My Savior - Gary Scott

The previous post is the part of Trading the Gator that  shows how owners prepare for the draft.  The plan for this blog was to have daily entrees from Draft Day 2013 through Draft Day 2014.  While we are in excess of 200 posts, we certainly have fallen short of our daily goal.

The clip from TTG, in part, explains why this time of the year is so hectic.  With spring training moving to actual games being played, Draft Prep is accelerating.  Prior to right now all we could do is look at projections, assumptions and last year's numbers.  Now we can actually see that one of our players pitched four innings giving up one run.  Or went 0-2.  Our time starts to get used up.

The CFCL has eleven owners who are professionals so there is the career thing to take up our time.  Seven owners are married and with that comes responsibilities and time commitments.  Four owners have young children which bring with it more awesome responsibility and time commitments.  The DoorMatts, thus far, are the only CFCL team to have "graduated" through the young reliant children stage to the empty nest stage, so while they dealt with the above challenges for many years as a CFCL owner, they currently enjoy endless amounts of time to surf the net for baseball nuggets.

Oh yeah, and it's also the time of year that Uncle Sam gets really interested in our money so there's a time commitment to organize our tax information, unless we want to wait until after the draft to put our accountants under the gun to meet the deadline.

There's a lot going on at this time of the year for all fantasy owners and unfortunately being creative on a daily basis has become a losing battle.  My apologies if you are a daily visitor looking for the latest memory of CFCL life from the past 30 years.

But having watched the TTG clip and seeing updates on the MLB network naturally made me think of  . . . Gary Scott.

It was spring training of the 1991 season.  The Rebels were coming off a very disappointing 6th place finish and needed to make a move for the future.  As we saw with the Will Clark Incident and the Jeff Stone Incident, pre-season hype can be costly.  Well, the Rebels are slow learners.  Reports out of Arizona all spring training long were about this phee-nom that was tearing up every pitcher he faced. 

Gary Scott was a 22 year old thirdbase prospect who, heading in to spring training, was not supposed to make the club out of camp.  He was viewed as someone who could be the next great thirdbaseman since Ron Santo, but he was not supposed to be that guy in 1991, in April.  But Gary would NOT be denied.  Every day the sports report on WGN radio told about Scott going 1-3 or 2-4 with an RBI. 

I used to listen to Spike O'Dell in the afternoons and I specifically remember about halfway through spring training the sports guy was doing an update and said "And from Arizona, Spike, guess who just drove in the winning run again?"  Spike responded "Not Gary Scott again!"  Sportcaster, "Yep."

Scott made the club and that sealed it in this GM's mind.  I HAD TO HAVE Gary Scott.  I built my entire draft around getting Scott and riding him to the title while he helped the Cubs win their division.  As the draft loomed nearer I sweated and fretted how to approach Scott.  Should I nominate him early when everyone else might be focusing on the likes of Charlie Hayes, Terry Pendleton and Matt Williams? 

But this is a Cubs Fan League.  Bringing him up early in the draft when everyone had money to spend could cause his price to be higher as emotional Cub fans drafted their teams.

If I waited too long, I may not budget my money properly and someone could lay in wait and snag him just beyond what I could afford.  Oh the dilemmas.

As it turns out, I don't recall exactly how it played out as to when Scott was nominated.  All I remember, as we drafted in the apartment David and I shared in Forest Park, was that I GOT GARY SCOTT!!!!!  And I got him for a steal - .09!!!!  My season is made!  I also seem to recall that everyone else on my "Have to Have List" ended up on my team as well.  What a shrewd drafter am I!

The one lasting memory I have is right after I bid .09 on Scott and the last standing owner folded, I exclaimed some sort of victory expression.  I also remember the other owners more or less looking at me as if to say "You poor fool.  This is just another example of a Cub having a great Arizona experience who will no doubt fail."

What did they know?  I wanted Scott.  I got Scott and together we would pop champagne together.  We would raise pennants together.  We would be awesome!

The results?

1991 - Rebels finished 5th (better than 1990 but a half point worse in accumulated points).

Gary Scott - one homerun, five RBIs, batting average of .165 and in the minors by May.

Foiled again.