The Baseball Weekend

For years I have participated in friendly sports pools - mostly hockey and baseball. Many many years ago, I started playing rotisserie baseball (now more commonly called fantasy baseball). I will not use this space to explain it. Last year, I was lucky enough to be invited to take over a franchise in a 16 team Diamond Mind Baseball League. Each team has a 50-man (can use gender specific language here (for now)) major league roster and a 50-man minor league roster. Our teams play actual simulated baseball games against each other in the simulations of big league parks. It is a lot of fun. Each year the owners get together to prepare for the upcoming season. The amateur draft is the highlight. With 800 players already under the contract, the usual information about who are the best minor league players is almost entirely useless. Of a typical Top 100 list - almost all of the players will be previously owned!

So when you go prospecting in this league - you are going deep. Because of a poor record and lucky bounce in the draft lottery - I selected first. I took a 17 year old Venezuelan shortstop! With my second round pick I took the top-rated high school junior!
And with my last pick I took a 16 year old Cuban phenom. My son attended the draft with me and I had to explain to him how the Cuban kid may never be able to help us because of the rules restricting Cuban nationals!

It will be alot of fun over the next five to ten years to see if anything comes of any of them - for the record - the names are Elvis Andrus, Robert Stock and Dayan Viciedo - unless you are the keenest of mionr league baseball fans I think it is safe to say - you heard it here first!