‘HEADS’ HEAD HONCHOS HAPPY OVER HISTORIC HAUL

[KenH]

You’ll have to forgive the Featherheads’ war room today. They’re not really giving interviews. It’s been a big day. A short, big day. If Hannahs’ comments leading up today are any indication, this was a long time coming.

“To be honest, today was probably the most pivotal single moment ever in our franchise,” scouting coordinator Ed McDaniel said, holding a few fingers of scotch in a rocks glass. “We feel incredibly fortunate to bring aboard the next generation of Featherheads.”

Normal draft day war rooms are a chaotic mess – reams of paper, scouting reports, thirty tvs playing clips of potential picks, curated down to lay bare the essence of the considered player. The center of an information maelstrom, the room can come to look like the platonic ideal of mania. Fast food wrappers, plates of forgotten food and stale coffee litter any spare space on tables and even the floor.

The Florida Featherheads war room had no such insanity. The multiple long boardroom tables where sweating scouts would make last minute pitches for their prized prospects had been excised and replaced with rows of seating, more akin to theater than a center of deliberation, heartburn, and male pattern baldness. A buffet had been assembled. A bartender presided over a fully stocked assortment of libations. Most interestingly, upon first walking in, a space was being set up for a deejay. This was unlike any draft war room I had ever seen in over two decades of reporting on the Featherheads. In fact, you could say this was not even a draft room… this was a party.

Drew Streets, effervescent as always, held court among the significantly increased crowd. Here there were the scouts and executives, but also their families. There were no decisions made this morning – no last-minute haggling. The Featherheads knew who they were taking and, if Hannahs is to be believed, had known for years who their guys were.

With ten minutes left before the draft was set to begin, Streets motioned for people to find their seats as he addressed them.

“This is a big day for the Featherheads,” began Drew Streets, fabled owner, and entrepreneur. As he spoke, he paced in his Italian leather wingtips, emblazoned on the heel with a platinum and gold Featherheads logo. “Today, we embark on a new chapter of this wonderful and fabled franchise we are all lucky enough to be a part of. This is, obviously, different than what I’m sure all of you have come to expect from our team, but this felt right. We’ve worked hard to make sure we are establishing something great here - something that will stand for years to come. This is a monumental moment in the history of our franchise, and I wanted to be here with all of you who had worked tirelessly to bring the Featherheads more years of continued greatness. I salute you all. Further, I wanted to say thank you to Ken Hannahs for pulling off a draft strategy so bold that the commissioner was given no choice to but change the rules after we were done. As someone who appreciates bold and inventive strategies that cause disruption, I couldn’t be more thrilled to see what comes next for this team. I know that with his and your hard work, we will bring forth a bold new era of Featherheads baseball. Play ball!”

As the clock struck the top of the hour, commissioner Harry Castle gave his opening remarks and opened the draft which led to a raucous cheer from those assembled inside the “war room.”

Over the next ten minutes, the middling Featherheads farm system would transform into the jewel of PEBA.

Three Featherheads greats had been invited to announce the names of the new players being added to the fold – Tsumemasa Morimoto, Luis “Digger” Torres, and Kevin McNeill. All three players great in their own right and all three teammates on the 2011 Featherheads squad when they brought home their first Rodriguez Cup. Tsumemasa Morimoto was the firepower – the inveterate slugging first basemen, Morimoto hit 50 in 2011. Luis Torres was no slouch either, belting 30 of his own. Finally, there was Kevin McNeill, the switch-hitting second basemen who had a career OBP of almost .400.

There were no calls in and out of the war room because, again, this was not a war room. This was a party.

Tsumemasa Morimoto took to the stage first and begun the next chapter. "With the first pick of the 2031 draft, the Florida Featherheads are thrilled to select first baseman Vito van Wondel, hailing from s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. The 4 year senior from University of Sydney holds career records for batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, total bases and wins above replacement in the ICOL and has swept batter of the year for four years in the league."

The room exploded with cheers well before Morimoto had even finished reading the accomplishments of van Wondel’s amateur career. As he finished, the crowd grew silent again as Morimoto left the stage. The television broadcast was on on the far TV. On the screen was a beaming square-jawed Netherlander giving an interview in broken English, but it didn’t matter. Excitement and joy is universal – it requires no language beyond the elemental transcribings of the Orbicularis oris, stretching into a smile so wide, a filling on a back molar is visible.

Back to the action as Luis “Digger” Torres ascended the two steps and up to the podium. “With the second pick of the 2031 draft, I am honored to announce the Florida Featherheads have selected Arizona State center fielder Gordon Knopp out of Arizona State. The West Virginia native stands alone as the most productive position player that has ever played in the USCBA, averaging 6.27 WAR per season.  A well-rounded prospect, Knopp performs admirably in the batters box and in center field and holds top three spots in career zone rating in center field and career OPS among ALL eligible players."

Reader, it is no exaggeration to say that literal tears were shed at Knopp’s name being called. The lithe center fielder looks, for all intents and purposes, to be the second coming of all universe center fielder Pat Watson. It was around this time that silver catering carts where wheeled into the room, holding buckets of ice in which were very nearly fifty bottles of unopened champaign. You wouldn’t know that the Featherheads team as it’s currently fielded is only one game over .500 and playing some of the most uninspired baseball ever put together by a team in the powder blues.

It was no coincidence that these great Featherheads of yore were chosen. These men are the embodiments of success that these new guns hope to strive for. None of these are more apparent than with Kevin McNeill presenting the Featherheads third and final pick on the first day of the 2031 PEBA draft. "With the third pick in the 2031 draft, the Florida Featherheads select Michael Roberts, a second baseman out of Los Angeles, California. Roberts holds the career record for WAR in the Interscholastic Federation. A strong fielder and hitter, Roberts has won three season awards each for both his elite offense and defense."

The party raged for several hours with several guests looking back at the big screen to surveil who the competition had settled on, but in that room, the Featherheads were no longer the team on the field – at least not entirely. The assembled saw the F-Heads for who they were going to be. For the moment, the season record didn’t matter quite as much. The fans and the executives were sharing a vision for what this team would be. It was a team helmed by phenoms van Dam, Acosta, Morimoto, van Wondel, Knopp and Roberts – kids that grew up in the farm system and made good. While it wasn’t there quite  yet, they could almost taste it. It is just around the corner.

Tomorrow the war room will take on a more traditional look -- papers festooned, scouting reports circled in glaring yellow highlighter – but for tonight, there was none of that. Perhaps some will say that the celebrations are premature. I would say to that that when your team is fighting to secure a second wildcard spot, you have to take those celebrations where you can find them. Hold onto them. Cherish the successes big and small, because not every year is your year. Sometimes you’re building something for the future, and all you can do is look at it in the far distance, smiling so wide that the filling in your back molar shows.

[Leones]

I believe the correct response is booo! :)

Well planned, and the article was fun too!

[KenH]

Thanks, Patrick!