One thing I would like to point out, when I showed the payroll figures for each team, one thing I needed to keep in mind was the "coaches salaries" were included in there. The owners(game) did a great job with keeping under the salary cap. Corning was the highest overall, but upon further review, their "player payroll" was $1.19m. Certainly under our
1.2million dollar cap! Awesome news for sure! I also hit the "assign fictional contracts to personnel" button, and it brought the Manager, Scouts, etc. way down, to more reflect the overall league financials, which again is great!!
So Spring Training is upon us. Which means simply, we move from the gym at Coatesville HS, or Octorara HS, and we move outside to the newly renovated Ash Park. The crowds were a hit or a miss. Some nights real crowded, others not so. Remember this is March in the Northeast. Gotta love independent baseball. Practice where you can, use every resource available to scout(that's cheap!), work 70 hours a week, and try and keep your sanity!
Eventually, we'll have seats installed for everyone. The side with the aluminum benches, are the visitors side. lol
And remember what the great Ernie Banks once said. The riches of the game are in the thrills, not the money!
Our team really played well together, and you could tell Manager Ed Bane had been drilling them with the fundamentals. We did a nice job of bunting over runners, not missing signs, and using the hit and run and our speed to our advantage. The final standings looked like this:
There were also the usual pranks that are done to players, and then there's this funny picture. It's from one of our very late, (98th pick), closer by the name of Vicente Rodriguez. Besides having a fastball that couldn't break 83, Rodriguez had absolutely no control. So one day our pitching coach found some old boots in the groundskeeper's shed, and told Vicente to put them on and see if they would help! Well one had been badly chewed by one of the four legged mutts running around Ash Park, so Vicente could only wear one. Needless to say, it didn't help, and we released him the next day!
Well, opening day is upon us! Stay tuned for reports on how the Aces do in the month of April!!