[TLDR: I’m asking to change my vote to end the draft from no to yes]
First, let me say that I hope nobody took my comment personally. I do believe we are on our second iteration of the $70 million league, we've had what feels like a rule change in this one, and now calls to end this altogether. It does feel to me like complaints are made about something and they get changed to something that is more liked or more favorable. If there is a legitimate logistical problem with a theme then that needs to be addressed. Perhaps that has been the case in this year's WISC?
I’m a huge baseball and basketball fan. Been that way since I was a kid. I remember when my Mom got to see the 83 76ers play. Her and I talked about this just last night and she has no memory of even going (she’s not a big sports fan, lol). She couldn’t believe that I could remember her going and she couldn’t, but we’re talking about the 83 Sixers! One of the NBA’s great teams of all time. I was 5 when she went to the game. I’ve been obsessed with Sixers as long as I can remember.
One of my first memories is watching the Phillies winning the WS (I was 3.5!). We didn’t make it to the WS games, but my Dad would take me to lots of Phillies games as a kid. He also coached baseball and softball in my hometown for over 30 years. Going to games with my Dad as a kid was all of the joy that baseball is between a Father and Son. It was also a study of the game. Like a live-action lesson on all of the little things that major leaguers do without even thinking about them; don’t move your head when you swing, lead with the hips not your hands, use two hands to catch a fly ball (this was often ignored at the ML level, lol) hustle out every play, run on and off the field, be patient at the plate, and those were the same things that he was teaching me to do on the practice diamond. He would work a long day as a laborer and take his tired arms and legs to the field and throw my Sister and I bucket after bucket of BP balls. From spring training to the winter meetings we lived the game as kids (I'm still heart-broken by that Sandberg trade, ugh).
We’re all just baseball fans here with our stories of why we love the game. The sim, for me, is like a data field of dreams that we get to play out over and over. The sim also makes us all baseball historians in some way. Tell me you don’t know an embarrassing amount about baseball history, lol. In addition to being a study of the history of the game by brining baseball’s storied past to life, the sim is also a modern way to connect with the game. The rise of advanced stats in MLB is changing the way teams build their clubs and it’s not all that different than what we are playing around with here.
My Dad passed away last Christmas. It was a hard time for me. He was also a huge Eagles fan and had season tickets for years when I was a kid. Watching that game without him was hard. Nothing that seemed like it should be joyful was for me. I was depressed and it impacted all of my life. My wife left me at the end of June. Things got worse as far as my depression goes. In the midst of all of that I recalled that I entered this championship. I was going to back out because I couldn’t imagine setting aside time in my life to play a game given all of the stuff I had going on. I didn’t want to mess things up for the tournament so I stuck it out. I decided just to lean on a formula for building teams that I’ve developed by playing this game over the years. I first joined WIS back in 2002. I won WS with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 man rotations, with the super long reliever, and 4 man rotations with a 3A/3B (before that was a setting), so I had confidence that I could make the finals without putting much time into the teams I was building. I took 10 years off from the baseball sim after the whole GuamGekkos and Bob Milaki things. I didn’t have a problem beating guamgekkos (he beat me more, but he was good) and I couldn’t understand why people were so upset. It felt like a great owner was being run off of the site just for being really good. That and then the whole Bob Milaki thing just stopped making the sim feel like baseball to me. The Milaki strategy made it feel more like if a baseball team ran a secret robot out to the mound in a WS and it blasted 120mph fastballs by everyone every-other-game, so it felt un-fun and I just stopped. I think that was right around the time that the WISC first started. I recall not really thinking that it was going to get off the ground and I was kind of checked out of the sim anyway so I didn’t enter.
I came back to WIS a couple of years ago to build basketball teams (hence the new name "bothways") during the Sixers tank. Thanks to NBA league pass I’ve watched every sixers game for the last 6 years, but those were some tough teams to watch so I think I needed a distraction. Hinkie was using advanced stats to identify players, and watching my team rebuild gave me an itch to build some hoops teams too. I built a few but wanted to kick the tires on a baseball team or two as well. It wasn’t long before I was hooked again. To my pleasant surprise the WISC was still alive and well and now had a rich history of great owners winning year after year for a decade!
I didn’t sign up last year, but when it rolled around this year I took the bait and jumped in. Even though my head wasn’t in it I leaned on past experience and slapped together some 1st draft teams at the last-minute each deadline and just ran with them as I really couldn’t focus on building teams at all. I was still confident that i’d make the finals.
This second round has been a lot of fun. More fun than the first round. I’ve enjoyed building these teams and bantering back and forth with all of you great owners. It’s been nice to do something that I’m having this much fun with.
I may have been the last person in but I’m still playing to win, and great as all of you are, I believe I can still beat you.
If some of you don’t want to do this draft because it’s not fun for you then let’s scrap it. It was fun for me (and I’ve invested an amount of time I’m not proud of in this draft), so I couldn’t imagine just saying "let’s scrap it". I may even be about to lose points, but it didn’t bother me at all because I’m having fun with it. That said, this is a game and we should be able to find a theme that everyone can have fun with.
I believe any of us can still win this round, and whether I win or get my butt kicked I want it to be against a bunch of owners who are fully invested and having fun too. I don’t care what league you change this to. I’m going to play to win it, and have fun along the way. I hope y’all do the same.
I’m asking to change my vote to end the draft from “no” to “yes”, so we can have everyone feel good about this second round.