner draws the names of all 16 teams from a hat. Philadelphia Athletics GM Jason Moyer, disappointed with receiving the 14th pick in the draft, expects to successfully build his team regardless.
Just 24 years old, the former amateur second baseman is a self-made millionaire. While his baseball career was de-railed by alcohol-induced vertigo, he was able to use his prodigous management skills and keen opportunistic timing to build a vast empire of wealth. Certainly his portfolio has diversified in recent years (worthy of note is his role as the largest shareholder in the Standard Oil company), but to most Americans he's primarily known for his many fascinating (some would say superfluous) mechanical inventions. The first man to discover that the power of steam could be harnessed to drive a complex mechanical simulation of base ball, he was both chided for wasting the leisure time of the modern man and lauded for helping to popularize what had previously been regarded as a children's game.
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"I pretty much popped everything cold turkey. We were doing steroids they wouldn't give to horses."
-- Tom House
"I was very fortunate to have a pitching coach by the name of Tom House...Tom, I really miss those days that we spent in the weight room and out on the field working together."
-- Nolan Ryan's HoF Induction Speech
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