Every year the draft brings some interesting things and this year was no exception. With three owners living out of state and an early Easter this year, coordinating schedules was a challenge. The Ruffins were unable to make it in to town, which sucked. Every year you can always count on Dave’s humor to keep the draft moving along. But whenever a door closes a window opens, as they say and our window was former Copperfield owner, David Mahlan. David had been the heart and soul of the league for 27 years before retiring back in 2010. He has been sorely missed and we have tried everything to get him back. Well it finally worked. David agreed to be the proxy for David’s Ruffins. Patched in with a Bluetooth headset and cellphone, David was the voice for the Ruffins and a welcome sight for the CFCL.
I just committed the biggest sin (or one of them) in journalism. I buried the lead. The lead of the blog should be - - - THE CFCL TURNS 30 THIS YEAR! Thirty years ago David approached me about a little green book he found in the sports section of the book store and the rest is history. Actually the rest and the history is being presented on a separate blog. For those of you so inclined, I invite you to visit http://cfclrebelcopperfield.blogspot.com/ where you will be able to read daily entries pertaining to the history of the CFCL. Our goal is to provide an update daily with historical knowledge about the league, trivia, video clips and Q&A from former and current owners.
Back to this year’s draft. We had some interesting things take place. The owner of The Danger had an unavoidable conflict arise and couldn’t attend, so he sent his brother to draft for him. So for the first time in CFCL we had two proxies sitting in.
The Ruffins invoked the Ruffin Privilege at 12:55pm and brought up Troy Tulowitzki and we were off to the races.
A few hours into the draft, for the second time ever, we had an owner depart before the draft ended. Dan, the proxy for The Danger, received word that he had feverish children at home. Doing the only thing he could, he left to take care of his family. But not before he nominated Carlos Marmol for bidding a .05. I will grant you this is a Cub Fans League (that’s with CFCL stands for – Cub Fan Club League), but nobody took the bait. Nine owners passed quickly and Marmol took his seat in the Danger bullpen.
**If my memory is right about this one, the only other time an owner left the draft before it was over was in 2002 when the Resevoir Dogs had to leave, also due to an ill child.**
Within six nominations of each other, Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay were brought up for bidding. The strange thing this year about that is that Halladay was brought up at the end of Round 4 and Lincecum in the middle of Round 5. Normally they would have gone early in Round 1. The other crazy thing is that Halladay went for .11 and Lincecum for .10. Combined .21. The last time they were available at the draft Halladay was taken at .37 (DoorMatts – 2010) and Lincecum went for .37 as well (Twin Killers – 2012). How quickly baseball changes. A combined .74 down to a combined .21. Rafael Soriano basically went for the same price (.20) as those two combined.
When the Danger Proxy left, the Danger still needed four active players and an entire reserve list of seventeen. In what may actually have been a first, the Danger completed their roster three days after the draft ended. In the short run they don’t seem to be too damaged as they are entrenched in sixth. But the Reserve List usually shows its strength or weakness in the dog days of the season, so we’ll see what staying power the Danger have in the long run.
The highest player salary this year was Joey Votto (.49 to the Clowns) [Honorable Mention to Carlos Gonzalez who went for .48 to the Danger). Most expensive pitcher was Cliff Lee (.41 to the Beatniks). The Twin Killers picked up the first penny player, Donovan Solana, in the second round.
And five hours and five minutes after the Auction Draft began, the Kenndoza Line took Daniel Descalso to complete the draft.
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