Loony Louie, the Rebirth of Baseball, and Me

[rallymonkey1982]

Hello all, for some reason, the writing bug has hit me over the past few days (I don't know why, I've never really done any creative writing). In order to let it out, I've decided to start writing a dynasty using OOTP to create a future MLB that is much different from the one we know now. Feedback is always welcome, particularly constructive feedback, and I will update this as much as possible, though I cannot guarantee any set schedule.

[rallymonkey1982]

It was hockey that almost killed Major League Baseball forever. In truth, the reasons behind the lockout that started just before the 2007 season were far more complex, and I know of no unbiased figure who can give a full accounting of the events leading up to the lockout. There were, for sure, many factors; the release of the Mitchell Report, the loss of public trust in both players and owners regarding steroid usage, and the almighty dollar, which ruled the league with an iron fist. Most, however, focused on the owners’ desire to beat the player’s union into submission, as the NHL had done with the lockout that resulted in the loss of the ’04-’05 season.

While the reasons for the Major League Strike have been debated since the day the Strike began, there is little argument over the consequences of the Strike. At first, everyone involved assumed that everything would turn out ok. Players, owners, and the media were blissfully unaware of the deep sense of anger and betrayal that ran through baseball fans. The public had lost trust in the professional game after years of reading and hearing stories about crime, steroids, and numerous other misdeeds of the players (and owners). The public was able to forget about these stories when they concerned actors, musicians, or athletes in other sports, but not baseball. Baseball was supposed to be different; a small slice of childhood passed from father to son and carried throughout life. There is a feeling of tranquility, of innocence, that comes from watching a baseball game that does not come from any other form of entertainment. This feeling, a reminder of the wonder we all experienced the first time we saw a major league field, of watching games with family and friends, is what makes baseball special. Baseball had a way of breaking down even the hardest of men as they watched a game and remembered coming to the ballpark with their father, grandfather, or childhood friend. Fans expected that feeling to always come when they came to the ballpark, or watched a game on TV. Now, fans no longer saw the players as heroes; they saw the players as dirty, greedy criminals. The owners were simply greedy businessmen that wanted to increase they size of their already substantial bank accounts.

After the release of the Mitchell Report, the owners decided to unilaterally change the drug testing policy contained in the collective bargaining agreement. The players protested vehemently, claiming that the move by the owners was illegal. Rather than allowing the owners to run roughshod over them, the players went on strike, vowing not to play under the new drug policy. Most legal experts agree that the players had every right to protest, and the owners had no right to change the drug policy on their own. However, the owners had an ally on their side; Congress. The issue of steroids in baseball had become a political hot button issue, and every politician who publicly weighed in on the subject was guaranteed TV time, and therefore, every politician did so at the first opportunity. As with most political issues, the question of what was legal or even moral was ignored, and replaced with the question of what was popular. Every politician who got involved with the issue did so by agreeing with the owners. The fans, who only wanted to watch games, reacted with a collective yawn. The sound of a ball impacting leather, of bat striking ball, of an umpire’s call and the roar of a crowd were gone; the wonderful chorus of baseball had been replaced with the incomprehensible droning of well-educated but wholly uninteresting men and women in $1,000 suits with an American flag pinned to it.

I got involved with writing about baseball while I was in college, Along with writing for the college newspaper, I blogged about the Angels, my hometown team, in between midterms and frat parties. After I graduated, I was hired by a large newspaper (I’m not allowed to say their name, but I’ll just say it’s based in the City of Angels and has something to do with a clock), to write about the sport I loved; baseball. Due to poor timing, I was never able to write about a single game. Instead, my reports were of Congressional hearings about steroids, the economics of the game, and other details that no one wanted to read. I found my stories getting pushed to the back of the sports section, when they were published at all. After the players union officially disbanded in 2009, I was let go from the paper, which had stopped printing stories about Major League Baseball altogether. Indeed, baseball had become an afterthought in the minds of most fans, and those who stayed loyal to the game began paying more attention to college, high school, and other levels of baseball, which provided a baseball fix at little cost without the headaches that were now associated with the professional game.

Memory is a funny thing; there are times in my life where every detail of a moment is perfectly captured, every detail etched into the mind forever. The phone call I received on September 23rd, 2009, is one of those moments. It was, and still is, the strangest call that I’ve ever received. To this day, many years later, I can point you to the exact spot in my Dad’s house where I was standing when I answered the phone. The number was unfamiliar, as was the voice on the other end of the phone;

“Hello?”
“Mr. Brenden Stephens, please,” the voice said.
“Speaking”
“I am calling to inquire if you are interested in a job”
“Yes, I am looking for a job,” it had been two weeks since I was let go from the paper.
“Are you available to come to the Angel Stadium offices tomorrow morning at 9 am?”
“Yes, what position is this for?”
“All your questions will be answered tomorrow. Please make sure to be on time”
And with that, the voice hung up the phone.

I was very curious at to what position I would possibly be able to get at Angel Stadium. I assumed that it had something to do with the numerous events that were held at the stadium when baseball wasn’t being played (which, at this point, was all the time). However, I had no experience or education in marketing, event planning, or anything else that I thought might be needed for these events. Despite the uncertainty, I showed up at Angel Stadium dressed in my best suit (actually, my only suit) at 8:43 the next morning. I had to wait for the first person to open the office, and after I was let in, I was directed to a seat where I was to wait. And so I waited. And waited some more. And when I was done with that, I waited more. Each passing minutes made me more uncomfortable; my only company was a pretty secretary who was working at her computer. She smiled at me as I shifted in my seat and sighed, and she got a thin-lipped smile from me. Just as I was about to give up and leave, the door to my right burst open, causing me to jump to my feet. Into the room strode a man, who strode purposefully to stand directly in front of me,

“Mr. Stephens?” He asked.
“Yes” I responded slowly.
“Follow me,” He ordered.

I slowly collected my thoughts as I followed the man through a hallway to a small office. I had no idea who he was, and had no idea why I was there. I looked around the office for clues as I walked in. The office was unimpressive, to say the least. Stacks of paper covered every flat surface, even stacked on the floor in some places. The desk, of which I could barely see anything, was four rusting metal legs with a slab of plywood on top. The computer monitor on the desk was dirty, but managed to give more light to the room than the flickering florescent bulbs on the ceiling. The man took the chair behind the desk and offered me a chair on the other side. I slowly sank into the folding metal chair, looking around to find the camera that was surely filming my every move.

“Mr. Stephens, thank you for coming today. My name is Luis Chen…” The man began. My eyes snapped back to him at the mention of his name. Luis Chen was a name that most knew; some thought they knew all about him. He was supposedly a billionaire, one of the most successful businessmen in the country. He was also thought to be very eccentric, perhaps even insane. His nickname was “Loony Louie.” He made no public appearances, and made no effort to dispel the rumors that constantly flew about him.

“Wait, you’re Luis Chen?” I asked. He gave me a harsh glare.
“Yes, I am, and do not interrupt me again.”
“Yes sir,” I apologized.
“Very good. I have had my eye on you for some time, Mr. Stephens. I admired the work you did at the paper during the strike. You did a good job of capturing the costs of the stoppage, both in economic terms and the loss of any goodwill Major League Baseball had.”
“Thank you…” I was struggling to keep up with everything that was going on.
“I want to let you know that, as of yesterday, by agreement of both owners and the player’s union, all of the players in Major League Baseball have had their contracts voided. In addition, the owners have bought out several of the franchises in the league. We are planning to restart Major League Baseball for the 2010 season with 16 teams, as well as a complete realignment.” He looked at me for some sign that I was following him.
“Sir, I apologize, but I do not understand… when did this happen?”
“Officially, it happened yesterday, but it has been in the works for some time”
“I didn’t see anything on the news about it”
“You, of all people, should know about the amount of coverage that professional baseball has received in the news media recently”
“Point taken sir,” I was finally beginning to feel like I had some grasp on the situation.
“I will also have you know that I am now officially the owner of the Angels franchise, and you’ll be glad to know we’re back to calling the team the ‘Anaheim Angels.’” I smiled as I remembered the outrage at calling the strange name the team had borne for a few years before the strike. I also thought about pointing out the humor in keeping the Los Angeles team name; it made sense to me to have a team with a geographically confused name owned by a man with an ethnically confused name. I decided that pointing this out would be a bad idea. Instead, I decided to try to get more information.

“When did you buy the team sir?”
“Yesterday, about two minutes before we called you?” His comment caught me off guard.
“Wait, why did you call me right after buying the team?”
“Because I want you to run it.”
“What?” What little grasp I thought I’d had on the situation was gone.
“I want you to run the team. You have a passion for baseball, something that few in this country have anymore. Your understanding of the financial side of the game was obvious in your writing. You are a fresh face for the cameras, something that will be important as we rebuild the league. In addition, you’re from this area, and you’ve been a fan of the Angels for a long time. I can’t think of anyone better.”
“Sir, I have no experience with running a baseball team…” I protested
“Everyone that had experience with running a team is gone, and so we’re all new at this. That means we can be creative and shape the game into what we want it to be. We’re not even going to have any former players in the league. We’re going to have a complete draft of players. You’ll be building this team, and the entire franchise, from the ground up. What do you say?”

A smile slowly came across my face as I began to contemplate the possibilities that would come from the position he was describing.
“Sir, it would be my pleasure.”
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Stephens.” We stood and shook hands.
My journey of building a baseball team had begun.

[canadiancreed]

NOw that's an intro

[darkcloud4579]

No kidding. A rousing start indeed.

[rallymonkey1982]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

NOw that's an intro

Originally Posted by darkcloud4579

No kidding. A rousing start indeed.

Thanks for the comments guys. Sorry for taking so long, but here comes the next entry!

[rallymonkey1982]

I always used to love drafts. As a fan, there is no part of a sports year that I enjoy more than draft time. The draft is the time for teams to restock their young talent. Draft Day is the day where every team sees the potential for a brighter future wrapped up in a young arm that can throw 100+, a pair of legs that can run fast enough to suck the breath out of even the most experienced observer, or a thunderous bat that can send thousands of fans into absolute delirium or complete and total silence. No matter what the team’s record is, draft day gives the team and its fans a glimpse of the bright future that brings goofy smiles and a distant look to the faces of all but the most cynical of fans.

It pains me to tell you, but running a draft from the other side of the spectrum is a very different experience. The best analogy I can make is to compare it to a bobsled race; if you take too many risks, you can come out of it with a spectacular crash that leaves you with nothing more than the injuries you suffered, a broken sled, and a group of fans staring at you in a state of complete shock, wondering what you were thinking. If you don’t take enough risks, you may be ok, but you won’t impress anyone, and you’ll be quickly passed by the field. However, if you combine risk-taking with prudence, if you know when to go all out and when to ease back, you find yourself in the most exhilarating experience of your life, as you race worthy competitors to the final goal.

In most drafts, the teams involved have the luxury of knowing that, even if they have a horrible day, they still have some comfort in knowing that they have some sort of team assembled. On the day of the Opening Draft, none of us in the new Major League Baseball had that comfort. We were starting, quite literally, with nothing. None of us even had scouts at that point. Instead, we depended on a central database of scouting information that we would use to evaluate players. I took some comfort in knowing that we were all on somewhat of an even playing field. However, that even playing field also meant that any failures were on my head alone.

The draft pool was officially announced to the public two weeks before the Draft was to take place. It was a spectacular event, the league office even splurged by buying plastic covers to put the list of player names in. The lists were distributed to the press by each team at individual press conferences on the same day. I had three whole reporters there to listen to my first painful press conference. Two stopped by on their way to a Los Angeles Galaxy game, and the other lost a bet. At least if I messed up the draft, no one would care enough to write about it.

While the names on the lists that we distributed that day were unknown to almost every one, they were starting to become very familiar to me. The most interesting parts were the stories that each man had. There was David Theoret, the 35 year old from Vancouver, who had given up on his NHL dreams at the age of 32 to start playing independent league baseball, to Fa-hsien Teoh, is the only pitcher in history to win a game in Olympic competition for the Chinese national team. Every man had a story, most had been playing baseball for a majority of their lives with nothing to show for it other than sore elbows, scraped knees, and if they were very lucky, enough money to quit their day job.

Planning for the Draft was a completely nerve-wracking experience. I had never undertaken a project of this size before, and my “staff” consisted of two office assistants who between them had about 40 years on the earth, 250,000 miles on their cars, and about a million pimples. There were times I wondered if I should hit the dirt in order to avoid a pus explosion. Neither of them had never played in or even seen a baseball game before. I quickly learned that they had both never made a pot of coffee before either. If either of them has ever made a decent pot of coffee in their lives, it would be news to me. I took to calling them Frick and Frack.

I tried to get Mr. Chen involved with planning for the draft as I went along, but, in a very brief discussion in his office, he made it very clear that he was not interested in helping.

“Mr. Chen, it’s your money that is funding this team, don’t you want some say in how it’s run?”
“I hired you, that’s the end of my involvement, now go back to work, and don’t close the door, the lights in here went out again.”

I received a bit of bad news at the draft lottery two days before the Draft. We were to pick 15th out of 16 teams. We had a decent chance of having a deep team, as the draft would go in a serpentine fashion, but we would be at a serious disadvantage. We picked last out of the teams in our division, Los Angeles would pick 2nd, after Atlanta. Even before the Draft had begun, the Anaheim franchise was playing catchup with LA. I was determined to not be stuck with the “little brother” image that had plagued the Angels for so many years.

On the day of the draft, I was as nervous as I’d ever been. I did learn one thing though; after three nights with no sleep, you stop caring about fact that your coffee was probably made with whatever cleaning agent was under the sink, and start chugging straight from the pot. I also learned that I start talking out loud to myself after 27.5 hours of no sleep or nine cups of coffee, whichever comes first.

For those of you who were fans of the previous incarnation of Major League Baseball, you know that the draft was held as a conference call all the way to the end. This was one issue we were able to upgrade right away; we conducted our draft on the internet. I don’t mean to say it was broadcast, I just mean we upgraded to pointing and clicking. The only differences between our draft and a fantasy football draft were; we didn’t have a pre-filled list of players, and we didn’t have loud-mouthed ‘experts’ to tell us who the best players were. The good news was that our fans wouldn’t be convinced that we had messed it all up from the beginning. The bad news was that no one cared enough to find out if we had messed it up at all.

I won’t bore you with the details of who went where in the Draft, all of that information is ancient history at this point, and readily available in books or other information sources. A few details I found interesting enough to write down in my notebook after the draft ended:
- We waited seven rounds to pick a starting pitcher, I blame the coffee
- I think Frick makes better coffee than Frack
-The Yankees have the highest payroll in the league, some things never change
- Carl Lane was the 15th pick in the draft, but is one of only six players to break the million dollar mark in salary.
- I wonder if we consistently have football scores, people will be fooled and come to the games
- After thinking about it, I think Frick just uses better quality bleach to make the coffee
- The scouts are ranking Juan Duran as the #3 prospect in baseball; I’d feel better if he’d shaved at least once
- Our oldest player is catcher Ernesto Martinez, maybe he’ll be able to pitch for us
- Is it a bad sign that the coffee I’ve drunk is trying to get back into the pot by going through my belly button?

I don’t remember anything else from that day. I woke up the next morning when Frack called me to let me know that his car wouldn’t turn on, so he would be late into work. I told him his car had probably caught a whiff of his coffee and passed out.

Such was the glamorous beginning of the second coming of Major League Baseball.