In 2013, as I was preparing for the draft I happened to be digging through some baseball stuff in the basement and realized I had two DVDs of For Love of the Game – the delightful movie of an aging Kevin Costner playing the field and playing on the field. That got my mind spinning. I certainly didn’t need two copies. What could I do with the extra? I could give it away, but to whom? A MEMBER OF THE CFCL! Yes! But how?
A CONTEST! I drew from the inspiration of co-CFCL founder, David Mahlan. Every so often David would create games or trivia contests during the off-season and give the winner a prize from his vast library of books and movies about baseball. Ok, easy enough. We were all going to be sitting around the draft table in a few weeks so it could be fun to create something that would allow an owner to happily walk off with a copy of For Love of the Game.
So I started thinking, how do I give it away? Wait until the end of the draft and pass it out to the owner who spent the most for one player? What if two owners spent the same amount of two different players? Then it hit me. The Ruffin Privilege! I could have all the owners submit a guess as to whom the Ruffins would nominate as the first player. The tie-breaker could be whoever came closest to guessing the final bid of the first player. Genius!
Logistics – how could this blow up? Well, usually the Professor nominates a substantial player in order to suck a lot of money out of the draft quickly. He could zig when everyone expects him to zag and nominate Neifi Perez. To try to prevent this, I e-mailed the Professor to see if he had already decided on whom he would nominate. He said he did. I then explained the game to him and he graciously agreed to play along, which basically meant he wasn’t going to try and screw with everyone.
Long story short, all the owners submitted a guess and as it turned out, Kenn Ruby was the BIG WINNER by anticipating that the Ruffin Privilege would be used on Ruffin favorite David Wright. When I handed out the prize the look on Kenn’s face was, well it wasn’t good. I forget his exact words but an accurate summation would be “This movie sucks!”
When I set the stage for the 2013 version of the game, Kenn graciously offered the DVD as part of the prize package. That didn’t stop him from participating again. And as luck would have it, Kenn guessed that Troy Tulowitzki would be the player nominated with a final bid of .34. The Ruffins nominated Troy Tulowitzki and the Graging Bulls acquired Tulo for .33. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Not only did Kenn get to keep the DVD, he also picked up a couple of baseball cards of non-descript former major leaguers that I had doubles of.
Kenn can’t wait for the Ruffin Privilege Game, version 2014.
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