Legacy Baseball League - Fictional/Historical

[catamount_kid]

The LBL just entered the offseason and has room for one more GM to take the helm of the Providence Angels. This is a great time to get onboard!

[LBL_Brendan]

Happy President’s Day weekend! Still working our way through the off-season. A great time to join and influence your roster for the 1907 season.

[catamount_kid]

The LBL is all full up! Always happy to hold a wait list if you saunter by this board and you're interested in joining.

[catamount_kid]

The 1907 season is underway with our newly-incorporated AA league and new feeder leagues for both the LBL and the Legacy Negro Baseball League.

Increased salary baselines and a lottery draft were approved under a progressive 1906 Summer Meetings. Keep an eye out for openings and get on that GM waitlist!

[LBL_Brendan]

Franchise Highlight: The Chicago Packers

What the Packers have lacked in on-field success, they have made up for in terms of intimidation. The Packers’ blue-collar fans, employed in Chicago's booming meatpacking industry, frequently attend games wearing blood-stained aprons. Ultimately, the Packers will need a steady hand to redefine roster and to avoid the ire of their dangerous fanbase.

Set against the bustling Polish neighborhood of Buck Town in the Wicker Park District, the Packers of Powers Field play against a noisy and bustling working-class community near the newly-constructed Wicker Park train line.

Hand-selected from the best city meat-packer baseball organization, local politician and banker Horatio Powers bankrolled the formation of the Chicago Packers in 1891 and secured several lucrative contracts with the city to construct a crude and unappealing ballpark amidst the dim and coal-swept brick neighborhood lined with factories and church towers.

The Packers are a tough, mean, and unforgiving lot–just like their diehard fans, who leave work an hour early for home games to line the stadium seats often still adorned in their bloodied aprons and coveralls. This is quite the sight to visiting teams, and generates the sort of intimidating air the Packers pride themselves in producing each home game.

As the legend goes, long before Wicker Park incorporated into the municipality of Chicago, “Buck Town” was so-named for the many goats who would wander the Polish shacks and alleyways. In this tradition, each home game begins with a parade of “The Great Goat of Bucktown,” a goat selected by Mr. Powers each spring to be spared the factory. The goat has it’s own booth near center field, and is indiscriminately named “Bucky.” So, in north Chicago, the Packers and their fans are often affectionately referred to as “Buckies.”

Apply for the GM Position Here!

[LBL_Brendan]

Franchise Highlight: The Pittsburgh Oilers

The Oilers began as an oilman’s tribute to his deceased wife. Since their inception, the Oilers have been among the unluckier franchises in the LBL. The Oilers need a GM ready to fall in love with the tough luck franchise to secure a place at the top of their division.

The playful shrieks of children in the streets rang out through the midsummer air in Titusville. Their shrieks clashed with the morning song of several persistent birds. As soon as the disjointed melody between the children and birds started to die down, it would soon pick back up again. Meanwhile, the bright morning sun took its righteous place in the rich blue sky of Western Pennsylvania.

The Colfax residence was quiet, as usual. After all, it was home to only one inhabitant. Chester Colfax, deep in slumber just a few minutes ago, had finally woke up to start his day. The fragile man lifted himself from his bed and stumbled down into his living room, still groggy and half-asleep. He squinted as he tried to decipher the time on his grandiose grandfather clock, a family heirloom that had endured several generations.

As his vision steadied, Chester sighed. The clock read 10:13 in the morning, much later than Chester would have guessed. He was supposed to be at the oil field by 8 AM.

Despite him running late, Chester moved with no urgency. Tardiness was nothing new to him. In fact, he had made somewhat of a routine out of being late.

After Chester had finally prepared himself to leave, he emerged from his front door into the oppressive summer heat and began his 20 minute walk to work.

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Chester had never been late for work a day in his life up until 1892. His tireless work ethic everyone knew him for also came to a screeching halt right around this time, and it’s no secret as to why. In 1892, Chester’s beloved wife Eunice had tragically passed away from a bout with pneumonia. Ever since that dark time, Chester had been a shell of the man he once was. Chester’s former enthusiasm, loved by all, had been erased. He never learned to cope with his loss and found it impossible to move on.

In fact, one of the reasons it took so long for Chester to leave his house each morning was because he would converse with a framed picture of his beloved Eunice at the start of every day. Part of Chester still believed that Eunice was there as he stared into her frozen eyes wistfully.

Chester’s workers at the Colfax Oil Company never questioned him or attempted to overstep his boundaries. They held for him a great deal of compassion and knew he wasn’t in the right frame of mind.

Chester’s self-imposed responsibility at his job was to play the role of field supervisor. Chester, hampered by his fragility, was no longer a productive team member. He used to be willing to get his hands dirty. He used to be willing to work right alongside all those who had helped to build his fortune. No longer.

In fact, one of the mottos that he lived by was that he would never expect his workers to do something that he was unwilling to do himself.

But those days were long gone. Chester internally resented himself for his departure from the motto, but never did what was necessary to restore his belief in it.

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Little did Chester know that his commute to work on a muggy morning in mid-July would change his life. Lately, Chester had taken notice of a group of young boys who often played in a park that was on his way to work. He was particularly intrigued with what exactly it was that the young boys were doing.

Much to Chester’s delight, the boys were at the park once again. He stopped a moment and observed. One boy threw a ball, another attempted to hit it, and if the ball was in play, the boy who hit the ball would run with glee around the stations that they had set up. Though it was foreign to him for the most part, Chester was filled with a sense of joy. He approached the young men.

“Are you boys playing baseball?”

“Yes we are. It sure is a lot of fun!” The young boy that responded to Chester grinned from ear-to-ear.

The boy’s smile made Chester feel at ease. He continued, “I’ve heard much about this game but have never taken the time to understand it. Would you boys be so kind as to teach an old coot like me how to play baseball?”

The boys were thrilled to let someone else in on their game. They went on to explain to Chester the rules to the best of their ability. In truth, Chester didn’t learn much from what seemed like gibberish that came out of the boy’s mouth. They were young boys, to be fair. But what Chester extracted from that interaction was something he hadn’t felt in years – passion.

Chester was invigorated by the idea of baseball and wanted to involve himself with it in some way. He just wasn’t sure how he’d go about doing it.

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A few months later, Chester settled in to read the November 11th,1894 edition of The Sporting Times. Chester scanned the title of the featured article in disbelief. It read, “Rumor of a New League Sparks Hope.” As he learned, the competition to own a team in this potential new baseball league was fierce – “Several herculean obstacles lay before the feet of many organizations vying for control of a “national” baseball organization—the greatest of which is organizing the funds and vast horde of independent ball clubs across the nation.”

Chester knew he had the necessary financial standing to purchase his own club and did not want this incredible opportunity to slip through the cracks. From that point forward, he committed himself to doing anything it took to establish his own baseball club. Chester submitted an offer for ownership of a team and waited impatiently for a response from the office of the commissioner.

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Chester’s offer was competitive, and therefore it was entertained. As a result, Chester’s next step in starting his baseball journey would be to meet with Legacy Baseball League commissioner Alexander Madigan at his headquarters in Manhattan in order to discuss some of the logistics. After the men had worked through the tedious details, they shook each other’s hands and made it official – Pittsburgh would be home to one of the LBL’s 16 inaugural franchises.

Madigan couldn’t help but ask – “What will you name your new franchise, Mr. Colfax?”

Chester was prepared for this question. “The Oilers, sir.”

It was an apt name considering the decades of work that Chester performed in the oil fields.

In 1895, Chester retired from his role as supervisor at the Colfax Oil Company. He sold ownership of the company to his nephew, Chris. In doing so, Chester was able to invest his full attention toward baseball.

While it’s true that the Oilers have not enjoyed much success since their birth, Chester has made it clear that he hasn’t regretted one minute of his baseball life. After years of despair, it turned out to be the formation of the Legacy Baseball League that rescued Chester from his paralyzing emotional rut.

Most of all, Chester is overjoyed that he finally has something uplifting to share with his beloved Eunice.

Apply for the GM Position Here!

[LBL_Brendan]

Franchise Highlight: The St. Louis Beavers

The Beavers have had a dominant run at the top of the Western League’s Frontier Division for most of the 1900s. Founded by the younger brother of a wealthy St. Louis family, the Beavers’ have played with a chip on their shoulder since their inception. The Beavers need a GM willing to embrace the scrum of the Frontier Division and their owners' sibling rivalry with the cross-town St. Louis Reds while shrewdly planning for the transition to the younger generation of Beavers’ stars.

By the time venture capitalist and team owner Robert Schilling arrived at his recently constructed Riverlands Field the morning of October 19, 1894, the flames had mostly subsided. The large, newly painted grandstand and its buttressing block towers lay charred and crumbled. Firefighters scrambled about, and layers of smoke leapt and danced in the breeze, like silent, stinging taunts. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed to Robert Schilling.

Scorned by his family, Robert set out on his own as an investor and venture capitalist. After older brother Andrew moved considerable family capital into upscale department stores across Midwestern cities, Robert founded a rival chain of department stores, more appealing to the burgeoning middle class in the region, which he named, simply, “Robert’s.” When Saint Louis newspapers heralded Andrew’s purchase of a baseball franchise, to become the Saint Louis Reds in the newly minted Legacy Baseball League, Robert moved quickly to land a team of his own to rival and outlast his brothers’.

The younger brother of the famed Schilling Shipping and Trade Company family, Robert was left from his father’s will after what many in the family described simply as a disagreement concerning morality, horses, and the necessary quality of leather for workmen’s boots. However, whispers over expensive whiskey tell of Robert’s hatred for his favored older brother, Andrew, the heir to the family’s vast assets, as the reason.

Robert secured a parcel of land to build a ball field to the south of the city, overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi River and the winding River Des Peres. He took great care and foresight in the ballpark’s construction, designing the tall block towers himself down to the slightest of details, and hiring, for above normal wages, only local skilled carpenters and craftsmen. He wanted to build a park where the more common of men could watch a ballgame as kings.

The fire turned his dream black and smoldered. When onlookers and firefighters noticed the stoic expression on Robert’s face as he took in the devastation, all became quiet. The sound of a falling tree along the banks of the River Des Peres interrupted the silence. It was soon discovered a beaver had felled the tree. Robert took the moment as a sign to rebuild.

A humbler grandstand was erected during the winter months, and, upon the first game played in the spring of 1895, locals began referring to the team as the Beavers, in recognition of the moment of hope provided by a beaver, the tenacious spirit of their team’s owner, and the hardworking laborers who rebuilt the field and now watch their team as fans.

A sign over the main gate, painted in blocked white letters, reads, “Built by you, for you. Beat the Reds”.

Apply for the GM Position Here!

[LBL_Brendan]

Packers and Beavers claimed.

[LBL_Brendan]

Pittsburgh claimed. Currently full, but still accepting applications for the next vacancy. Please feel free to apply. Thank you, all!

[TXMike]

Not sure which one you'll see first, but I sent my interest there too