Breaking New Ground

When you have children you never know when that awesome comment or conversation is going to happen, you just know that it will.

Tonight such a time occurred.  With my oldest (18) and youngest (14) daughters and son (7) hanging out for dinner, the subject magically turned to baseball.  Katelyn (18) reaffirmed her love and admiration for Cubs phee-nom, Kris Bryant.  She readily admits that he became her object of affection because he's so adorable, "but hey" Katelyn says "it turns out he's an awesome player as well!  I know how to pick 'em."

For years she said I should have Alfonso Soriano on my fantasy team.  With Soriano it wasn't because he was good looking, just because "he's awesome" according to Katelyn.  Now with Bryant she chastised me for not having him on my team.  The owners in my league can tell you that I did everything I could to get Bryant right after he was drafted by the Cubs including telegraphing my moves to force another owner to snag Bryant two slots ahead of me.

"I could probably win your league," Katelyn stated confidently.  "All I need are pictures of all the players.  I would pick all the good looking ones."

I kind of laughed as thoughts rolled around my head.  "Have you ever won the league?" she asked.  I said it had been a while (almost 20 years).  Then I said 95% joking, 4% serious, 1% hoping "I recently pissed off an owner and they decided to resign.  So we have an opening. . . "

She declined, saying she didn't want to be the only girl in the league.  I pointed out she would be the FIRST girl in the league.  But that didn't stop the four of us from brainstorming and spit balling ideas for her team. 

We started with the fact that she would be a pioneer and Kristi (14) threw out a reference to Neil Armstrong.  Then Katelyn said "Amelia Earhart" and I came up with her team's tagline - "A female pioneer who loses her way and is never heard from again."  I can only assume using a drafting strategy based on the good looks of a player would destine her team to the cellar.

Well, her team needs a name.  Usually the CFCL (Cubs Fan Club League) encourages its owners to build a team name in connection to the owners name.  But Katelyn nailed the name in five seconds.

"The Air-Hearts**", she said, specifically spelling the second part of the name h-e-a-r-t-s.  "The 'hearts' go out to the good looking guys on the team."

**  Yes, Amelia's last name was Earhart.  But if we spelled the team name The Ear-Hearts, obviously people will be thinking 'hearing' and mispronounce the team name. We're exercising creative license here people.**

And literally seconds after the name was identified and my note taking began, Katelyn came up with the team logo.  I can't create it in a word document so I will describe it.  It's a baseball in the shape of a heart with the red baseball stitches in front of each loop of the heart and wings extend out to the side from the upper parts of the heart.  A shout out to Amelia flying (wings), the heart for the good looking guys on the team and baseball stitches for . . . well you understand.

A legitimate team name, logo and approach all created in less than 10 minutes.  Let me tell you.  As a father who loves his children, loves baseball and loves fantasy baseball this was . . . Eden, Nirvana, Shangri-La all rolled into one.

Think about it, the team could be located on Howland Island, the island Amelia Earhart was trying to reach when she lost contact with the Navy.  Sure the Air-Hearts would travel more than the Seattle Mariners, but think about the home field advantage.  Teams coming in suffering from severe jet lag, playing in oppressive heat. The only fans attending would be Air-Heart fans, what fan would travel to see their team play only three games at a time on Howland Island?

As an owner, while she could learn it eventually, Katelyn would have to figure out how to coordinate our salary cap with the physical appearance of her team.

This is a pipedream as she has bigger fish to fry.  After conquering high school by finishing in the top 7% of her class (already more qualified to run a team than I am) she's off to the University of Iowa in four weeks to make an impact in the Health Sciences field.  It's the right decision . . . .but this would be totally cool.