League News Roundup 11 MAR 2017

Lord Sinister Announces New Logo and Theme Song For the Z-Slayers
Its official: the Z-Slayers have played their last game sporting their gray and red uniforms. Instead, their players will now wear black caps and white uniforms sporting a white and light green logo, pictured below.

Lord Sinister also announced that the team will now have an official theme song which will be played at every home game when the team takes the field.

The announcement was criticized by rival teams both for its content as well as timing. Cardinals GM Cedric Sorry curtly commented that the logo "looked like puke" and that the song sounded like "a drunk sailor looking for the bathroom on a rickety ship." Aces GM Ishmael von Corrin, who lost out to sinister in bidding for the team, was slightly more conciliatory in his response. "Well, it certainly is a novel idea getting a theme song for a team. I can't say I would have thought of that. But if I were in control of this team, I can tell you that I would have addressed the coaching situation first, before cosmetic and optic considerations such as these." During the announcement, Sinister said that the uniforms will debut next game against the Tycoons and the theme song will be played for the first time next series. Sinister also gave an update on the situation with Z-Slayers Park, saying that reconstruction will be hopefully completed by Series 11, when intra-league rival Meow Meow Dui come to town.

Queynos Warriors Hire New GM and Coaching Staff
The Queynos Warriors are the latest team to add back office personnel. Mhassa Spellcaster has been named GM with immediate effect, whose first action yesterday was to appoint three coaches: Kalaby Jaby as head coach, Danuvan Marvelsong as pitching coach, and Bravenogg Ironhammer as hitting coach. None of these strangely named fellows have any experience in the league, although they all claim to be prominent residents of Queynos. In a speech to the press, Mhassa announced that his team is currently not in any market for trades, as the new GM firmly believes that his team already has what it takes to make the playoffs. To finish off what was roundly considered a high energy speech, Mhassa said that he's looking forward to working with the Warriors and climbing up the ranks to win Division 1 again.

Spartans MIA; Various Members of that Organization Mysteriously Incommunicado
Various members of the Spartans of Bobia organization have been mysteriously missing from any public appearances over the past several weeks. Most players and managers have not been reachable when asked for comment about these noticeable absences. Conspiracy theories have abounded on the internet when photos surfaced last week of a grocery store worker in Washington D.C. who bore a stunning resemblance to Bobian slugger Ichiro Suzuki. Other photos surfaced of people looking very similar to other players: a golf caddie on Long Island was claimed to be secondbaseman Marcus Giles; a competitor in the "World's Strongest Mams" competition in Cape Koresh was purported to be Charles "The Body CJ" Johnson; a man identifiable by his mustache in a pornographic film was thought to be reliever Rollie Fingers. One theory has said that GM Ronde Barber has convinced his team to join some kind of UFO cult and is requiring them to work side jobs to fund this religious organization. Other theories claim that the players are being underpaid to the point of needing second jobs. Another has claimed that the photos are all coincidences and that Barber has taken the team out on an extended retreat for morale purposes. Whatever the truth may be, the strange inactivity from this team has allowed all sorts of wacky theories to proliferate.

Series 7 Part Zwei: Double Header in Germany!

TEN 0, MMD 7 F

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
TEN	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
MMD	0	0	0	2	3	0	0	2	0

W – Ortiz (1-1)            L - Thomson (1-1)      
       

Both teams traveled to Germany for a promotional double header for an overseas audience. In the first game, both teams got off to a slow offensive start with a few double plays that killed a few embryonic scoring opportunities. However Meow Meow Dui was able to bring a few runs home in the fourth thanks to a string of clutch hits, most importantly RBIs from Scott Hatteberg and Mark Ellis. Dui expanded their lead in the next inning thanks to a three run bomb off the bat of Eric Chavez, which tied him at the time for the league leading fifth of the season. Meanwhile Russ Ortiz twirled a gem of a game for Meow Meow, going seven strong innings and making the Green Sox offense look downright foolish. Ortiz handed the game over to reliever Chris Hammond who has pitched well this year and certainly has grown to be a favorite of Coach Taklamente. Hammond went two innings string to close the game, insulated by a 2 run homer from Meow Meow catcher Gregg Zaun which brought the final score of Game 1 to 7-0. By the way, that homerun tied Gregg Zaun for the league lead in RBIs, at least before the other games this day.
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MMD 2, TEN 5 F

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
MMD	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
TEN	3	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0

W – Piniero (1-3)            L - Pavano (1-2)                 S - Hammond (2)

Game 2 pitted two former Cy Young award winners in a match that was sure to please the German spectators in attendance. Nevertheless, you could hear the Green Sox collective sigh when Joel Piniero surrendered a two run shot to Miguel Tejada in the top of the first. But unlike game 1, the Green Sox offense finally decided that they weren't going to take another beating lying down. In the bottom of the first, the first four batters of the Green Sox lineup tagged Carl Pavano for three runs while simultaneously hitting for a cycle: Omar Vizquel tripled, Magglio Ordonez doubled, Jorge Posada homered, and David Ortiz singled. Both former Cy Youngs settled down after the shaky first and ended up completing the game. However Joel Piniero was clearly the better pitcher, shutting out Meow Meow Dui for the rest of the game. While Piniero has generally been a disappointment in his first season with the Green Sox, this was pretty clearly his best game of the year so far. Carl Pavano gave up another two runs in the sixth and had several close calls throughout the rest of the game. There was a bit of drama in the top of the ninth as the game was being closed out for the Green Sox. At one point Meow Meow baserunner Ryan Freel was thrown out at third when trying to round second after an Aaron Rowand single. Although it was somewhat close, instant replays showed that the call was correct and that Freel was indeed out. Coach Taklamente came out to argue and got into a very heated argument with the ump. Green Sox starter Joel Piniero approached the arguing duo and exchanged words with Taklamemte. Whatever Piniero said, Taklamemte lost his cool and started screaming, resulting in his prompt ejection. To make matters worse, the next batter doubled, which would have surely brought home Freel had he not been waved onto third.  After the game Taklamemte gave a circus of a press conference in which he verbally blasted both Piniero and his own starter Pavano. "Well clearly we cannot trust former Cy Young winners whose first names are four letters and whose last names begin with 'P' and end with 'O'," said Taklamemte. "Piniero should have absolutely been ejected as well, after he told me to shut up and go back to the dugout. But you saw that the referee gave him special treatment, just like he got all the calls the entire evening. Totally unfair. I don't know how we could have won that game. As for Carl....I will need to fix him. His performance is entirely unacceptable, especially for what we're paying him. This is already his second loss of the year. Not acceptable for a Cy Young." Taklamemte did not answer any questions about his experience playing in Germany or his team's upcoming series against the Bobians. Nor did he explain what he meant by "fix." Things certainly don't look good for the Green Sox, so any win against a playoff caliber team is a big one at this point.
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TYC 4, ZSY 11 F

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
TYC	1	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	0
ZSY	0	0	4	1	3	0	2	1	0

W – D'Amico (1-2)            L - Lopez (0-2)               

This game looked like it was going to be a 4th starter high-scoring affair from the get-go. The Tycoons strung together several hits in the top of the first resulting in a Jason Giambi RBI single. Tycoons starter Albie Lopez appeared cruise through the Z-Slayer lineup the first time around, but ran into trouble in the third, surrendering two homeruns to Jason Larue and Albert Pujols, both bringing in two runs. The Tycoons answered immediately in the top of the fourth, rallying against D'Amico with a Edgar Renteria RBI double and a Jeremy Giambi 2 RBI double. The back-and-forth continued in the bottom of the inning, when Ralph Kiner lead off with a triple and was immediately brought home by a Paul Lo Duca single. This knocked Tycoon starter Albie Lopez out of the game after just four innings of work; Jeff D'Amico finished the top of the fifth and was pulled as well. Former Darkpaw Mike Myers entered the game for the Z-Slayers and pitched three solid innings of relief, easily his best performance thus far this year. The Tycoon reliever, Shingo Takatsu, did not fare as well; he surrendered a three run blast to Albert Pujols in the fifth...and then another 2 run shot to Pujols in the seventh! This is the first time that a player has hit three homeruns in a single game so far this season. With his 3 homeruns and 7 RBIs in this game, Pujols now is first in the league in both categories on the season (6 HR and 20 RBI respectively). Z-Slayers thirdbaseman Jeff Cirillo tacked on another RBI in the bottom of the eighth as his team's bullpen strung together an impressive four inning string of shutout baseball. As the Tycoons drop to 7-5, yet another win for a Division 1 Team. Mao's team has been a big factor in this lopsidedness; they've lost four of their last five games.

League News Roundup, 01 MAR 2017

Lord Sinister Announced as New Owner and GM of Tuldarian Z-Slayers

In a stunning announcement, Lord Sinister was announced to be the mystery bidder whose offer was accepted to take control of the financially hard pressed ball club. In a press conference yesterday, Sinister officially took over as he signed the legal documents to become owner and general manager. In a speech after the signing ceremony, Sinister announced that a new day had come for Tuldarian baseball and that his first priorities were to make all necessary repairs on the Z-Slayer’s homefield, drain the area of all remaining Zachrian gas, and to find a full time coaching staff. Although Sinister’s experience in sports is very limited, he brings to the table a lot of cash to straighten out the teams dismal finances. But questions have been raised about the source of this income and Lord Sinister’s past. Darkpaw GM ALLIED_MASTERCOMPUTER spoke openly about the corrupt practices that Sinister employed when he was President of the former Alyxian Republic, and said that he did not think it to be fair or just for the league to be profiting from ill-gotten investments. St. Louis Cardinal General Manager Cedric Sorry wrote a letter from prison to the league commissioner expressing his concern about ties Sinister has had in the past to allegedly terrorist organizations. Noticeably silent was Red Clay GM Ishmael von Corrin, whose bid was rejected in favor of Sinister’s.

Red Clay Closer Wagner: I’m Being Overworked

Billy Wagner started off the season as perhaps the sharpest closer in the league, snagging two saves right away in the first two series. Since then, he’s found himself racking up appearances and innings pitched that have put him near the top of the league in those two STATS. In a recent interview, that's the reason that the pitcher has given for his latest two performances, which have deviated sharply from the dominating form he was in earlier in the season: he struggled badly to just barely earn his third save of the year against the Cardinals before actually blowing his first save of the year last game against the Warriors. The two time All Star claimed that Red Clay management has not been attuned to his needs and that he’s being overworked despite the fact that the Aces have a six man bullpen. In response to this, John Kruk wrote in his weekly column that he was surprised to see an All Star of all people try to make excuses for a pair of bad performances. Wagner responded in turn by challenging Kruk to another charity at bat, similar to the one he had a few months ago against Randy Johnson of Mao’s Tycoons.  No response as of yet from Mr. Kruk.

Adam Kennedy Named First Player Manager in League History

The Melmegetian Marauders are the latest team to join in on the coaching craze, but in an entirely new way in the league’s history. Second baseman Adam Kennedy has been named head coach by GM Dr. Vindaloo effective immediately. Kennedy has been a fixture of this team and has played for the Marauders for six straight seasons, notching more than ten RBIs in each season with a high of 16 in Season 4 and a  regular season career total of 70 RBIs. Dr. Vindaloo said during the conference that there were three main reasons why he decided to go with a player to be coach: 1) Vindaloo has already been handling most of the coaching duties himself and will continue to do some of them, so it would not be a full time job for a player 2) The coaching market is currently very competitive and thin, as shown by the inability of teams like the Green Sox and Warriors to attract viable candidates. 3) Kennedy recently won an eating contest where he was able to eat more of Vindaloo’s homemade saag paneer than any other player in the Marauder lineup. Kennedy said that he was thrilled with the opportunity not only to be the first player-coach in the league, but to continue to work for the organization that’s been his home for so long. His first task at hand will be to guide his teammates in an attempt to split a series with the Darkpaws after an embarrassing loss.