What Does The Fox Say? Franchise Legend Joins Minor League Staff; Franchise Unknown Has Run-in with Security (2065-01)

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The Cape Fear Swamp Foxes held a press conference today to introduce not one, but two new coaches joining their ranks.

One of them, Paco Méndez, is a fast-rising disciple of the game, who led his team to the playoffs in five of the last six seasons, and whom Cape Fear just made the highest-paid hitting coach in the BBA.

Only problem is, nobody at the presser knew who he was.

"Press room is that way," a security officer said to Méndez as he attempted to come in through the staff entrance.

"No, I'm the new coach," said Méndez.

"Coach of what?" demanded the security officer.

"I'm the new hitting coach of the Swamp Foxes," Méndez asserted.

"Sure you are," said the officer with a chuckle. He pushed a button on his radio. "Yeah, we've got a fan here trying to gain access. Probably trying to see Danny Leach."

Yep, the Swamp Foxes' other notable coaching hire is a franchise legend, who pitched for the team for sixteen seasons in its Rockville days. Danny "Padfoot" Leach, who has been in the front office for a couple years already in a Special Assistant role, has officially been named the new Pitching Coach for Single-A Eau Claire.

His salary is over 26 times smaller than Méndez's.


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Méndez was still outside, squaring off with the security guard. "You really don't recognize me?" he tried to plead. "I was with the Hebrew Hammers for eight years."

"Hebrew Hammers?" the guard eyed Méndez suspiciously. He talked into his radio again. "Yeah, this guy's part of some extremist group. We're gonna need to forcibly remove him."

Meanwhile, Leach was up at the podium taking questions.

"Have you had a chance to connect with Dan and Vasco?" a reporter asked, referring to the other two-thirds of the Single-A coaching tandem, Manager Dan Cannon and Hitting Coach Vasco Fonzarelli. Both played alongside Leach during their playing careers.

"Dan Facetimed me last night to welcome me on board," Leach said. "He's a Hall of Fame pitcher, so it's a tall task being his pitching coach. But we have a good rapport as old teammates, so we treated it like any other job, and got down to business. We talked about game strategy, and some things we want to focus on with certain players."

"I haven't heard from Fonzy yet," he continued. "He's probably off on his houseboat."

"Can you share any of your techniques for developing young players?" another question came from the back of the room.

"Dan and I both, we take kind of a holistic view of pitching," Leach explained. "In that it's not just about throwing the ball. Rather, we try to teach pitchers how to work with their catchers on developing a game plan, understanding what the defense is doing and using that to their advantage — every facet of the game."

Swamp Foxes' President Woody Donahue cut in. "Thank you everyone, that's all the time we have for questions. Our other new coach, Paco Méndez, was also supposed to be here, but we have no idea where he is."

Leach pointed at the bottle of water in front of Méndez's empty seat. "Can I have his water, then?"