Practice
LaRue is calling a practice for next weekend (April 6th), weather and field conditions permitting. Please let me or him know if that works for you.

LaRue
LaRue has some back problems that will prevent him from playing this year. It is also very possible that he has played his last game.

Sponsor
We still have a new sponsor, but the money man has been out of town, so we still don't know how much financial support we're talking about. We should know in a week or two. I have a revamped website layout ready to install, pending confirmation from the sponsor. I may deploy it anyway, perhaps with blacked-out logos in the next week or so.

Season
Season starts first week or so of May. We will play single headers on tuesday and thursday for the 1st three weeks. Then for the next 8 weeks we will play doubleheaders on a single night (I think thursdays; might be tuesdays though). That puts the season through the end of July, not counting playoffs.

Personnel
Still haven't heard from Mark C., or Danny. LaRue wants to go with no more than 12 players.

Sounds like we have a new sponsor lined up. We don't know as yet the exact financial commitment the're prepared to make, but we should know very soon.

Today's the due date for returning teams to secure their registration at Warren. I think LaRue's planning on putting down a deposit today. Hopefully, he'll be using funds provided by the new sponsor.

In old sponsor news, Jeff G. and Clair are expecting another daughter in April.

I attended the Manager's Meeting for Larue last night, since he is out of town. The only major items that I feel I should report here is that (a) we should not sign up for the over-35 league (unless we want a weekly ass-kicking), and (b) getting a deposit in by next thursday will ensure our spot in the league. I have the team registration form, player contracts, and league rules. I should probably add a (c) to the list, and mention that the mercy rule is listed as 10 runs (same as last season), but a *lot* of managers bitched about it, so it's very possible this will be changed to 12.

An interesting thing I noticed at the meeting was that I, at age 40, was quite possibly the youngest person there. The meeting was attended primarily of over-35 and over-50 team managers. The league guy talked a little about how the popularity of softball in the Detroit Area has been dwinding over recent years. Liberty Park's registration is down, Warren's is down, and Softball City is of course out of business. The older guys continue to play, while the youngsters are not signing up in anywhere near the numbers they were when we were younger.

Happy New Year
It's been nearly 4 months since I've updated the site here. I've been pretty busy. I'm discovering that the two little ones in the house is about 3-4 times the work that one is.

But when there's time, I work on this new and improved scoresheet proggy. When it's done, I think it'll be easy enough for anyone to use it (ie, when the season begins, Larue can take the scoresheets home and enter 'em himself). Anyway, I'd really appreciate it if anyone reading this take a look at it, and test it out. Let me know if it's easy enough to use/figure out. Tell me if you see any messages in the status area with the word "DEBUG:" in it. Don't worry about breaking anything, it's not connected to our database yet.

Assorted Updates

Last season's news, schedules, and scoresheets have been "moved" to the archives area. (Not really moved since it's all dynamic, but you'll find links to that stuff there).

LaRue's looking much, much better these days. Unfortunately, his ribs will probably not be mended enough to play ball on opening day. He's planning on the Fall half.

Rue's working on sponsors this week, and pending the outcome of that, we'll have a Winter Meeting plan.

We are in receipt of both Liberty Park's and Warren's registration information. We will definitely need a winter meeting to discuss the available options. And we'll need that meeting soon. Warren's doubleheader league 100 bucks less than Liberty's single header league. Also, Warren has an over-35 league on thursday nights, and by LaRue's count, we'd lose only one or two guys if we sign up for that.

I have a bunch of pictures to post from last year, including last year's winter meetings. I'll post it before this year's meeting. I swear.