April 1, 2004
We have changed the person who assigns umpires this season. In the past, Tom Hastings has served
this role. For 2004, Pete Szafir will be assigning umpires. We welcome Pete aboard!
February 8, 2004
Here are notes from our manager meeting on February 8th, 2004.
We welcomed Steve Saraceno to his new post as manager of the Red Sox. Thanks to Steve for helping Rob
Scherer out with the Sox. Also thanks to Tom Galvani for giving Steve permission to move on. Gestures
such as that have helped this league get to the point it's at now and obviously we continue to do the
things needed to keep the league great!
We gave Paul Valentino some tokens of our appreciation for his incredible dedication to our league
over it's first 10 years. We wouldn't be where we are today without Paul, we owe him a great deal
of gratitude. Thanks also to Trey Garvin for making it to the meeting despite his broken ankle to
present Paul with one of the gifts. Thanks to Jim Callaghan and Lionel Hamilton for working to
bring the gifts to fruition.
We decided to not add the new team from Watertown (Paul Harrington, manager), so we will remain at
10 teams.
We also decided not to start any partnership with the Worcester league other than having scrimmages
if teams would like to do that. We will not have a merged All-star game or playoffs or regular
season games with the Worcester league.
We discussed board positions. Board positions have 2 year terms. The board members are:
Rich Schwarz, president
Rick Huckins, head of umps and assigning new recruits
John Masiello, treasurer
Lionel Hamilton, field organizer - he's looking into a home field for the league in September and
maybe for the all star game
We decided one of these positions was non-voting, but I can't remember which one, was it the
treasurer post that was non-voting?
We went through various scheduling options and potential changes. We decided to keep the same
master schedule as last year which has 3 regular season holidays (Mother's Day, Memorial Day,
Independence Day) and 4 double headers. We decided not to shift any double header weekends. The
2004 schedule has been posted to the League website, it starts on 4/25 and ends on 8/15. We'll
have 8/22 for a rainout weekend if needed and the playoffs start on 8/29 with 9/6 off for Labor Day.
Our Double headers will be on 5/23, 6/6, 6/20 and 8/8.
We briefly discussed making 3 rules changes:
Removing ban on intentional walks
remove ban on pitchouts
pitchers not having to bat
All 3 rule changes were voted against and will not change for 2004
We also decided to leave the 9 inning playoff double headers as is, managers from both teams can
agree to shorten the games if they wish, but by rule the games should be 9 innings each.
We did decide to remove the rule that stated you could not have a player play on your team for the
first time in a season after 8/1. With this rule removal, we are saying that you can allow anyone
to play for you for any game during the entire regular season, we're using an open roster for the
entire regular year. It's only in playoffs that we will restrict the rosters.
We decided not to change anything about our current recruit process. Recruits typically come through
the website and Rick Huckins calls them and tries to assign them to the team with the best fit.
We decided against splitting the league into two age brackets. We need to grow by at least 4 teams to
consider such a split.
I need to investigate the playoff positioning tie breaker rules. The website lists the tie
breaking procedure as:
Head to head record
Best record within division
Most runs scored
Coin flip
Some folks believe that number 3 should be most runs scored in the games played against each other.
I'll let you know if there is a change there. We also don't document how to break a three way tie,
hopefully that never happens.
We spoke about doing something to improve the playoff roster sheet process, including eliminating it.
In the end we decided to leave it as is, but hoping the managers will do a better job of submitting
and approving the roster sheets on time. Here are the guidelines:
1 - Home team manager sends an E-mail to me at rschwarz@netexposure.net and CCs the visiting manager
within 4 days of the game
2 - The E-mail includes the players for both teams, this is the first name (at least initial),
full last name and uniform
3 - Visiting manager must respond to me and the home team manager approving the submitted rosters
before the following Sunday.
We discussed Stan's proposals from the previous season. We all agreed they were good ideas, but we
need to have someone take ownership of these to make them happen. The preseason banquet and hall of
fame proposals could be great for the league if we get someone willing to work on them. We did talk
about adding a hall of fame link on the website if we make that proposal happen. We could list each
hall of fame member with a photo and description of accomplishments.
We voted to move the All-Star game from the last weekend of the season to a day close to July 4th
weekend, preferably a weeknight the week before 7/4 or on the 7/4 Sunday on years it does not fall
on a weekend. We did not schedule the All-Star game for the 2004 season, we will need to follow
through on that.
We also spoke about the league dues for 2004. Here are the estimates at the charges for 2004
(these numbers will be updated as soon as all the information is in:
$44 per case of balls (Braves 6, Brewers 2, Cardinals 6, Cubs 6, Phillies 3, Indians 6, Mariners 6,
Orioles 5, Red Sox 5, Yankees 4)
$180 for insurance
$50 webmaster
$30 web hosting
$10 domain name extension (our domain name was expiring on March 21, 2004 - I extended this
for 5 years for $100 last week)
$30 winner share
$35 awards
$20 umpire stipend
This works out to $355 per team plus $44 per case of balls ordered.