Charleston: Glenn Harris joins the grand old men in Charleston as the new Team Trainer. Word comes from people what I can’t tell you about that Mr. Harris – who attended the wounded bones and sore feelings of the Reno Zephyrs last year – isn’t paid all that much, but I guess these days anyone should be glad to have a job. Next year will be interesting, when manager Aric Kinast, bench coach Hisashi Kimura and pitching coach José Martínez all face contract renewals.

There has been a lot of interest in Dean O’Monahan, a player who could move a lot of woes away from Charleston if there was some way they could get him to play for less (are you listening, Conan McCullough)! But the front office has been Hamlet in Act II, equivocating – do we want to move Fate? do we not want to move Fate? – and have turned down all offers so far.

This leaves the Statesmen in a real pickle. They have to move their salary down, but the only player anyone seems to want is one they don’t want to get rid of! Sooner or later, the Colonel suspects the Statesmen are going to have to give Fate up….

Front Office Woes: With Sue Beckley now controlling 35 percent of the Statesmen, the sniping war between Beckley and majority owner Charles Pinckney continues. Trenches are being dug in the front office, and it will make that little old War Between the States look like an ice cream social. It looks like other golf companies have caught on to the Titanic Clubs idea and have learned how to make their own unsinkable golf clubs and Pinckney’s company stock is sinking like…well, the Titanic. While Pinckey tries to run his company and the Statesmen at the same time; Sue Beckley has moved into a corner office and like any newlywed is trying to rearrange the furniture more to her liking.

“Who’s the boss of this club anyway?” an anonymous tipster told Colonel Crank. “We ask Mr. Pinckney for direction and we don’t get an answer for days. Meanwhile, we keep getting all these memos from Beckley. Beckley says something, Pinckney countermands it. People are taking sides and this can’t go on much longer!”

Gonna be a reallll interesting 2018. And by “interesting” the Colonel means highly disagreeable and woesome. We are entering the desert to wander for about forty years.

Raleigh: The El Dorados finally have a manager. Enrique Cortéz comes to the club from the Dominican Republic – he was a Manager of the Year down there in 2014. Even though he doesn’t have any American managerial experience, hopefully he’ll find Raleigh muy bueno.

Rockville: Don’t think the organization is going to leave C Jesús Negrete sitting in Sitka. According to team sources, he’s going to be moving to AA Rockville barring disaster. Rumor has it that he didn’t fit in very well at A-level Cheyenne for the Omaha Cyclones because he was a me-first kind of guy. But Charleston felt highly enough of him to trade away SP Seu Tong for him. He’ll be the straw that stirs the drink in Rockville while CF Odilon Infinita – the previous drink-stirrer at Rockville – moves up to Raleigh.