Happy Birthday, PFBL Commish!

Have a great day, Bro!

Here's to 2013 and its PFBL champion!

Last Saturday, a champion was crowned:



Congrats again to Matt!  Sixty percent of the PFBL attended the trophy ceremony:

Royals fans crawling out of the woodwork?

UPDATE: video!

The Royals have been playing well, which means the K has been full of fans, including this one:

Catch the full story and

Most Valuable Mom

April 9^th has been synonymous with baseball around my house.  It usually finds our family at a Rockies game, in many cases the home opener.  Being my mother’s birthday, April 9^th holds even greater significance, as mom took a leading role supporting and nurturing our collective love of baseball.

When I played the game, I played it hard – always giving 100%, and sometimes toeing the lines of legality.  I was first ejected from a game in 8^th grade for colliding with the catcher at home plate.  Right or wrong, mom was always there to support me and encouraged me to play the game as it was meant to be.

This particular memory of my mother, however, finds me at my most apprehensive spot on the baseball field – in the stands, seated next to her, watching my brother pitch (I was always a nervous wreck whenever he pitched).  

With men on base, Jeff raced to cover home plate on a passed ball.  He received the ball from the backstop, applied the tag, and absorbed a colliding blow from the runner attempting to score.  Jeff came away shaken, favoring his wrist, and the runner was called out, but not ejected. 

Mom went ballistic.

She stormed out of the stands to the backstop berating the umpire – demanding that he eject the runner.  Having seen me ejected for similar offenses, she sought justice now that her other son was on the receiving end, and she was not going to stop until she got it. After several attempts to appease my mother, the umpire realized that she would not relent, and finally gave mom the old heave-ho.  She would wait out the rest of the game from the parking lot, and in years to come I would tell others with a small glow of pride that of all of my family members to never get ejected from a baseball game, my mother is not one of them.

Mom’s support for our baseball efforts never waivered.  Whether playing, or coaching, she was always there to support us.  And now that her son’s playing days are over, she still supports our baseball efforts, taking an active role in readership and commenting on this blog, and staying up to date with our Fantasy League and Major League Baseball in general (as always).

Thanks, mom, for all of your support throughout the years.  You have been an integral cog in our collective baseball consciousness.  Even more, nearly ¼ of this league would not exist without you.  So thank you.

And Happy Birthday!

Love blooms in the Spring

My first contribution to Out Standing in the Field was intended to balance out some of the Rockies love fest, but the date (tomorrow specifically) changed my focus to another love fest or two. You see, tomorrow (April 8th) is my lovely wife's birthday and my love for her has led me to post about her love for Alex Gordon. You know the one; he of the striking smile, boyish good looks, sweet swing, and high expectations of many Royals fans. I guess Alex is something of a 'pretty' boy; I know my wife thinks so anyway. What hasn't been pretty for Alex is his transition from 2nd overall pick in the 2005 draft to big league mainstay.

Alex garnered a ton of attention his Junior year at the hated University of Nebraska, sweeping the collegiate baseball awards. According to Wikipedia, he won the Dick Howser Trophy, Golden Spikes Award, the Brooks Wallace Award and the ABCA Rawlings Player of the Year. He was an ESPY Award Finalist for the best Male College Athlete and earned 1st team All-American honors for the 2nd straight season. Talk about a can't miss draft prospect.

Most baseball fans can attest to the fact that Kansas City IS a baseball town without much hope (lately) for a REAL baseball team. Whether right or wrong, we poor, baseball starved, Royals fans placed super high expectations on Alex. He, along with Billy Butler, were to be the core of our future return to good baseball. Not only was 2007 the arrival of Alex, but the purse strings were loosened to the tune of $67 million. Maybe the tides were changing and KC would return to the promised land. Alex mustered a respectable (for a rookie) .247 BA and 15 HR and showed real promise. The expectations only increased when the Royals posted a great 69-93 record.

WHAT!?! 69-93 is a great record!?! Only for a Royals fan, who had suffered through 3 straight 100 loss seasons.

Alex posted similar numbers his sophomore year (.260/16), but 2009 brought an injury plague and Alex only played 49 games in the bigs. 2010 wasn't much better as Alex started the season on the DL and was later demoted to Triple AAA. Through it all, Heather has remained true.

2011 finds the second time that Alex has been rostered on my fantasy baseball team after the draft. Is it my love for her that makes me draft him, or the dopey hope that he finally lives up to his promise. I can say that Gordon brought me a nice piece in trade (Ethier) from another dopey hoped owner and the ire of my wife the first time around. Here's to the hope that his 6 extra-base hits in the first 6 games lead to a full season of them.

If that happens, my budding Spring-time love may bloom to full blown, Heather level, love fest.

Draft Recap - 3/19/11

The annual Percell Fantasy Baseball Draft was held last Saturday, March 19, 2011.  The festivities kicked off at 10 am CDT, although owners were busy far earlier (some way earlier!) planning their draft strategies.

Google Images

Cole Hamels: PFBL top pick in 2011

In a surprise move, Matt Percell selected Cole Hamels #1 overall, but with each returning team retaining 3 players from 2010, names like Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, and Roy Halladay were already off the board.

The rest of the first round went rather predictably: M Cabrerra, Pujols (keeper), R Cano, Cliff Lee, A Gonzalez, U Jimenez, R Howard, and M Texiera rounded out the opening picks.  2009 champ Matt McAlexander, with a squad newly renamed One Bad Pitch, jumped right back into the action to select T Lincecum at the top of round two.

All in all it was an excellent draft, although one owner, Nate Percell, suddenly opted out of the live draft at the zero hour - some excuse about in-laws coming into town.  However, it was widely rumored that Nate fabricated that excuse, believing the Yahoo Auto Draft mechanism might do a better job than he could.  With Record 6 yielding players like Albert Pujols, David Wright, Ian Kinsler, Ichiro Suzuki, and Matt Latos, he might prove to have been correct.  This pseudo-intentional auto-draft move subsequently threw a corkscrew into some owners' draft plans, who were counting on Nate to burn good draft picks with undesirable players.

Notheless, all rosters sit squarely at 22 with Opening Day looming, and this Points-only Fantasy League, starved for baseball, is licking its collective chops.

Welcome back baseball!
Oh how we have missed you!

Jay
The Commish