Time to shit or get off the pot
Alan Ehlers walked into the dusty, dimly lit offices of Land O' Lakes Park with the distinct feeling that he was heading into a war zone following a 4-3 loss to the Madison Wolves. His “office” was basically a broom closet—a creaky chair that swayed whenever he sat down and cheap wood paneling that hadn’t seen polish since the last time a Brooklyn team made the playoffs. He’d been the GM for long enough to know what to expect, but as of late, it was getting absurd. New owner Martin Delgado was cutting costs like crazy.
Tonight, it started with the coffee maker. The usual hum of cheap java was absent, so Ehlers peeked inside the pot and found that it had gone bone dry. Not a drop left to brew. There wasn’t even a cup in sight, just a wrinkled note taped to the machine: "BYOC" (bring your own coffee). Alan sighed, trudging over to his desk, which, to his dismay, seemed to have shrunk in his absence. "What in the Temu is this?", Ehlers squawked
. The once-reliable desktop computer now stuttered like an old clunker, the screen flickering as he tried to pull up analytic game data. One quick tap on the keyboard and it froze. Just as he muttered to himself “stupid, god damn OOTP 25,” his phone rang.
“Alan!” barked Gerald Brandt, the River Monsters’ beleaguered manager. "What are we doing about the pitching machine..it's toast. Keeps spitting balls sideways like Kujapa Padmanabhan in a big spot. I told the team to show up early for extra bp tomorrow.”
“Add it to the list, Gerald,” Alan replied, holding back a sigh. "You coaches are going to have to throw manually. Not much left we haven’t scotch-taped together at this point.”
Just then, Ehlers’s printer sputtered, trying and failing to spit out the budget request he’d been planning to send up to ownership in order to sign Ed Rooney to a long term deal. It stammered, spewed ink like it was coughing up black dust, and finally gave up. Great. Even paperwork couldn’t escape the River Monsters’ rundown infrastructure.
Alan decided he needed to clear his head and headed toward the restroom, hoping for a moment of peace as he took his nightly Nashville. But of course, the lights flickered as he opened the door, and he froze for a second as he faced the cracked, stained tiles and a toilet that looked like it might be older than the teams average age player.
There, staring down at the grimy porcelain throne, Alan felt a wave of frustration hit him hard. This was it. Is this the crossroads he’d dreaded but couldn’t ignore any longer? Did he just accept this sorry state and keep plodding along, managing a team that was falling apart one broken piece of equipment at a time? Or will he take the plunge, hit the proverbial “nuke button,” and start from scratch with a full rebuild?
He knew what it meant. If he decided to go for the rebuild, it wouldn’t just be the equipment that got replaced. Some of his players, young and old, might have to go. Fans, already frustrated by the lack of wins, would get restless. But maybe, just maybe, they’d understand that tearing it down was the only way to bring it back up stronger.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door, "Hey, are you finished? You have been doing #2 forever. Shit or get off the pot."
Ehlers stood up and looked at the clock... 11:57pm. Just minutes to midnight. Is it time to blow up more than the bathroom? Stay tuned...
