MetroWest ABL 2006 Grapevine

March 13, 2006
We held our first annual tryout/draft today. We held this one at the Velocity Sports facility in Sudbury.

Here's my understanding of what happened at the draft on Sunday. We had 15 players show up and 11 were drafted. The drafts were:

Brewers:	Mike MacLean, Cort Montross, Jack Vanasse
Yankees:	Jim Gillon
Mariners:	Tom McCabe, Dana Waterhouse
Red Sox:	Mike Donfrancesco
Cardinals:	Andrew Calkins
Braves:	Manny Menchaca, Kevin Moran
Phillies:	Tim Corning

The Indians, Cubs and Orioles did not make any draft picks.

Thanks to all, especially the non-managers who showed up to help out and make this tryout a positive event for the league. I was very pleased with the way things went (other than the Menchaca issue).

We will need to figure out how to address that if we do another tryout in the future. I had to assume that everyone who showed was interested in playing. The Manny thing is really unacceptable to me and we will need to make sure we do everything possible to try to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.


November 13, 2005
Here are notes from our manager meeting on November 13, 2005.

We discussed the following scheduling options:

• 4/23/06 start date
• Mother's Day and July 2 weekends off (Of course Memorial Day weekend is off too, but there is never a question on that)
• 6/11 Father's Day is a single game instead of a double header
• 8/13 season ends, giving us a makeup weekend and a playoff weekend before Labor Day
• National League teams are home teams for first and third double header weekends

Here are the notes I took.

Larry is moving to CA, Mike Togneri came to the meeting with Larry to represent the Indians. Not sure who will be running the Indians yet for the 2006 season.

Treasurer report, everything is paid off for 2005, there is a $105 balance in the account

All-Star game will be played somewhere around Thursday 6/29

We agreed we would have the same 10 teams again this season

Paul Harrington will merge with the Yankees getting Paul's team into the league! (He's been trying to enter for 2 seasons)

We agreed that we should hold a tryout for the new recruits. We agreed to hold off discussing details of the tryout and draft for the next manager meeting around the time of the Super Bowl. The tryout would probably be in late March.

We discussed the grievance board, that is composed of Rich Schwarz, Mazz and Chris Shea.

We discussed various options for Velocity Sports Managerment sponsorship

• Website ad $800 (pay for website)
• Patches on unis (probably not) $2500 covers balls
• $1500 to cover insurance
• Naming of league (Probably not)
• Bartering
• Sponsor league All-Star game or championships with banners
• Could a portion of sponsorships go towards charity (way down the road, need to build a sponsorship base first)

Action Items:

• All managers need to send $200 to Mazz by 12/15 for insurance.
• All managers were going to send a note out to their teams to see if anyone would be interested in being an event coordinator for the league for things like a game at the Tornadoes, preseason banquet and All-Star game festivities.
• Steve to investigate availability of Ashland High for the 6/29ish all-star game
• I have a action item to send an E-mail to all recruits telling them that they need to respond to me if they are interested in attending a tryout so we can weed down the recruit list.
• I need to contact the insurance company to see if the policy will be in the same neighborhood of cost.
• I need to investigate the bylaw that states there is a 20 minute infield practice before the game.
• I need to speak to Velocity Sports about sponsorship options

View the 2005 Grapevine.
View the 2004 Grapevine.
View the 2003 Grapevine.
View the 2002 Grapevine.
View the 2001 Grapevine.
View the 2000 Grapevine.
View the 1999 Grapevine.

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Last updated: 2/24/2008