We held our first meeting of the 2011 season, where we welcomed Jeff Graves to the team and bid farewell to Steve Wiley. Wiley will be around to help out however his doctor has told him he needs to quit playing. His retirement speech let us all know we haven’t been living up to our potential. We also discussed adding 1-2 more players in light of losing Steve and possibly Ed Stewart. Ed stated he was reluctant to travel to Phoenix as AAA again.
The tentative schedule is posted for 2011 however we discussed going SPA this year as opposed to SSUSA. Denny said he will look into SPA and provide more info in the future.
Steve also gave us an update on the Fall League. The city has more than tripled the cost for the fields. We had already discussed raising the fees , this confirms it the figure discussed was $300. Steve’s projection was that we would net around $1000, however we would only be able to pay one umpire per field.
Sponsors, we need sponsors at this point. Johnny is asking for $150 from each player to cover our costs. As in previous years the intent is to pay as much of that back as possible. I would make this suggestion if each of us were to get sponsorship for ourselves to cover our own $150 and $150 extra for $300 total from each player, we would be in pretty good shape without taking anything out of our own pocket. If just ten of us manage that it’s more than the all the players fees from last year.