I have some kind of special and dubious "fame" for going out of my way to - ... well, um, no, I'm crazy, that's the only explanation.
Unfortunately no online shop carries the proper brown for T-shirts and the logo looks crap on black, so it's gonna be white. EUR 25 down the drain, yay!
As you mentioned football management games - I actually had a lot of success with those in my time, so I can not be THAT bad, most of the time with Werder Bremen.
Path to success in football management games:
Step 1: sign Cristiano Ronaldo
Step 2: SUCCESS!!
And before I make myself any more ridiculous, here come the 'Coons:
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Our manager, Jim Alexander, retired at age 64. He had hovered around long enough to actually witness a winning team. Our bench coach and a few coaches in the minors also left the team due to expiring contracts.
So, one priority was signing an experienced manager, and there were some very nice options available, including a World Series winner and Manager of the Year recipient, and another Manager of the Year recipient without championship laurels.
More good news: to reproduce success, the budget grew quite a bit, to $10,285,000 (19th of 24). This is about $1M more than last year. This should go some way to keep us safely inside the budget this season. Next year was different book, though, although the estimate was $11.3M so far.
But first things first. There were six players to make decisions for.
Three were arbitration eligible: MR Carlos Moran, C Spencer Dicks, and 3B Cameron Green. Although I was extremely unhappy with Moran, I would make an offer. The estimate was $99k, and we would submit that. The estimate for Dicks, who improved his play tremendously last year, was $104k, but that appeared very low to me. I submitted $110k.
Cameron Green was difficult. He had suffered through a horrible season, getting only 245 AB due to performing abysmally bad during the first four months of the season. His estimate was $189k, which seemed way too high to me. I offered $175k, but we would try to negotiate a contract beforehand.
Then there were three free agents. Two were outfielders: Jason Short and Chris Smith. Short had batted .200 for his $163k salary, and Smith had been great in our run down the stretch, but refused a reasonable contract offer from us. He was 36, no way we’d pay him $1.5M over three years for batting .270 with zero home runs.
Both were type B free agents, and both got an offer to go to arbitration.
Then there was Burton Taylor, who had been signed as situational lefty prior to last season. He performed well, then got hurt. He was not compensation eligible, but I would try to negotiate a contract, although we had brought on David Jones. Jones could also pitch in long relief in case of injury to a starter, if needed. But Taylor had thrived in the situational lefty role and had posted his best numbers in 1983.
There was a seventh man for whom to decide was easy. We had made a 2-yr, $250k deal with Winston Thompson before the ’83 season, with the second season a team option. No question, we would execute that option.
We sent out a couple of offers to renowned guys to fill the manager and coach jobs that were open, and promoted our longtime AA and AAA manager Jesse Chandler to become our bench coach in his last contract year. AA manager Silas Barnett was promoted to AAA. Both sport overall winning records in our organization, although the last year yielded no results to brag about.
Because I am such a good negotiator, the Raccoons were able to sign Chad Klein as their new manager rather quickly, on October 24. He is 45 and receives a 4-yr, $800k (total) contract. He is legendary when it comes to teaching both hitting and pitching, excellent in handling players, and good in teaching fielding. He is the 1980 Manager of the Year when with the Bayhawks. A great guy to have for sure!
We also reached an agreement with Burton Taylor before the end of October, removing him from the free agent list. Taylor, 29, signed a 3-yr, $400k contract, the last year a team option. This comes rather cheap for us, since he’s a good guy if used properly.
October 3 – RIC 1B Ramon Diaz (.347) and TIJ OF Jim Wood (.339) win the batting titles in their respective leagues.
October 23 – The Washington Capitals, the only team to never win the FL East, are sold to Orlando Gonzales by Juan Montano. Gonzales is described as generous, but demanding.
October 29 – The Condors acquire outfielder Felipe Hernandez, 28, with 1,084 career hits and 94 career home runs, from the Wolves in exchange for reliever Carlos Martinez, who is also 28 and has a lifetime 3.80 ERA. Tijuana also receives a minor leaguer, so this looks like a skewed trade to me.
Odd notes:
Mark Dawson is the all-time home run leader of the ABL now! His 27th last season squeezed him past Michinaga Yamada, who was 142 to Dawson’s 143. Yes, the ABL is a league with little power… Former Raccoon Ben Simon and current Raccoon Ramón Borjón are t-5th with 120 each, former Raccoon Ralph Nixon is t-12th with 92, and Daniel Hall is 22nd with 82 dingers.
Ed Sullivan has retired. He was a mainstay on our infield from 1977 to 1979. He was traded to Tijuana, and later to Sioux Falls. In 982 career games he had 910 hits, 74 HR, 437 RBI, and batted .268. He was an All Star in 1981.
Matt Huber also retired. We signed him as starting pitcher for the 1977 season (after the automatic inaugural draft), but he is most notable as the player we sent to Denver to get Chris Powell, together with Laurentij Mlotkovsky. Rusty Frazier also joined the Raccoons organization back then. With the exception of Powell all of them are retired now. Huber pitched only in 112 games (19 starts) in the majors. He went 7-13 with a 6.39 ERA.