Hammer Time 2046.4- New staff, new draftees

[chicoruiz]

Every happiness contains a seed of unhappiness, and vice versa, I guess.

Wow, I’m sounding like an Eastern philosopher today, instead of a UMEBA GM who fell bass-ackwards into a nice team. At any rate, things are actually pretty good right now, and when I say I fell bass-ackwards into a good team, if pressured I will admit that it’s a good team at least partly because of my moves this offseason. All my free agent signings are blooming like desert roses in Jerusalem, and if we can keep this pace up we have a chance to go from worst to first in one season, which will change my self-image considerably.

The “seed of unhappiness” comes from a couple of sources. Firstly, our inability to find an administrative assistant to replace the departed Miriam. I delegated the hiring to Chaim, and I don’t know where he found his first hire, but I have my suspicions that he found her at a place where the music was loud and the costumes were minimal. She was enthusiastic about the job; she said she really enjoyed being around ballplayers. She enjoyed being around them so much and so frequently that we ended up getting a group rate on penicillin shots at the local clinic. That, and her revulsion at any type of actual work, led me to encourage her forcefully to seek her fortune elsewhere.

So now we have Tamar, who came to us from a staffing service. Tamar at least can not be described as passion’s plaything; she combines the pessimism of an inner city parole officer with the body type of a sumo wrestler. But I have to admit she’s grudgingly competent…

The other reason things are less than perfect is the draft. If the last two drafts have been steak dinners, this one was a cup of ramen noodles. I shouldn’t complain; it was equally bad for everyone. And we got a few players. Eugen Badea, our #1 pick, is the kind of okay-across-the-board talent that the world needs to fill out its fifth starter spots. And Ulrik Wiuff and Lanakila Kealoha, our next two picks, are basically the same player; they lack contact skills, but have gap power and speed, which I always love. Hopefully at least one of them will be hitting baseballs into the alleys and running lippity-lippity around the bases in Jerusalem in a few years.

Past that, it’s a bunch of fellows who were not blessed by the Talent Fairy, and I’ve been going through the list this morning with the proverbial weed whacker, sorting out those who seem too hopeless even for rookie ball. I’ve never before had to call a draftee and tell him that even though we drafted him, we don’t plan to sign him and he should probably go back to school. If only there were someone I could foist this unpleasant job onto…

“Tamar”, I called out, “could you come in here a second?” I felt the floorboards creak as she moved her ponderous bulk over the complaining earth.

“Mmmph?’ she queried.

“Here’s a list of some of our draftees. Could you contact them and let them know that we won’t be signing them?”

She smiled; the first time I had ever seen that particular phenomenon; were those steel teeth? “Sure… It’ll be a pleasure.”

Sometimes I guess it’s handy to have a sadistic personality on staff…

[Fat Nige]

I’m usually meaner, I call them into my office personally so they have to travel to see me. Then just hand them their bus ticket back home along with their rejection slip