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Don Mahley Born in Indiana, raised on the Chicago Cubs and Bears Married to Julianna, who tolerates baseball, though she says that the only reason there are organists at the ball park is to keep the fans awake. Vienna, Virginia Annandale Agates Annandale comes from the suburban location of the franchise when it started. Agates, as a kind of multi-faceted marble, describes the kind of patchwork team it was in the beginning. Worst Trade: Two loom as the worst. The first was when Marty Fiehl talked us out of Oester (and Fimple) for A. Bannister and Perconte, neither of whom stayed around long; the other is when Dan Warren got Brian Downing for Alex Trevino and a pitcher named Fontenot. It’s well known the Bees don’t trade often. One of the best was trading Butch Wynegar forBest Trade: The best has to be prying Frank White and Andy McGaffigan out of Harbor Beach for Rafael Ramirez, Marc Sullivan and a paltry $25,000. Another “gem” was getting Garvey and Kevin Gross (plus $13,000) for Tellman, Krueger, and Tim Foli - two of whom never again contributed to anything. Baseball Fortunes I well remember getting tired of the leagues a few years ago. To be honest, the same ennui still creeps up. I haven't stayed in the leagues - despite the relative (and unexpected, in TCBA-Y) successes of the Northern Virginia franchises this year, I'm still not convinced I know enough to do particularly well in the talent scouting department. And, to be blunt, I don't have the time to correct the situation unless I were to retire. All that means the real tie-breaker for me has been the people in the league. They put up with my irascible temper and fugues: despite certain members’ exasperating habits, and the problems of trying to get a good trade deal out of Jim McEneaney without selling your first-born as well as your franchise future, etc., the general attitude and conviviality of the whole crew is like an old shoe: a pretty comfortable fit, and one that you don't have to maintain a lot of formal images around. It is one of those things where I wonder both how long the crew can remain at least mostly intact and what the options are when drift finally sets in. We have had a stable league core membership, even for my late arrival, for longer than the median marriage lasts in this country. We have seen both some family crises (between divorces, additions of new babies, and employment traumas) as well as some significant aging (from the student phase to the adult phase, not that we are all getting creaky in the joints just yet) and other kinds of transitional moves, with hardly a ripple on the league surface. I like to think that some of the league relationships have been useful to members when there were significant stresses in other parts of their lives - and that for the good. I worry some times that when a crack finally appears, it will be a sudden disintegration - like that of safety glass when the surface is finally broken. ( I hope not - but am not a good enough psychologist to even guess more than as a random event.) Anyway, I have stuck around: and at the current rate and with the blessings of computers, modems, and E-mail, I may just make it for another 5-7 years --- but probably with not so much as a championship to show for it (which, as I stop to think of it, hasn't seemed to matter much to some other stalwarts like Al Keefer). Cheers, Don
Don Mahley 1996 Annandale Agates/ Fortney Gators/Woebegone Wombats
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