The Jeff Stone Incident

Every CFCL season is littered with memorable events: a tense or entertaining moment on Draft Day, a brilliant trade, or a key tactical error by an owner. Most of these events are forgotten once the season passes, but others are so memorable, such defining moments, that they live on in CFCL history. It is these events that earn the label of “Incident” in CFCL lore.

Perhaps the earliest “Incident” resulted from one of the first times the Co-Commissioners Rich Bentel and David Mahlan squared off against each other in a D-Day bidding confrontation (though it was far from the last). It's also a classic illustration of the phenomenon of Hyper-Inflation resulting from Pre-Draft Obsession.

Kick back and relax as the CFCL’s founders recall The Jeff Stone Incident:

RICH:
It was 1985. We had just completed our first fantasy year and I thought I was getting the hang of building a team. I spent the early spring reading magazines and newspaper articles trying to glean some information that would vault me past my fellow owners and nab a superstar. And then I found it. Bill Mazeroski had written a blurb (or his editors did) in his magazine about a young Phee-Nom in Philadelphia that was the next Big Thing. Jeff Stone!

DAVID:
No CFCL team owned Jeff Stone in 1984, when he hit .362 and stole 27 bases in 51 games. This is surprising until you consider the following: 1) with only 6 CFCL teams, we only used a maximum of 36 OFs; 2) most of the 36 OFs we owned were players who started the 1984 season in a starting role -- Stone did not -- and the only way to pick up a free agent was if you had an injured player to replace.

In 1985, Bill Mazeroski's Baseball magazine was the ultimate draft prep tool. Even so, only a few of our owners used it. But when it comes to Hyper-Inflation resulting from Pre-Draft Obsession, a few owners is all it takes. The 1985 edition of Bill Mazeroski's Baseball had this to say about Jeff Stone:  

RICH:
Once again, keep in mind this was 1985 and ESPN at best was making us watch Australian Rules Football. There really wasn’t national coverage of all teams. Somehow Stone went unnoticed by the Original 6 in 1984. His numbers were good, but he was an unknown to our league. Until the spring of 1985 when the newly named Dem Rebels were looking for a face for their franchise, someone who would lead them to the Promised Land. I . . . Could . . . Not . . . Wait for Draft Day.

DAVID:
It was fairly easy to "backdoor" a player in the early days. For the majority of the owners, Draft Day research consisted of browsing the previous year's stats the day before the Draft. Rich and I, however, had both read the comment about Jeff Stone in early March. As Draft Day drew nearer we spoke to each other and dropped heavily veiled hints about a "sleeper", little realizing that we had the same player in mind. 

RICH:
I made the mistake of talking about draft prep with David. I remember trying to be coy and point out that I had my eye on a real stud and I thought I could backdoor him for a really low price.

David has always been more low-key than me and I was surprised he even commented on my statement. He said he also had his eye on a Special Someone but he wouldn’t go any further. Through the course of the late winter/early spring I would try to get David to elaborate. We would exchange sly grins in a way that said each of us thought we knew more than the other.

DAVID:
In our own minds, we spent the weeks before the Draft visualizing the moment late in the auction when we would say, "Jeff Stone for a penny," and then watch as the other owners all dropped out of the bidding on this unknown quantity. We both knew we would come out of the Draft with Jeff Stone -- and therein laid the danger.

RICH:
As we got closer to the draft we both must have felt bolder as we started making statements. Rich: “My guy plays on offense.” David: “So does mine.” Eventually our momentum carried out to where we had identified we were both looking at an outfielder who played in the National League East. I think at that point we both feared/assumed we were shooting for the same guy.

DAVID:
The obsession grew so deep and so frenzied in the days before the Draft that Rich and I were both willing pay any price to own Jeff Stone. When the day arrived, almost four rounds of the Draft went by before Stone was nominated. The bidding started innocently enough, with most reasonable owners dropping out early on.  

RICH:
I don’t recall who brought up Stone but after about two bids each we knew this was the guy we were both targeting.  

DAVID:
Things began to seem fishy as the bidding went over ten and into the low teens. Rich and I grinned at each other as we realized we both had same thing in mind. When we were the only two left bidding in the high teens, the grins were gone and it became clear where things were headed. The rest of the league looked on in shocked silence as the founding fathers and the leaders of the CFCL batted bids for a reserve Philadelphia outfielder back and forth into the high .20s.

RICH:
The Rebels won the battle by outlasting the Copperfields and getting Stone for .32, but lost the war because Stone had all of 3 homeruns, 15 RBIs, 15 stolen bases and a batting average of .265.  

DAVID
Jeff Stone was the highest-priced player in the 1985 Draft. To illustrate just how far out of hand things got, Andre Dawson was the player drafted immediately before Stone and he went for all of .22.

RICH:
Turns out 1984 was Stone’s pinnacle and Mazeroski and Dem Rebels were way off. The Copperfields dodged a bullet, but wouldn’t be so lucky the following year.

DAVID
Ouch. Leave it to Rich to get a final dig in. Check back later in the year for the tale of The Will Clark Incident...

POSTSCRIPT: Many, many years later, on the anniversary of the 1985 Draft, David celebrated the event by sponsoring Jeff Stone's page at Baseball-Reference.com for a year in Rich's honor.