Category: Offseason

Good snowy day today guys,

It’s days like today that make me think of hot days on Wednesday nights. Last night we had our postseason dinner and awards night. Big thanks to Mike and Rick at the JCC for making it all happen. Below are the winners of all of the awards. Congrats to everyone who was nominated. 

Ron Rose Rookie of the Year – Ian Segall

MVP – Griffin Harris

Offensive Player of the Year – Cam Kirzner

Defensive Player of the Year – David Wertheim

Comeback Player of the Year – Jimmy Lefton

Tournament MVP – Dan McGrath

All-Star Game MVP – AJ Goldhoff and Stu Solomon

Frank Harkavy Goodwill Ambassador – Ryan Silverman

Marcus Kruke Sportsmanship Award- Bob Pelberg

League Champion – Team Goldhoff

Post-Season Tournament Champion – Team Solomon

On top of that we had a nice Q&A with former JCC Blue Jays player, Charlie Goldsmith. He was very informative on what it’s like to cover the Reds and Bengals.  A couple of the highlights were talking about how the Bengals have denied all the Bengals beat writers the chance to talk to Duke Tobin, that they will continue to operate the way they see fit, wins and losses be damned, and that first round pick Shemar Stewart is currently the worst player on the Bengals, which is saying something.

On the Reds front, he didn’t have an answer for why the Reds won’t spend more money on payroll, that Banana Bob loves the Reds so much he meddles in the front office (but not enough to actually spend money on a winner) and that he agrees with me that the Reds should trade Cam Collier because he has no place to play and won’t be on the Reds for at least two more years. He is worried about the lockout, unfortunately. If he didn’t stop questions I think we (I) would have kept him there all night. 

Finally, he said he knew Mike Youkilis and it was fun to talk to Tito Francona about his connection to him when he was hired. That was very cool to hear..

League notes:

Thanks to all of you who came out for the Oy Vey 5K yesterday. Yes, it was cold but that didn’t stop Adam from defending his title of fastest 5K runner in the league. I beg/implore all of you to come out and try to beat him next year. Once again, ALL of the money goes back to the Blue Jays and softball and basketball league. 

Happy birthday to the following:

Pete “The Straw that Stirs the Drink” Soltesz

Mark Weisser

Steve Z (and get better from your shoulder surgery) 

If I missed your birthday since the end of the season, sorry.

Happy anniversary to Rick and Betsy Lefton

And Congrats to Ryan “The One Man Gang” Marcus on getting married

While OSU looks like the best team in football it will be interesting to see if their schedule and total lack of playing any teams any good (which is a 100% reflection on the lousy Big 10) and not at all on OSU) will come back to bite them in the tournament. I’m not sure what I would like more. to see Bama and UGA struggle to beat teams in the meat grinder of the SEC or to be OSU and just crush everyone without playing as hard a schedule. Again this is not to take anything away from the Buckeyes. You play who you play, but are they as good as the top of the SEC? In a few weeks we will find out. 

After two games, I have no clue if UC is good in basketball. I can tell you I haven’t seen a player like Baba Miller on UC maybe ever. The dude is 6-9 or so, can dribble like a point guard and can throw it down like a power forward. He might be the best player on the team or it could be that they play Little Sisters of the Poor for the first month. Just like with the Buckeyes, we will find out soon if UC and Miller are legit.

I started watching the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame concert the other night. They opened it with a tribute to Sly and the Family Stone (Sly Stone died earlier this year), with Stevie Wonder, Joe Perry, Beck, Flea, Questlove, some other R&B guy and Jennifer Hudson all in the band they didn’t hold a candle to prime Sly. Not even close. One of the greatest bands ever.

On the other hand, Bryan Adams rocked it fronting a couple of Bad Company songs. 

I have not confirmed that Roger camped out over night at Skyline Chili to get the Bengals bobbleheads first but I wouldn’t put it past him.

Stay warm out there. April isn’t that far away, right?

Marc

Hi everyone

I figured the day after the Super Bowl would be as good a time as any to catch everyone up on the offseason. 

First as most if not all of you know I can’t stand Ohio State and make it a point to remind all the guys in the league that they normally root for the 4-5th best team each season. So as much as it pains me to say I have to congratulate all of them on winning the National Title a couple of weeks ago. A very impressive run they had through the post season. Let’s hope Alabama can get back in it next year or I will be the one eating crow again.

Congrats goes out to Matt Miller and former player Ben “Weezie” Lefton on getting engaged this off season

A ton of birthdays since the last time we all spoke:

Former league batting champ Corey “May the” Schwartz be with you and I believe his brother Taylor “I believe your Schwartz is as big as mine” got married!

Birthdays:

Dee Harris

Todd “The Mayor” Wasserman

Duffy “Hungry Like A” Wolf

Jimmy Lefton 

Scott “Shorty” Adams

AJ Goldhoff

Dr. Bob Pelberg

Matt Leader

Micah Kamrass 

Also, I think both Brooke Fogel and Laurie Lefton celebrated birthdays… and I am sure there are a lot more, so if I missed you, Happy Birthday!

In alumni league news:

Ryan Kirzner’s daughter (Jerry’s granddaughter)  Sasha is going to be a Florida Gator next year (she is also her school’s valedictorian) 

Jeff Cohen’s daughter Zora graduated from USF.

Jeff “The Natural” Weisbrot’s son, Evan, became a bar mitzvah last month. Congrats to the Weisbrot family!

I believe Oren Schmoel, Jimmy Lefton,  Joel “Sparky” Fogel (and I’ll even mention me) all celebrated wedding anniversaries over the last couple of months. All praise goes to our wives for putting up with us.

Get well wishes to Ryan “The One Man Gang” Marcus who, if reports are to be believed, slipped on the ice and hurt his knee. 

Finally, in league news he did it on the down low (which I wasn’t happy about), but let’s all raise a buffalo wing and Krispy Kreme donut to Eppy who announced post season that last year was his last in the league. His first year was 1974, when Dick Allen was the highest paid player in baseball ($250,000), Nixon was still in the White House and the Big Red Machine hadn’t won a World Series yet. For all of us who played with and against Eppy and enjoyed his generosity at the Spring House, we wish him well in retirement (from the league) and hope he comes out to watch us play from time to time. Thanks for everything Eppy!

Speaking of Dick Allen, congrats to him and Dave “The Cobra” Parker who both made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. Eppy, or maybe Mark Weisser, tells the story of the one time Dave Parker came out to one of our games at the old JCC. If I remember it correctly he only had spikes with him and when told he couldn’t play with them never set foot on the field and just walked off. I would have liked to see him hit a couple of balls into the pool.  

And last but not least, if you are in the market for a Chris Mack Bobblehead don’t forget to give Roger a call. He has a couple. 

See everyone soon.

Marc

A  busy offseason for the league last night culminated in the election of a new Commish, Adam Cronstein. Let’s all wish Adam well as he has big shoes to fill after Ryan Silverman. Ryan, a big tip of the cap to you for the past 3 seasons. You did a great job and we can’t thank you enough. A quick bio on our new Commish:

Adam has played in the league for over 20 years and was brought into the league the same way a lot of us were, by his dad. He played with his dad and his brother, who joined the league a few years later, for several years. Adam has been married for 13 years and has two kids Ari and Zev, who both come out to the games from time to time and play ball. Just like all of us with sons, Adam hopes to still be playing when they are old enough to play in the league.  Adam told us a story last night that I can relate to. When he was a captain and was on the ratings committee, he was a passenger in a car driven by his wife in a snow storm to a wedding in upstate New York. While his wife was driving and white knuckling the steering wheel, Adam was kicking back talking about the softball draft for hours. That sums up our new Commish nicely. 

In other news, AJ Goldhoff and Scott Friend were elected to serve on the Commission. Congrats, guys!

A ton of birthdays since the end of the season and I’m sure that I missed a few:

Brad “the Human Rain delay” Wagner

Pat “Sunshine” Feldman

Olivia “The Big O” Goldhoff

Albert Weisbrot

Pete “The Straw that Stirs the Drink” Soltesz

Joel “Sparky” Fogel

Scott Sadler

Corey Noris

A couple of big anniversaries as well:

Rick Lefton

Scott “Dire” Wolf

AJ Goldhoff

Engagements:

Ryan “The One Man Gang” Marcus

Former league MVP Mark “Big Blue” Tenenholtz

And finally, one wedding as Evan Gildenblatt got married.

In other Tenenholtz news, Rick retired from his job and is now playing golf, advising Triple Creek on rain outs, and I believe may be helping coach Walnut Hills baseball, if I heard correctly last night. 

Congrats to everyone who won awards a couple of weeks back at the banquet and a big shout out to Mr. Mike for the nice plaques this year. 

For those of you who signed up for the Oy Vey 5K, thank you and sorry that it got rained out. Be ready for next year already as it will be back better than ever. 

I can’t remember if Tito Francona was hired by the Reds before the last blog posts, but if not my take is great hire for the Reds. Unfortunately he can’t hit, run or pitch. The good news though is that he brought in former Red, Chris Valaika, as his hitting coach. When he was with the Guardians they didn’t strike out nearly as much as the Reds did last year. Did you know the Reds had 5 players strike out over 100 times with Elly leading all of baseball with 213!!! 213 times Elly didn’t even put the ball in play. If he can cut down on that, the Reds will be much better.  Watching Tito on the great Netflix series about the 2004 Red Sox, you can see why he is such a good manager. The total opposite of David Bell. 

As for the Bengals, am I the only one that sees them going the way the Reds did with Votto and just wasting the prime years of Burrow and Chase? God I hope not, but when you are as good as those two (Plus Trey) and your team is 4-7, you know you are going the wrong way. 

Count me on board as loving the new college football playoffs. According to Temple Sholom’s star alumnus, Stewart Mandell from the Athletic: 23 teams are still in the running for one of the 12 spots compared to 8 last year.  How great would it be for the Army to make it? Or see Alabama come to Bloomington or South Bend to play IU or ND? 

In a story that might only interest me, I found it amusing that the owners of Heritage Bank Center, after the report came out about how much we need a new arena, are now saying we should build it on the current site. If only they had put ANY money into that dump over the last 30+ years maybe we won’t need a new arena. I don’t care what those clowns have to say when it comes to the new arena. Just get it done so we can get the NCAA tournament, conventions and concerts like Kacey Musgraves, who went to both the YUM Center in Louisville and Nationwide Arena in Columbus just last week while skipping Cincy. 

Finally, Roger and I will be lobbying the Reds to do bobbleheads of journeymen of the 80’s this season since the Reds have pretty much done all of the Reds we would want. So with Roger’s expert advice we are pitching bobbleheads of Eddie Milner, Ron Robinson, Kurt Stillwell and Kal Daniels. 

Be on the lookout soon for news about next season. Registration starts on January 1!

Have a nice Turkey Day, everyone.