[Westheim]

Originally Posted by UltimateAverageGuy

Curious Westheim, how old are you?

33, but before my first coffee I usually feel like 77 at the very least.

(with nervously shaking paw reaches for the cup)

Originally Posted by OrbisEuler

any cool stories?

There were highs, there were lows. There is this lefty, taken in the second-to-last round in ’95 that required a neat write-up some 25 years later.

There was also this game that I played four and a half years ago and will never get out of my head.

We had four championships (indicated in the signature, too, the bold years) and have been an above-.500 team all-time, but there have been some dire straits (the Juan Diaz came occurred squat in the middle of a 10-year run of posting losing seasons). We also have our fair share of Hall of Famers, which is probably due to OOTP players lacking the “I just want outta here” sentiment that real-life, say, Miami Marlins personnel has, so if you really want to, you can hold on to them forever and make them yours in the Hall.

Most of the time however I am rambling down rough play-by-play account of a week’s worth of games while spicing it up with a mostly inept cast of supporting characters and my inherent madness. Like the final section of this entry after a recent 0-6 week:

Complaints and stuff

(sits at his desk with a metal sweeping bucket over his head and speaks with a cracked, metallic sounding voice) I am wearing this so nobody can see that I cried. I think it works very well.

Kevin Harenberg was Hitter of the Month in the Federal League, batting .360 with 2 HR and 20 RBI, which is nothing that concerns the Raccoons directly except for nostalgic reasons, but I felt the pressing urge to report something, anything positive.

The team as a whole is terrible. They suck. There is also no hope. They will always suck. We will never have a winning team again. Heck, we will never score FIRST in any ****ing game again. The streak is up to *13* games in which the other team got on the board first, going back to the second game of the double-header in Indy two Sundays back. I think this colossal level of misery is best fixed by sending the entire roster to some remote and icy gulag in the frozen wastelands. Too bad that thanks to global warming there aren’t many frozen wastelands anymore.

Maud! … Maud! – Can we trade the entire roster to Vancouver? – No? – Aw.

(with a clonking sound, rests bucket-covered head on the desk)

Fun Fact: Tim Stalker is the only batter in ABL history to hit for multiple cycles without leaving the field as winner even once.

It is TRUE. It is a very Raccoons story. We obviously lost the 11-inning gut-wrencher on Friday, and we also lost his first career cycle on May 10, 2029, a 9-8 defeat against the Gold Sox in Portland. Stalker batted leadoff that day with Ramos routinely on the DL at that point and went 4-for-6 with 4 RBI in an ultimately futile rally after Dan Delgadillo had been whomped for six runs early on.

That’s boilerplate madness. But I can go off the rails entirely, too.

I took another curious look at the note with the address, then looked at the building again. This was it. This was the address that Maud had given me. A fantastically fancy, relatively new apartment building on the west side of Portland in an otherwise sparsely built up hillside area. I also let my trusty stuffed toy raccoon Honeypaws take a look at the note, then shrugged and went inside. There was a guy behind a white marble counter eyeing me briefly before typing something into his computer. In at least three corners there were tiny red lights blinking in dark corners – security cameras for sure. I had to take the left-hand elevator, Maud had stressed, so I went to that one and pressed the button with the upwards pointing arrow – the only one available – then waited.

After the Raccoons had suffered the mother of all sweeps in Boston (30-2 in terms of runs in case you partially or wholly erased the ghastly memory with self-medication of your choice), the team had gone north of the border to play the abominatious Elks. Of course, I was still not allowed back into Canada, stemming from an incident in the 80s when I had ripped an Elks cap from a kid’s head in a waterfront park in Vancouver and had stomped on it. The hat, not the kid. Still, the Canadians were kinda weird with being cruel to children. The authorities, not the team. Although, that too. Anyway, several illegal border transgressions for important business since then aside, I had not accompanied the team to Vancouver in decades, and usually watched in horror from my couch at home.

But not this time. I just couldn’t be alone. Unfortunately, few of the people I considered friends or something like that were available to watch the game with. Steve from Accounting had gone fishing, which I didn’t remember him ever mentioning to enjoy. Maud had left town to visit her mother, which I found weird since I’d swear she had been to her funeral at least twice in the past. I was also fairly sure that both our lazy janitor Slappy and glue-sniffing mascot boy Chad actually lived in Raccoons Ballpark, so there was no visiting them. The Druid and our scout, that guy with his name, were obviously in Canada with the team. That only left – oh, the elevator finally arrived, it was all fancy white inside – one person. There was also only one button inside the elevator. Nowhere but “^” from here, apparently. I pushed that, held on to Honeypaws with my left hand and to a small bag with a change of clothes and various pills – whatever I had been able to find and what would mix well with booze – in my right hand.

Man, this elevator was moving upwards *forever*.

When it finally arrived at “^”, the doors opened with a gentle whirr and allowed the occupant to step out into a very short sort of hallway that was dimly lit. There was but one door on the other end with a lit buzzer next to it. Honeypaws pressed that with his front paw. Within seconds, the door was opened by a young man that was about 6’4’’ and … well, we were both sort of surprised apparently. He by the sudden, unannounced appearance of an old man in a well-worn jacket, and I was sort of taken by his flowing blond locks that fell to the shoulders and were the only hair on an otherwise clean-shaven body. He only wore a black thong that seemed unnecessarily tight at first glance, and a white bowtie around his neck.

I’m… I’m sorry. I am looking for Senor Carmona. Is he home? – Mr. Westfield, it is.

The hunk turned around and said to somebody inside that Mr. Westfield was here, which immediately caused some thing or other to collapse with great noise, and after a second of silence I could hear Cristiano’s voice, but couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the towering hulk soon stepped out of the door and lowered his head slightly to allow me inside.

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...postcount=2951

There’s a few people that seem entertained by this and occasionally voice approval in my dynasty thread (and, rarely, concern ), and there is the additional boon that I am convinced that writing up the Critters greatly cuts down on therapy bills for me. Otherwise I’d probably need an emotional support animal.

A raccoon of course.

(whispers) I will name him Daniel.

I wonder whether it’s easier to dye or to shave the #15 into his back fur, though.