Monthly Archive
for: ‘May, 2012’

So the best thing about the 2012 Season thus far, at least in my opinion, is that we’ve made it through the most tenuous portion of the schedule weather-wise having played all scheduled games, that hasn’t happened in years. Now we head into a double BYE where we’ll come out on the other end at the start of June when weather becomes a bit more reliable… not to mention our stretch of longer games, late game start times will move to 7:15 on our next game day.

Still early on, but Leaderboard activity yesterday was a bit interesting and off the norm as well… of the 3 undefeated teams that remained, two lost with Perkins&Will dropping Cannon 16-7 and theBuzz edging out Clune 10-9 in a thriller that came down to the 7th… and in the ‘I didn’t see that coming’ department… Goettsch, coming off of a forfeit, played the seemingly invincible Dobbins Group into darkness for a 10-10 tie… at the end of the day, the Leaderboard remains anyones for the taking… no team is running away with things going into the double-BYE.

A Short Word About Forfeits

The reason I bring it up is because we’ve had two forfeits so far in the early season… the two teams involved are long time Design League teams that just had circumstances creep up on them, shit happens and this is directed at them in no way… just wanted to remind all Captains that a forfeit not only leaves your opponent that day with no game to play… it also alters the natural progression of the season which of course seeds the Tournament. In other words, a forfeit brings a 7-0 final score, but what we’re interested in is whatever score would have resulted from the game having been played. The closer we can come to this ideal, the more ‘legit’ the Tournaments seeding… Please use whatever tools you have at your disposal within the rules to get a team on the field… playing a late game? Query early game Captains for extra players that wanna play two… playing an early game? Do the opposite… or call friends, friends of friends, whoever… We’ve kept our number of forfeits to a minimum for years now, let’s work together to keep it that way.

Pictures for our next game day on May 31st > Goetch, Old Stylin’ & Kelso-Burnett

To the teams already photographed, thanks for your cooperation… it has gone very smoothly so far.

There is a possibility that Upper Hutchinson will be available to us next Thursday for any teams interested in practicing… I’m going to check in with the Park District again early next week to see if that’s still on the table… If you’re interested in a possible practice, let me know via email and I’ll get in touch with you once I know the details.

Everyone have a great weekend.

As I said last night on our Facebook page… one of those wild and wooly weather threatened early season Thursdays yesterday out on the diamonds… initially we were only worried about incoming storm systems, but then as the day progressed I got word of the standing water issues between diamonds 2 & 3… putting the choice of whether to play or not play out to the 8 affected teams, I was encouraged by how fast the PLAY responses returned to my inbox, almost as if no one really even had to think about it… which is the Design League way after all… and in the end this turned out to be the way to go anyway as the mud out there was only a minor inconvenience… plus what’s a little mud on your shoes right?

But then our attention turned to getting all the games in as storms were materializing all across the Chicagoland area over the course of the evening… entering the later innings of the late games we saw lightning to the north and the rumble of thunder was evident… but in the end… we got Week 2 in and escaped the diamonds just as the rains rolled in… not exactly sure if it rained on the diamonds, but it was pouring at the Ohio feeder ramp at 8:20, so I imagine it was… Can you believe this is the first time we’ve played the first two game weeks of the season since 2008? That’s the fact… so I’m really happy as our attention turns to the extended forecast for next week which is currently looking pretty good… we get through next week without any rain and we’ll be in great shape heading into the double-bye.

Not quite ready yet to do any game updates as the Leaderboard is always in a chaotic state here in the early-season… but we did have a couple of 1-run games yesterday as well as a couple of blow outs… 3 of 4 Final Four teams from last season in Cannon, Dobbins Group and Clune have once again jumped out to undefeated starts… but the season is still young, plenty of time to plot and scheme to knock them off ;-)

Pictures Next Week > theBuzz and Ruder Group

Everyone have a great weekend… and feel free to post anything you’d like to the ‘comments’ section of this post… the more voices the merrier… currently, it has only been mine… which is getting a little lonely.