My first trip around, I joined right before the 2015 season and took over the Washington Bobwhites team. With help from the league we moved them to Halifax. In 2016, Halifax made it to the playoffs for the first time in 20 seasons. The team would go on a tear with five straight postseason appearances. In the original 2017 season, we did not do well. As I did every season I was very aggressive with trading players and nearly always was working on some type of deal. Some discussions were seasons long. Without a doubt the highlight of my tenure with the Hawks was in the beginning of the original 2017 season, I backed out of a deal that was discussed with Omaha to acquire Steve Hoffman. He would end up joining Madison and they would go on an incredible run (to the Landis against Buffalo if I remember correctly? At least into the playoffs). Then, chaos happened and we needed to restart most of the 2017 season.
Well, guess what I did? I went back to Omaha to see if they wanted to do our previously discussed deal for Hoffman and I dealt Atsumori Maeda, Julio Ortiz and Lynn Stanley in the highlights (it was actually a huge eight player deal that required two parts. Part One. Part Two.) Hoffman would go 16-0 for the rest of that season with a 162 ERA+. Fast forwarding to today, Hoffman is now 36 years old and pitching for his eighth team in the league. During that time, he was widely viewed as one of the best pitchers in the league and that 2017 season he would bring home the only Steve Nebraska award he's ever won. The pairing of Hoffman and Halifax was a pact signed with blood as after Hoffman threw in 784 innings in the three year stretch with Halifax from 2017-2019 he would never quite restore his former glory. He is still a productive pitcher, but other than 2021 where he posted a 5.6 WAR, he has never eclipsed the 2.9 WAR he achieved in 2023. This is after a 10.2 WAR season in 2017. Halifax would go back to the Landis twice more in search for a second cup in 2018 and a repeat match with the Carolina Kraken in 2020, but was unable to channel the magic from that 2017 season that wasn't supposed to happen.
Midway through the 2023 season I had to leave the league. I wasn't as active as I wanted to be in two seasons at that point and personal issues started to crop up which led to my decision. Now I am back and ready to put a stamp on the EBA. How many MBWBA GMs have won the Landis and the European Cup? I plan on joining the list. Let's bring bornac back so I can try and screw him out of the European Cup too
