CL Notes

The funny thing is ...

It was named the Continuous League, but it stopped very soon after it's inception, lasting fewer seasons than the USFL. It was an elitist league that no one should care about today, mainly because it's heart was nothing like the heart of the SL. Yet, to this day, my thoughts occasionally turn to this 2-season league and wonder where it would be today had it survived.

It was hatched in the Spring of 1996 as some kind of answer to the ABC leagues of 1995. CL founding members Ken, Chris, Greg and myself were tired of the scheduling difficulties of the past year in the SL and the difficulties in filling out a roster of owners each year. And that was before Tommy and Dan's absentee 1996 SL seasons. As it was believed the SL would fracture further as people moved away and moved forward from carparking at Twin Orchard, the founders decided this would satisfy our BBW joneses. I don't recall whose mind the idea sprung from, but the model based on drafting for the long haul was very appealing to us all, especially after 4 SLs had passed. I'm very sure it was not my idea, but upon hearing of the idea, I welcomed the idea and the different league model.

Of course, though we had that different model, the draft would be done knowing the player ratings from the previous season. And as we conducted the initial draft a month into the '96 MLB season, we were clued into a little of what the '97 CL might look like, as names like ARod and Jeter emerged, though it may have had a poor affect on the team that saw Geronimo Berroa's white hot April of '96.

The construct of the CL

We had two teams per owner, which I'll get to later. Each team carried an 8 player farm team. What the rules were for player movement between the parent and the farm team, I cannot recall, but such movement did happen. Free agent moves also occured during the season. While my thoughts on how we managed these manuevers are sketchy now, I believe the league as a whole was equally sketchy even then about how to handle such FA moves. I recall Ken and Greg once arguing in the summer of '96 about who had the rights to Mike Timlin, a player Ken must have thought he reclaimed after initially dropping him following the draft. I can also recall Greg's incredulous response to the announcement that I had snagged Bobby Higginson from a pay phone call to the carparker office from the Atlanta airport while I attended the Olympics that July. After a spell of such confusion and a series of disagreements, I think we stopped in-season free agency and agreed the only FA moves would happen via an off-season draft. Or something like that.

I'm guessing that player usage rules were similar to what went on in the SL in 1996. Stolen bases were rampant, with the 200% of SBA rule in effect. The only relief inning limit was 2 innings per, without regard to the cumulative innings over the season. Ken had a couple rosters with just 3 relievers, which irked the rest of us, mostly when he'd pull a scrub starter early and get to use the relief staff in such an absurd manner. A lot of part-time starting pitchers were picked relatively early in the CL draft, so I'm guessing we had some different rules about rotations. As for CF usage, I know we had a master list of CFs. For the CL, I think we began experimenting with better ways to restrict than just lumping players together based on undocumented criteria, but as to what we officially did, there is nothing documented that I can find.

There were two divisions, with each owner having one team in each division. There was inter-divisional play, including self-play against your other team ... i.e., games you managed against yourself. How to maintain the integrity of the league while playing 15 to 20 games against yourself is quite a poser, and certainly I think one of the biggest drawbacks of our model. At least trades between one owner's two franchises were not allowed.

Let the games begin ...

When we played the games, it was usually in the carparker office, and occasionally in the TO dorms. I think when we did start up the SL, we halted play, then we picked it back up again in the fall during the SL hiatus. Ken won at regular pace with both of his teams. Greg's Hannibal Cannibals team did well, but they weren't as strong as hyped. Neither Chris or I made too much of a ripple in the standings, though I think he fared better that first season. Chris did make a ripple playing Kirby Puckett as his regular SS for one of his teams. Greg's young team played like their best years were ahead of them. Ken edged Greg's HC team in lone competitive division, and played himself in the playoffs, and in stark contrast to the SLs shirt-tearing playoff hunt, the tension of the race never got too heated (maybe that was just from this outsider's view, though). No one outside of Ken cared too strongly about the WS winner. I think Ken's Montana Muff Divers won the title, but I'm not sure.

Momentum came again in the offseason, as we all looked to retool our franchises with the influx of free agents. Being a keeper league, we didn't do too many overhauls, just coming off our first season and all, but that didn't keep each GM from spending a great amount of time in player evaluation. Just the same, some of the first picks in the FA draft were very short-sighted ... old pitchers who could help in the immediacy. Someone took Fernando, who had resurrected himself for one last decent MLB season. I took Tim Belcher, a righty 12 Z with a +3, though he was in his early 30s, mostly because the other top option was in his mid-30s and just an 11Z, a certain Jamie Moyer, who would become an SL mainstay about this time. I recall that Ken took Nomar early, and Chris took Vlad, I took Shawn Green and Billy Wagner, but for every one of these great young picks, there were young picks like Rey Ordonez and Coby Bailey and Jose Paniagua, players would never have an impact in the SL in the coming years. I recall picking up Aaron Sele in the FA draft, after Ken had just dropped him, but I also remember dropping him midway through the '97 season, probably to pick up someone like Lenny Webster.

Autopsy ...

Why did the league die? For one reason, Swinea infused a ton of enthusiasm into the SL in '97, to the point where the CL founders had their BBW jones satisfied. Mostly, though, the CL had run its course, and the many flaws I have mentioned (the two franchise owners, the lack of passion compared to the SL, the general idea that you may be out of a race for years to come) ... all this took its toll.

The '97 CL season was exciting for me, as both of my teams overachieved. The Casper Clutch did well early and was still over .500 when the league stopped to make way for the SL games, and Newport News was holding onto their division lead when the CL went on hiatus. Whether we ever returned from that hiatus for any games, I do not know. Did Ken's PC have issues? I know that it eventually did, and thus the records were permanently gone, but I don't know when that happened. Did we all just move forward? Did we have too much BBW with the combined 3 teams and 500 games we had to manage in the two leagues? I don't know. I do know that we didn't hardly look back. By the time the '98 SL began, we had Bob infecting more enthusiasm into the SL and the CL was quickly becoming a distant memory. A couple of years ago, I remember seeing some printouts of Greg's team stats, and possibly some league leaders, when I was stalking about in the carparker closet. As the carparker closet was reshaped and improved awhile ago, I imagine those printouts were tossed in la basura or went up in smoke at the hands of Chris's head carparking replacements. Such a fate is kind of deserving. The CL, maybe a decent idea in parts, was an otherwise ill-conceived and ill-managed entity that delivered little to who we are and who we have become.