[Syd Thrift]

This update will be short-ish because it includes the draft. I took the time to update everyone's chances of having players according to the teams in the league so that everyone gets a normal distribution. I did a couple of extra stuff with Austria and England, and of course there are 3X as many Americans.

I think that in an effort to save time, too, I'm just going to allow teams to have first dibs on their own players: the first round will the the only in-nation round. From there, anyone can draft anybody else from the 2nd round on, although that could cause some tricky situations down the road!

June 1: Earl W. Bascom, rodeo cowboy and artist, along with his father John W. Bascom at Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, designs and makes rodeo's first reverse-opening side-delivery bucking chute, now the world standard. Canada gets the GRIT BONUS. Like, even if the GRIT BONUS wasn't the booby prize, this would get the GRIT BONUS because this is PURE UNADULTERATED GRIT. Congratulations, 3B John Drake. Drake was formerly a slow .328 hitter but now he's a slow .328 hitter with GRIT.

June 2: 1919 United States anarchist bombings: Eight mail bombs are sent to prominent figures. I mean, this feels like a negative even for the Yankees but instead I'm going to make it a positive, POWerful event for the Chicago Defenders! Hey, it'd be cooler if it happened to someone other than backup C Brian Schlesinger, but hey, a bump is a bump.

June 4: Women's rights: The United States Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would guarantee suffrage to women, and sends it to the states for ratification. That feels like a +POW to all 3 US teams (maybe that's their special secret power: American Exceptionalism). The Yankees get a bump to LF Sean Hurd, RF Aaron Hubbard, and, hey! 1B Albert Cushing Read (who by the way is hitting just .244 but even with the late start and before the POW boost is up among the league leaders in HRs). For Chicago it's light-hitting SS Hugo "Cactus" Castaneda and C Brian Schlesinger again (I realize that this should only grant 2 bumps since that's what Belgium and the Netherlands got but I'm not going to undo the Yankees). Finally, the LA Stars get fill-in SS Justin Shaw and backup LF Mike Backner.

June 5: Estonian and Latvian Wars of Independence: The advancing pro-German Baltische Landeswehr initiates war against Estonia in Northern Latvia. Germany adds a rando Latvian player, SS Laimdotis Sirants (incidentally the in-game name generator's Latvian names just look Russian to me, so I found one online for the purpose). He is an old man (38) but is now their primary pinch-hitter.

The Draft

I'm finding guys who were born in 1899 to be the 1st round picks for teams. If no prominent guys were born, I'll use someone who died then...

AMS: Pieter RIjke, Dutch physicist (incidentally, the actual guy in this slot was named Ronald MacDonald)

BEI: Lao She, Chinese writer best known for the novel Rickshaw Boy and the play Teahouse

BER: Karl Diebitsch, German fashion designer; the guy who designed much of SS paraphernalia during WW2 including the all black uniform

BOM: Jibanananda Das, Indian poet, writer, novelist, and essayist

BRX: Albert Claude, Belgian biologist, winner of the Nobel Prize

CHI: Al Capone. Like, LA will get Duke Ellington, who maybe fits into the Defender aspect better, but Al Capone *is* Chicago...

COP: No Danish dudes!

HAV: No prominent Cubans this year (which doesn't mean they skip the pick; they just don't get to rename him)

IST: Cevdet Sunay, 5th President of Turkey

LAA: Fred Astaire. I know I said I was going to take the Duke, but man...

MAD: Carmen de Icaza, Spanish writer (sadly they never did get in gender options for players in this version)

MEX: Margarito Flores Garcia, Mexican priest, martyr, and saint

MOS: Vladimir Nabokov, Russian born writer of "Lolita"

LON: Alfred Hitchcock, British director

NYY: Ernest Hemingway, don't act like you don't know him

PAR: Jean de Brunhoff, writer of the Babar the Elephant stories

RIO: Manuel dos Reis Machado, Brazilian martial artist and founder of a prominent capoeira school (I mean, capoeira is sort of a martial art)

ROM: Gualtiero De Angelis, Italian actor, known for voicing over Jimmy Stewart for the Italian audience

SYD: Macfarlane Burnet, Australian biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize

TEH: Nobody listed from Iran, Persia, or Iraq.

TOK: Kenjiro Takayanagi, Japanese pioneer in TV development

I was all over the place here so if, like, the Austrian economist winds up in Poland somehow, blame me...

TOR: Chief Dan George, writer and tribal chief, also the guy who played the chief in the Dustin Hoffman movie Little Big Man

WIE: Friedrich Hayek, Austrian economicist