The Evolution of the CFCL Trophy

The Blackhawks are playing for Lord Stanley’s Cup.  The Cubs, hopefully, one day will vie for the Commissioner’s Trophy.  The Bears won the Lombardi Trophy back in 1985.  The CFCL owners compete for . . . well it’s been a few things over the years.

Title of CFCL Champion has always been there.  So has the check for First Place (usually in the neighborhood of about $500).  Not an amount to sneeze at, but not exactly world changing.  As they say in the NBA, “The Ring is the Thing”.  Well in the CFCL “The Trophy is  . . .”  Ok, nothing rhymes with trophy.  But the trophy we all strive for has had a couple of different looks over the past 30 years.  Below is a walk through history of CFCL Trophies.

 This was our first “trophy”.  As you can see, we were college students on a budget.  Back then winning the bragging rights was the incentive rather than the certificate.  Soon we moved on to . . .

 

We received this for a few years.  We joined the Rotisserie Baseball League Association in 1988.  As a part of the membership they provided an “official” certificate to the winner.  We stopped being members (or they stopped being around) in 1993.

I remember telling David at one point (apparently around 1992) that I thought the winner (i.e. David’s Copperfields) should receive something a little more substantial.  I got the idea of taking my trophies from Little League, tearing off the nameplate and replacing them with the name of the CFCL champion.  I guess I didn’t realize that there were businesses that would actually make new nameplates.  Ironically during the time we handed out the revised trophies, either David won (4 times) or I did (1 time).  The only other owner to receive this kind of trophy was Da Paul Meisters.

 

Ok, this was a bit of a dark spot in the CFCL Trophy Timeline.  For a couple of years we had our stats compiled by CBSSports.com.  As part of the membership they provided a “Championship Bobblehead”.  In my own personal collection I have bobbleheads of Albert Pujols (autographed), Ozzie Guillen, Tigger, and a Cubby Bear from the early ‘70s.  Nothing in that collection or anything I have seen on TV is as ugly as the CBS Sports.com Bobblehead. 



 

 

 



Finally, the Piece De Resistance.  In the late 1990’s David came up with brilliance and the CFCL has been better for it ever since.  He found this trophy on-line or in a store and put the winning pieces together.  Now the CFCL Champion receives a trophy with their team name professional engraved along with a Cubs logo ball signed by all the owners on Draft Day.  The previous year’s champion gets to sign in the place of honor just below the Cubs logo.  (It's faint, but you can just make out that at Draft Day 2004, Eric Lamb signed in the place of honor.  The Lambchops were the 2003 Champion.)  There are also two baseball cards in the trophy.  One is of the champion’s best offensive player and the other is of the champion’s best pitcher.  I won’t speak for anyone else, but this is what I compete for.  Not the prize money.  It’s this sitting on my mantel . . . or in my basement office since my wife probably wouldn’t let me put this on the mantel.

 

**  Side note – At the end of the 2009 season the owners of the CFCL unanimously spoke in one voice and named the trophy “The Copperfield Trophy” in honor of the CFCL’s most successful franchise.