[BirdWatcher]

So, who are these Denver Brewers and what is this W.P. Kinsella League?

Let's start with the league and work our way down from there. The W.P. Kinsella league is a professional baseball league of the highest order (think, MLB level) based in the continental U.S. (There are hopes, nay, aspirations, of the league eventually spreading outside the confines of the U.S., but for now that is where we play.)

The league was founded in 1965 with 20 teams, 10 each in two sub-leagues. These leagues are the Shoeless Joe League and the Moonlight Graham League.
(Okay, I just remembered that I intended to refer to the WPK from now on as the W.P. Kinsella Association so that I didn't get myself caught up in this leagues within a league linguistic conundrum. Well, I'll work on that.)

The Denver Brewers are one of the 10 franchises in the Moonlight Graham League (hereafter generally referred to as the MGL, while the Shoeless Joe League will usually be referred to as the SJL.) The Brewers are owned, as they have been since their inception, by Steve Lester. Lester has a reputation of not liking to open his pocket book too wide and of meddling in the affairs (thus far particularly when it comes to the spending of the budget) of the team in ways that aren't always comfortable for the G.M. He is also, paradoxically, someone who puts winning first. On the other hand, he is at least known to be a fairly patient man so that tempers some of his other personality traits a bit.

The Brewers play in a market that is considered above average by WPK standards and with a fan base that has shown good loyalty. Though the Brewers got off to a decent start as a team, finishing in 2nd place in the MGL in the league's inaugural season (albeit with a modest 87-75 record), the club, which jettisoned some of its veteran players and was starting several players at a very young age, fell to 8th place in 1966 and lost 90 games. They then began a gradual ascent upwards, finishing in 7th in 1967 with 80 wins, were back up to 2nd in 1968 with 90 wins, and finally won the MGL in 1969 with a 98 win season, only to be swept by the Columbus Whalers of the SJL in the WPK World Series.
The Brewers would again win 98 games in 1970 and this time they carried their success into the post-season, winning the team's first WPK championship by defeating the Jacksonville Wolf Pack of the SJL in 5 games.
In 1971 the team took an even bigger step forward in the regular season, as they set a new WPK record for team win total for a season with 108 (previous best was 104, achieved twice.) Unfortunately, the teams offense went on a bit of hiatus the last few weeks of the season and that carried into the WPK World Series and proved to be the Brewers undoing as they failed to win back-to-back crowns. They were, in fact, swept in the series by the 93 win Washington Night Train.

Which pretty much brings us up to the present. The off-season is in full swing, awards for the 1971 season have been handed out (more about this soon), and arbitration hearing and free agency filing dates approach.