[kotu247]

Gentlemen,

While browsing this forum occassionally, I have never had a need to register since all of my questions have been expeditiously answered with a quick search, but obviously the time has come for me to do so.

I am the "new" commissioner of the EBM (Elite Baseball Managers), [30 years old since it apparently matters to Cooleyvol] and since the history that has been laid out here is "foggy" at best, let me lend some insight:

My intention in starting the EBM was to pick up where the BMN (Baseball Managers Network) left off. The BMN was a league that was comprised of at LEAST 20 of the (in my opinion) best, most active, most knowledgeable OOTP players on the internet. Unfortunately it also contained one of the worst commissioners to ever run a league. After months of being MIA the commissioner came back, finding us dedicated BMN owners waiting patiently for him. He promptly started the 2005 playoffs, making it to the end of the wild card series before disappearing again for several days. The assistant commissioner, and then owner of the Toronto Blue Jays, stated that if he wasn't given passwords to do his assistant commissioner job, that he was going to have to quit the league. The commissioner then reappeared to start the League Championship series. Two games in, he disappeared again, and true to his word, the assistant commissioner threw in the towel and left. The commish showed back up after a couple of days, ran the next two games and THEN replaced the Jay's owner with a new one. The commissioner ran the rest of the playoffs and hasn't been heard from since.

Now that you have some clearer history, here are my thoughts on the subject.

1) As commissioner of the EBM I deeply feel that it is my responsiblity to take personal feelings about an owner out of the equation. I REFUSE to show any bias towards an owner because I like or dislike his personality. Has the original Blue Jays owner been an a$$ at times? Probably so. I could care less about that. Any point made here about his being a cancer or crybaby or whiner are (in my opinion) absolutly irrelevant when it comes to making a decision about ownership. I know that I have the ability to handle that owner in this league, and if I thought for one second that he would be bad for the league, he would not be invited back.

2) The "new" Jays owner was not involved in the league long enough for anybody (including myself) to even know who he was. I have been with the league since about 3 weeks after inception and checked the message boards daily. To my knowledge he NEVER MADE ONE POST about his team or any other team for that matter. His owner information was never posted to the owners page and since he was instated LATE during the ALCS he had ZERO opportunity to impact the management of that team.

3) The old Jays owner undoubtedly put his heart and soul (as much as you can over a game) into forming that team and he in no way wanted to abandon it, he honestly felt like he had no choice in the matter. I could think he was the biggest a$$hole on the face of the earth, but it still wouldn't make me question his passion about being an incredible owner in the BMN.

4) The precident that was mentioned earlier involving the Padres owner was a completlely different situation. The owner who left the Padres left early in the season and was gone for over half of that simulated season. The new Padres owner had put his "identity stamp" on that team and had made many changes to try to make it a competitive franchise. In that circumstance I wholeheartedly agreed that the original Padres owner should have been made to pick an open team or wait for one to come available. And in most incidences I would think that would be the case. All rules must have an exception, and I think that this is the one.

5) I am determined to run my league as a democracy and not a dictatorship. I understand completly that you can't make everyone happy all of the time, but I also plan on listening to the opinions of my owners. I offered up a vote on reinstatement IF (I REPEAT IF) we were able to get ahold of the "new" Blue Jays owner to see if he was interested at all and IF (I REPEAT IF) the "old" Jays owner was even interested in returning to his old team. As of this second, the "new" owner has been unreachable and the "old" owner has not expressed a desire to return.

6) I would hate to see Shaun (OCBLCommish) leave this league because of a decision to reinstate the old Jays owner. On a personal level Shaun is probably my favorite owner in this league since he and I took on the challenge of running expansion franchises last season and talked frequently during that time. Having said that, I would hope that he would be able to respect the decision of a league wide vote on the subject and the early take from the people in the league is to let the "old" Jays owner have his team back. This is not because we are trying to "railroad" the new owner, it is because EVERYONE in this league was JUST AS FRUSTRATED as the "old" Jays owner, he was just the only one fed up enough to leave. And once again.....if the "new" owner had been there for more than a couple of PLAYOFF sims, I would have an entirely different outlook on the subject. While we may not agree with some of the things he said on the way out, we ALL agree that we were just as upset in seeing one of the best leagues on the net dying a slow painful death.

If you made it to the end of this post, I want to thank you for reading the entire thing, and I also ask that you try your best not to flame me for my opinions. I feel like I have the ability to admit when I am wrong and will gladly do so if someone can point out an overwhelming justification to changing my decision that I might be overlooking. As the commissioner of the EBM I wish that this issue would have been kept "in-house" since I don't think the court of public opinion is the appropriate place to judge a situation that is obviously intricate, delicate, and understandable only by someone directly involved in the situation.

Ty Smith - Commish of the EBM.