Fantasy baseball banquet

The Colonial and Glenn Sample leagues had their joint awards banquet last night at the Black Finn. I came in third, so did not receive a trophy. All told, five trophies were handed out. There was a tie in the Colonial League and a three-owner team (father and twin sons) won the the Sample League.

The guest speaker was Chris Eckes, Curator for the the Reds Hall of Fame and Museum. Mr. Eckes gave a great talk on the history of the Hall of Fame and the fairly new history of the building and museum which are part of GABP. He spoke at length about the process for being elected, the requirements, and even the periods of time when there were no elections. Apparently, at one time Hall of Fame night was one of the season's biggest promotional nights.

We also heard some great stories about Pete Rose and Marge Shott. Pete apparently sold three different jersies as the jersey he was wearing when he broke Ty Cobb's record. Interestingly, they have a photo of Pete in the dugout that night with two extra uniform shirts draped over a railing in the dugout. While he could certainly have only worn one for the record breaking hit, he likely wore all three during the game. Not an uncommon practice, according to Mr. Eckes.

One problem they have is that the teams didn't save much. Accept for Marge, who apparently saved everything. For example, thanks to Marge the museum has a jersey for all but three of the 1990 Reds for next year's display honoring the wire-to-wire team. Speculation from the group that perhaps Marge intended to recycle the jersies at some point was not shot down, although she never actually did that.