As Webmaster for the award winning, highly popular, and most talked about website in the history of amateur baseball, I’m privy to information unavailable to the ordinary man. Since our season ended, my network of sources has reported that teams all across the NCBL have been wildly speculating about the immediate future of the SweatSox.
One of the rumours is that the SweatSox are folding. This would imply that the Trepanier Prophecy (he signs, he dominates, he terminates) has struck one of the Ottawa Recreational Baseball League’s original teams, and one of the National Capital Baseball League’s most valuable franchises.
It has not, we are not folding.
A more common rumour is that we’re open to expanding our roster by merging with a second team. We’ve heard from extremely reliable sources that the following teams are begging us to let them join: the Nepean Brewers (Tier 1), the Braves and Winchester Sox (Tier 2), the Dukes (Tier 3), and the Orleans Lynx (Tier 4). It seems the vultures are circling just because we lost a few games. It’ll take more than 17 losses to break up the SweatSox.
We’re all* back next year, we are not merging.
So now that we’ve established the SweatSox are sticking around in its current form, the question now becomes where exactly we’re going to play. As a result of finishing last in Tier 2 this year, by rule of the NCBL Constitution, the SweatSox must drop to Tier 3 next season.
By-Law 4.14 Teams that finish in last place, in the regular season, in Tiers I, II, and III shall move to Tiers II, III and IV respectively, in the following season.
I’ve been busy studying that very same Constitution over the past several weeks to see, should we so choose, if there was some way around it, and came across Bylaw 4.16:
By-Law 4.16 Notwithstanding By-Laws 4.14 and 4.15, a team may request to remain in or move to a Tier. Permission shall be granted if the teams in each Tier affected by such request agree by majority vote.
While it is tempting to go back to the tier where we went twenty three and one back in two thousand five, the fact is the last time we missed the playoffs, we won the championship the next year. The way Craig Cornell sees it: we’re the 2015 Tier 2 favourites!
We are making a pitch to stay in Tier 2. That pitch will be 4 words:
We’re the motherfucking SweatSox.
