December 26, 2023: Toyama — After a season of relative calm, we suppose it was only to be expected that something weird would happen in Toyama. A couple years ago, owner Paul Walker went on a financial rampage and decried his GM, then there was Cliffi-Leaks wherein internal documents were stolen from the team’s front offices and spread across the globe to the embarrassment of many. Then, of course, the fans put their foot down and demanded a change to the entire concept of the team (which resulted in an entire rebranding effort).

But the 2023 season happened to relatively little disruption, and lo and behold, the team won 98 games and went to the post season for the first time in their PEBA history. The Wind Dancers featured one of the better rotations in the league, a good bullpen, and the finest closer in league history. Offensively it was good enough to get things done most of the time, and defensively they were solid up the middle and had an All Leather recipient in right field.

The team drew record attendance and made record cash. The newbie manager turned out to be brilliant and well-loved, the owner raised the budget, and the league signed a contract that sent the Wind Dancers several Brinks trucks worth of bullion.

One would think it would all be steady-oh, eh?

I mean, set the main jib and hie thee up the sails, gather here the wind, and make it around the horn lassies and head for the Winter Meetings, for the sailing is going swimmingly, ain’t it dearie?

As they say, then: WTF, eh?

The facts are these.

1. Toyama Wind Dancer GM Ron Collins had a quiet breakfast alone in room on the 35th floor of the resort where the PEBA winter meetings were being held. Per hotel records it was a three-egg omelet with sausages and mushrooms and Colby jack cheese—and most certainly did not contain either crack, ecstasy, molly, acid, PCP, or any other hallucinogen under God, Laverick, or even Rodriguez we swear.
2. Communication records show he had a brief conversation with team owner Paul Walker (Walker confirms this, and said they merely conferred for a final time on the priorities of the team’s contraction draft process).
3. The floor staff reports that at some time, most likely after the phone call, a contingent of 6 or 8 people tromped down the hallway, upsetting her cart and making her pick up all the towels again—which she then states for the record she did most definitely send them back to the laundry staff and did not in any way put the towels that hit the floor into any of the rooms whatsoever.
4. That collection of people, all wearing dark suits and baseball caps of teams, specifically including a snazzy New Jersey cap (she knew that one because the deep maroon is her favorite color and makes her look … well … she wouldn’t go so far as to say “hot” because who is she to say, but that she likes herself in that color and her boyfriend doesn’t seem to mind either, if you know what she means) … anyway … these cart tippers pounded on the door to Collins’s room.
5. Whereupon Mr. Collins did so allow them to enter.

We all know what happened next. The dramatic pounding of the table at the contraction draft’s opening statements, and the quiet, yet firm words of reprimand from Collins about how the league should be ashamed of itself for running the little guys out of baseball, and that the PEBA was forgetting its roots as the local game, the it was becoming like the old defunct MLB in its greed and its avarice, and the this contraction process itself, focused as it were on the picking of the carcasses of six perfectly fine little baseball teams from six perfectly fine little cities, was a glaring example of it.

And we’ve all seen the phone videos of the Toyama General Manager storming out of the hall without making a selection at all—committing, apparently, the ultimate sacrifice upon the alter of altruism and loyalty to these teams by publicly announcing his resignation of his position under protest.

And so one is left to try to piece together what has actually happened.

Who were the 6-8 heavy cart tippers?

What did they say to Collins in the secrecy of his hotel room?

What, perhaps, did they have on him? Did they force mind-warping concoctions down his throat at gunpoint, or perhaps just slip him a mickey? Did he have a sudden Grinch Who Stole Christmas moment, and have his heart grow three sizes? And, if so, did something of his go through the laundromat itself and suddenly shrink back to perhaps even smaller than it’s original size? Or, did the phone call that came in from Paul Walker shortly thereafter includes some kind of conversation along the line of “I’ve got you under contract for another three seasons, and if you don’t make this right you owe me back all your bonus money from 2019 on,” or perhaps something slightly softer along the lines of “your resignation is denied, now get your ass to work?”

We will, perhaps, never know.

All we can say for sure is that Ron Collins, GM of the Toyama Wind Dancers, walked into his office this morning and petitioned PEBA officials to accept his apology, and if it was considered reasonable to include New Jersey’s Edison Terry and Marseille’s Ramiro Salinas as the team’s post-session selections, saying that “in reality, those were the guys we wanted anyway.” And that then he punched up his video conferencing software and held a conversation with manager Hirotada Suzuki as if nothing at all had happened.

The rest of us, as always with this team, watch onward, perplexed but entertained, and certain beyond all doubt that these last thirty-three words were not added merely to garner an extra CP.