Owners' League News

The Guardian Angel Brokers capped a masterful 1996 campaign with the first title in their history. They succeed the Pachos as Owners' League Champions, becoming the third different winner in three years (a good sign, uh?).
The Brokers upset the favored Mikes 4-1 in a wonderful Final Series. For the first time, the title went to a wild-card team .
The toughest challenge to the eventual Champions was actually put together by the Burberries, the East Division winners by a 17-game margin over the Topos: they trailed from a 0-3 deficit in the first round of the playoffs to force the Brokers to the 10th inning of the seventh game (only a solo homer by Derek Jeter with two out solved them). The Mikes were the usual powerhouse in the regular season, topping the league with 117 wins (best ever), and disposed easily of the Candies (winners in the Central Division by just five games over the Pachos), 4-1, before finding themselves on the losing end of the Finals for the second year in a row.

You can see all the statistics of the 1996 DiamondMind Baseball Championship; they are provided, as usual, by courtesy of the Flowers Home Page.

PREVIOUS BULLETINS

12/20/96 The Ghiotto meeting: Candies spend! (with trade rules) 12/23/96 Flowers: The Mob Visited My House! (in Italian) 01/05/97 The Loan Auction 01/19/97 The Trades Deadline

Championship Day brought the league back to the playing field, allowing disgruntled owners to put all the recent troubles aside for one night. Now, with about three months ahead before Draft Day, they will have plenty of opportunities to give the league the shape that best fits their need of a straightforward and funny game.
Perhaps the length of the season, with its continuously-running format, is actually taking away some of the beauty of rivalry. The prevailing opinion is now that competition should be based on information, along with drafting and trading skills, rather than opportunism. Allowing owners to trade players more than three months after the end of the regular season (the DiamondMind Baseball disk isn't usually available before January) throws a lot of external factors in the mix. The best example is a player who's traded to a National League team in the offseason, therefore losing his eligibility for the following year. That player's value on the Owners' League market will suddenly and dramatically drop, and he will remain of any interest only to contending owners. Teams out of contention, with the current format, are encouraged to trade away those players for cash or prospects, and this kind of trade is clearly resting upon external factors.

There's an interesting statistic that perfectly displays the effects of the increasing tendency of "giving up" late in the season: in 1995, the team with the best record (Candies, 105-57) won 37 games more than the losingest team (Fatties, 68-94). Last year, in the strike-shortened season, the Mikes (106-38) won 57 games more than the Burberries (49-95), and we're not considering the 35 games won in the whole season by the Sniffers, as they were an expansion team, and you could concede a little to that. But still, this year, the spread between the best record (Mikes, 117-45) and the worst (Sniffers, 43-119 - man, weren't they lousy!) summed up to 64 wins. SIXTY-FOUR! Can you imagine a real-life team losing 119 games? You'd rather be a smuggler than a vendor in their home park...
Well, this is quite a trend, and most owners seem to be willing to take care of it. Chances are a future assembly will specifically address this problem by making the trade deadline coincide with the end of the regular season. Are some owners already planning something new and exciting to do in the three-month vacuum? You bet.

Other issues on the table: expanding the rosters to minor league players, who could be freezed at the end of the season if they still possess rookie status, and expanding the postseason field to six teams, to increase competition.
Yes, we have our Bud Seligs and Jerry Reinsdorfs too...

The Promised Land Journey plans received a major blow on January, 29th, when we tried to book tickets for late-May Toronto and Boston games, but were only offered bad seats from the respective teams' booking offices. We still hope to get good seats with other contacts (ticket brokers, local fans, etc.), but our chances seem to be quite slim as of now.

Check the League's Coming Events . Stay in touch!

For a complete recap of all the year's trades, see the Trades List Page, which appears thanks to the Flowers' archive site.