Sandbagged!

By a geek, no less.  Pete Toms scores a nice Q+A with the commish a few days ago - the contents of which can be found here.  Nice work.

You may recall that I wanted to explore the tension between MLB and the Independent Leagues a little further.  Pete fleshes some of that out in his interview with Miles Wolff, notably:

“Yes, relations are strained or almost non-existent. Before independent baseball, the minor leagues had a monopoly. Now, there are options for cities, and some minor league operators don’t like this. Plus, there seems to be an increased level of arrogance among some minor league owners. Those of us who have been in the game awhile don’t believe it is warranted.”

I had looked at an older interview (much older - circa 1994) and wanted to check first with Mr. Wolff to see if his position had softened at all - having read Pete’s interview, I don’t believe it has:

“What makes this success notable in the baseball world is that the Northern League is independent of Major League Baseball, the corporate entity that until last year controlled all the country’s minor leagues and most of its teams. Wolff and his partners have gone out on their own, competing with the big leagues for players and fans. They lack Major League Baseball’s imprimatur and financial support–but are free of its dictates. The Northern League’s success delights him.

“There is a bunch of idiots up there running Major League Baseball,” he says. “One thing we want to say to other minor league operators is, ‘You don’t have to work with these jerks. You don’t have to take it.’”

In his book Good Enough to Dream, an account of a season with the minor-league Utica Blue Sox, author Roger Kahn describes Miles Wolff as “bespectacled, thin armed, mild mannered, shrewd, and tough.” Wolff is also six-foot-two, trim, and, at age 50, still in possession of his hair. His office at Baseball America’s brick headquarters on tobacco-scented Durham’s South Duke Street is about as unassuming as an office gets. Some bathrooms have bigger windows than the scant rectangle of glass high over his desk, and some bathrooms are bigger, period. Amid the clutter are snapshots of Wolff’s two kids, a Northern League schedule thumbtacked to the wallboard, and a disassembled computer disk drive set on a shelf. On the floor stands a stack of The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Wolff’s latest publishing project and something he’s very proud of. On his desk is a large coffee mug that he reaches for throughout the day.

Slouched in a chair, Miles Wolff is courteous, businesslike and self-assured. When he discusses his success, he tends to do so in terms of its being no big deal. This may have less to do with modesty than with reserve. In conversation he’s cerebral and dispassionate; even when calling somebody a jerk, he makes it sound more like analytical precision than scorn.”

This of course, is a beautiful segue for me from a personal perspective; a huge part of the UOLB was fighting for the respect I felt the Ottawa Lynx organization had been denied for the better part of 10 years.  At least now, there’s seven other organizations in the same boat with us.

And finally, there’s this other bit of news.  Ottawa’s Can-AM entry has hired it’s second employee:  The new Director of Player Operations is none other than Ottawa’s own, Mike Kusiewicz.  Now, will he still be pitching?