(scheduled for March 4, 2000)
This is the Thirty Tyrants draft methodology. I'd like every league GM to email me their three favorite tyrants. From this list, I'll assemble a list of 30 official tyrants from which we'll choose next month. At the start of the draft, each GM will have to select one tyrant from the pool. That tyrant will reveal a major league organization for the 2001 draft. Consider a broad definition of tyrant. My three will include, for example, Charles Comiskey.
The real Thirty Tyrants were an oligarchy of Spartans appointed to rule Athens after the Peloponnesian War. The complete list of their names is unknown, so we work in metaphor, since the term itself has been applied to other despotic oligarchies.
Okay, now think broadly and tyranically, folks.
DAVE: Dr. Doom (arch foe of the Fantastic Four and wanna be world dictator), the Red Skull (arch foe of Captain America, formerly served under Hitler (in the comic world anyway) and wanna be world dictator, and what more appropriate name than Tyrannus (Incredible Hulk villain and ibid)
DAN: Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, also Oliveira Salazar, the Portugese fascist dictator...and for the third, J. Edgar Hoover ... who can bring his fashion sense to the proceedings
KIP: Tyrant Number One is and will always be MARGARET THATCHER! Tyrant Number Two is and will always be Kennisaw Mountain Landis! Tyrant three is my tyrant of the day, and that would be MICHAEL JORDAN for his callous exploits with the Washington Wizards.
RON YOUNG:
2) Juan Vicente Gomez. Ruled Venezuela 1908-1935. Was the longest lasting Latin American ruler until surpassed by Fidel Castro
3) Anastasio Somoza. First of the Nicaraguan Somozas, took power in 1937. Hear he was a Dennis Martinez fan.
JIM: Simon Legree, Emperor Palpatine, Caligula
ROLF: Charles Comiskey, Atilla the Hun, Archers Daniels Midland
NILS: Humbert Humbert, King Leopold II, Cruella de Vil
MIKE:
2) Charles Foster Kane (as played by Orson Welles), whose tyrannical nature, so to speak, leaves him a broken and lonely man through the very end of the great American masterpiece, "Citizen Kane."
3) Scottie Ferguson (as played by Jimmy Stewart) in Alfred Hitchcock's best film, "Vertigo." At the end of "Vertigo," which stands the test of time as one of American cinema's greatest works, Scottie becomes a tyrant to Judy Barton (Kim Novak) and is unable to love her for herself.
Since we haven't gotten tyrants from all GMs and stand three tyrants short of 30, I offer these three figures to round out the lot:
Vlad the Impaler, Prince Vlad Tepes, the model for Bram Stoker's Dracula
Duty, all that we must do measured against what we prefer to do