The news is, #9, you should move back to Pittsburgh. The economy is great right now I’m sure you’d have no trouble finding a job. Maybe Faust is looking for a roommate.

There could be a lot of competition for playing time, and we appear to have some depth at key positions such as middle infield and pitcher (Seriously, depth, imagine that). On this note, A.Smith showed some versatility in fall ball’ playing error free outfield and finishing the fall season with a better batting average than his coach, the Ducks’ all time hits leader.

I will get to play outfield primarily.

However, there is still a lot up in the air, if everyone who has made even the most remote commitment to play on the Ducks this summer is a go, we’ll have about 20 guys on the roster (and will never forfeit), but who knows, there’s a lot of time for people to move away or decide they want to play on the Gray Bats.

South Oakland could lose several starters from last season, so we’re hedging our bets. Barring a series of catastrophes the Ducks will have a better team than last year, it will just be a matter of different guys stepping up in clutch situations.

The key is pitching as always, and we will definitely have Homa, Guthrie, Smith and Schwartz, and the Kuhnses out of the bullpen. If we can put Necheff in that rotation it will be huge, if we get Necheff and Barchie that’s the best 1-2-3 in the PGH-NABA, if we get this other kid we have a line on who has pitched at a very high level, it will be unfair to everyone else, given the pending debut of Tony Cassale and Mike Watson in the infield, who are absolutely sick. (the guys from the Ghostbusters), but we don’t know how the rotation will fill out yet, either way defensively we will be better, if Novak and McCray return they could move to the corners, or beat out the newcomers for their spots up the middle last season (we don’t know if they will be back this spring) we also had another infielder who has played at a high level fall into our lap, (also named Bob), so who knows. I’m cautiously optimistic.

We could wind up just ridiculously stacked, and then the biggest test for Dr. Jones will be keeping everyone happy, playing time wise. this is always easier when the team is winning, though. We’re assuming we will lose all the incumbent “maybes”, Jones doesn’t want to turn anyone away who can help, and then have a shortage of ball players so we’re loading up as usual. A lot will depend on who leaves.

More as this develops and we get the roster set, and begin working out as a team. Winter sucks. I turn 28 soon, “Old man Gwin”, they’ll call me.

There’s been a Bob Faust sighting.

Bob was a Duck during the “Red Scare” years of 2005-2006. Before the 2007 season he ran away to California to find inner-peace, but came back because that state is infested with hippies. My dates might be wrong, but I know he led the team in times hit by pitch one year and played as hard as anyone on a bad team, which is not easy to do.

Bob introduced KT Murphy, Chris Roth, and Brett Pusateri to the Ducks. When Chris and Brett are healthy and present they are capable of putting up MVP type numbers. KT has been one of the most important, dependable Ducks during his two year stint in South Oakland winner of the 2008 Duck of the year, and the most improved Duck in 2007. Thanks, Bob, you have an eye for talent.

#99, Robert Faust is a Solid human being who hated losing all those games as much as I did. As the South Oakland Ducks founder and team blogger I would like to welcome him back to a winning team.

Team of Destiny 2009.

Quack.

Buy Ducks stuff for everyone you know this holiday season, it’s not too late.
I have done nothing to enhance the store, which I wanted to do, but I recommend buying a sweet Ducks hoodie or golf shirt and supporting our team while also providing a gift for someone you know and care about on some level. Or buy yourself something with the money you may or may not receive for whatever Pagan holiday you will celebrate this winter.

Go to the league site for info on winter ball

I played winter ball last year, it was fun. One night a week from Jan-March.

PGH NABA players will receive discounts at a few local indoor facilities this winter, I’ll have more specifics on this at some point (or you can contact the league office at pittsburghnaba@yahoo.com) and Coach Theodore Jones will email everyone about spring training at one of these facilities.

The Winter Meeting s will be held on January 11th at an undisclosed location (bar) in the greater Pittsburgh area.

The A and AA divisions idea will most likely be shelved.

I think pre-season tournament would be fun…. A fun way for the Ducks to display our dominance as early as May.

I expect a handful of new faces in South Oakland, attached to heads full of baseball wit and killer instinct, who will play key roles in our quest to reclaim the championship.

Our goal is to dethrone the Owls like Claudius, only without all poisoning and stabbing–in a literal sense anyway.

Opening Day is only approximately four months and ten days away.

The blog will pick up again when I have anything worth mentioning, expect a grandiose season preview. I’ll contact other managers to give their own thoughts on their teams and use that stuff against them later in the season.

“Scrooged” is the best Christmas movie of all time.
“Ghostbusters” is the second best.

Quack.

read my steelers blog

Garrett Moore, backup catcher, outfielder, prophet

Maybe you’ve gone through a phase where you frequently bet on college football, maybe you are just a fan of the great state of Alabama, either way Garrett Moore’s early season prediction of the Crimson Tide’s dominance must seem somewhat surreal, maybe a little bit frightening.

Among other things, Moore spent time between Blues game’s this past Labor Day weekend in Virginia shouting, “roll tide”, after winning a hefty sum on the ‘Bama, Clemson game that weekend, and now the University of Alabama has a shot at getting a shot at the national title, should they defeat #4 Florida this weekend. What an exciting game, kind of like the Ducks vs. Rakers season finale. We need to do more to make these kind of exciting games possible in the Pittsburgh NABA.

With the College Bowl Season right around the corner, and the only NABA news, revolving around how to improve the structure of the divisions, and make the league more inviting to potential players, I have come up with an idea I think will improve the level of competition and simplify things, a bit, i call it, Ben’s Competition Standardization, or BCS for short.

Here’s how it works, first all the teams need to have a town, borough or city in their name, and then we take what I assume will be 16 teams (if the current rate of expansion holds true) and put them in four, four-team divisions based on their location. So we have the 16 teams, last season’s 12, plus the Gray Bats, and these 3 imaginary teams: The Grove City Grave Diggaz!, the South Side Brewers, and the Bloomfield Blue Sox…

Now we rank these teams in the pre-season based on last years finish, not taking the divisions into account
1. Owlz
2. Warriors
3. Black SOx
4. Oilers
5. Ducks
6. Bull Dogs (yeah, I know)
7. Grounds Keeper Willies (rakers)
8. Hotel California’s
9. Matadors
10. Hurricane Carter’s
11. Phantoms
12. The Confederacy

13. Gray Bats
14. Grave Diggaz!
15. Blue Sox
16. Brewers

Now after each week, we have the managers and the media rank these teams. “What Media?”, you might ask. Well there would be some overlap, as most blogs are run by managers, and I guess Joe at the Bull Dogs Blog wouldn’t be able to vote since he’s the comissioner, and he’s a cheater . And no one will be around to run the Grounds Keeper Willie’s blog since Sorosky left for the Ducks, I mean Larry’s future 10-14 Gray Bats ( I give you eight wins next year Sorosky, get used to Steve Carlton references). So some folks will get two votes and some teams will start blogs just to get a chance to vote in the media polls, but that shouldn’t matter too much. the other part of the rankings system will be based on a computer formula no one really understands, and will depend on margin of victory, strength of schedule, opponents strength of schedule and a team’s opponents’ opponents’ strength of schedule, plus wins and losses.

We will then take a composite ranking, basically the mean of the coach’s poll, media poll and the computer rankings, and at the end of the season the top two teams will play for the championship, the third and fourth ranked teams and the fifth and sixth seeded teams will also play for the right to call themselves champions of their respective series’. Then we have the rest of the teams play in post season games that mean absolutely nothing.

This allows for teams like the Bull Dogs and Oilers (the Oilers are my sleeper team to come out of the Allegheny this year as the will probably pick up a couple defectors from the Warriors.) , who play in the weak division to pile up wins against The Hurricanes, Phantoms, and Matadors, and knock out teams like last year’s Rakers who will probably lose close games to better teams.

With this formula, teams will have to run up the score, so naturally this gives the defending champs the best shot at becoming the first repeat champions in the league’s six years.

I guess that’s basically it, there will be divisions that mean nothing,a team in an extremely weak division can go undefeated and it will not matter, and if a team has a great record but loses to good teams due to playing in the toughest conference, they will be punished for playing in that conference while a Big Ten team gets desrtoyed in the championship. So the best way to secure a bid in the championship is to assemble a very good, not necessarily dominant team, and play in a pretty good conference, but not the toughest conference because that would just lead to unnecessary loses.

It may seem like this would prevent the two best teams from playing each other, but it will make the regular season so much more exciting. Just imagine, the Ducks, Black Sox game in the second week of the season will basically be for the right to go to the BCS Championship.

Quack.