The original Smokey Louis draft was an experience. Honestly, we put the league together on a bit of a shoestring. We were really scrounging for that last owner or two (partly because Chopper inexplicably declined to join the league that first year. . .what's up with that?!). Anyway, we had to invite a guy named Donnie Smith to own a team. Smokey Louis vets, do you remember him? He's the guy who knew so little about baseball that I once had to explain to him just what an RBI was.
Donnie owned a team called the Lucky Lefties. Before that first draft, Donnie, Jeff Gary, Dave and I went to Applebee's for a few beers. Donnie downed a couple of glasses, got drunk with stunning rapidity, and started babbling nonsensical sentences that were usually punctuated with "Oh Boy." He was obviously nervous as hell. On the drive to the draft site, he kept saying: "Oh boy, Rabbi Dave, Rabbi Dave" since Dave had decided to name his team the Rockin' Rabbis. Now, Dave is an easygoing guy, but he was tiring of this nonsense as was I. I was trying to get locked in to draft mode so I too was a bit tense (shocker huh?). Dave told me later that if he had heard one more "Oh boy" he would have done bodily harm to Donnie. Thankfully it didn't come to that.
The main draft site was a computer lab at Maryville College in Tennessee. The St. Louis owners--Joe, Kuth, Ron and V--were on speaker phone. All of us randomly picked a draft order since this was the first ever draft. I got the last pick. Everyone laughed. I was thrilled--NOT. After that I was poring over my spread sheets, wondering how I was going to get who I wanted in the first round, when Dave came up to me. "Johnny, I'll give you five dollars for your pitcher information." My jaw must have hit the floor. He was bribing me for my draft prep info! With only five dollars! What a big spender! I politely declined and suggested that perhaps Dave should have prepared his own info. We still laugh about this.
Most of the teams had not submitted names yet so, before the drafting started, I asked each owner what his club name would be. I distinctly remember asking this question to Ron over the speakerphone. He paused, as if caught off guard. Then he blurted out: "The Broken Cups!" What the hell, everyone thought? But, as usual, Ron was a step ahead of us. That spring, John Kruk had testicular cancer and he blamed it on getting hit by a ball in his groin so hard that it broke his cup and gave him cancer. With our usual maturity, the name eventually morphed into the B-Cups, a classic moniker now.
The team with the first pick was called the Black Sox. It's the same franchise that is now known as the Ball Girls. In those days, two guys, Neal Crosby and Derek French, owned the Black Sox. One of the two--Derek I think--was late. Now, all of you know how much I like tardiness on draft night. So you can just imagine the steam coming out of my ears as minute after minute ticked by and we're all waiting on a guy whom we've never met to show up. I was literally this close (index finger a millimeter from thumb) to revoking their draft choice, when in walks Derek as if on a Sunday stroll. It wasn't a good way to start his Smokey Louis career but he more than made up for it. He turned out to be a really good guy.
The first pick in that draft was Barry Bonds. The last pick was Bobby Ayala. Donnie the Lucky Lefty guy picked Tommy Greene with his first ever pick. If there's ever been a worse fantasy baseball pick, I have not yet heard of it. I recently did some research on that draft and discovered that none of the first round picks from that night are still with their present teams in 2007. But many spent years with their clubs. Mike Piazza was Dave's for years. Greg Maddux anchored the Mockingbirds/Commanders/Hoosier Daddies for a decade. Kuth had Roberto Alomar for at least half a decade. Frank Thomas was a Practice Jersey forever, until he got too fat and too slow. I picked Ken Griffey with the tenth overall pick and he was my anchor until about 2001-2002 when he turned into a Prior-like injury machine.
There's one little known fact from that 1994 draft. The Mockingbirds picked Alex Rodriguez in the 25th round. Can you imagine that happening now? Of course, he was all of 18 years old then, but still. . . .
Donnie Smith, our "Oh Boy"-ing, Branch Rickey-like guru, picked Michael Jordan in that draft. Now, that would have been a hell of a pick in an NBA fantasy league, but not so much in baseball. So what happened to young Donnie? By mid-season he was not having much fun, particularly since his team specialized in losing games. My sense was that baseball to him was as bewildering as quantum physics is to me. The poor guy had no clue what he was doing and it was affecting competetive balance in the league. So he gracefully bowed out. Well, that was the standard story. Actually we "helped" him make that wise decision, much the same way that the Rams and Mike Martz made a "mutual" decision that he should move on. Donnie's departure brings to mind an arcane Smokey Louis trivia question. Who is the only undefeated owner in the history of the league? Answer: Ben Zorio. Ben was a friend of Dave's. He took over the Lucky Lefties for the rest of the 1994 season and won all three of his games. Then we never heard from him again. Poor Chopper--at long last coming to his fantasy baseball senses the next year-- was left to pick up the shambles of the franchise.
We've obviously come a long way from those early days, but I think it's fair to say that, from the start, we could all sense that this league was something special.
The Commissioner
The Practice Jerseys are an interesting team. Over the last few years they have been a perennial contender and have taken the trophy home once. Yet the team is an interesting blend of young talent and wily veterans. The big question is whether those veterans will stay healthy enough in 2007 to allow the PJs to make it back to the playoffs.
Has there been an ownership group handed a franchise in worse shape than Hemann & Co.? Though the Sticks were in similarly miserable shape when Chopp took over, the Slump Busters paid a heavy price in the first few years of Smokey Louis for the previous owner's mistakes. Will this be the year that the Ghost of the One-Eyed Jacks is finally exorcized?
No team in Smokey Louis comes close to the 6--count them 6--rings that the Celtics have. That's enough rings to fill 
