Welcome to the Winter League. For those of you who expressed an interest in this, here is the format.

First of all, this is all for fun. NO fees, No hassles, no traveling, no pressure, just some fun. ALSO, it will keep us occupied and talking thru the winter.

This will be a DH league. I don't particularly care for that, but it will make it somewhat easier to play the games for the MM's. They don't always substitute for pitchers properly.

We will start in 1975. We will pick one player from each team. A total of 24 players. We will then pick 12 more players but no more than 1 more from each team. You will then, (after drafting) draft one more player who will be designated as your franchise player. He can be from any team.(making 3 players from 1 team possible). He can be someone who has been drafted by somebody else. (he Probably would be) He becomes a member of your team for at least 2 seasons. He cannot be traded or cut until 2 years are up. At the end of 2 years, if you no longer want him he will be cut and a new franchise player will be designated.

At the end of the year, we will cut back to 24 + your franchise player. One player from each team must remain on your roster. If you have made trades that leaves you with no player from that team, you will cut to 23 or 22 or whatever # of teams you have represented. It's also possible that your player got traded during that season leaving you short as well. You will draft the missing players first and the rest after filling your (every team) requirement, making sure you have each team represented on your team.

I said no traveling. You will play your home games at your house, at your conveinience. Approximately 1 series a week. Each series would be anywhere from 3 to 5 games. This process should only take about an hour to do. The files will be processed and sent back to me. There may be a week or so where you are on the road and won't be playing the games at all. You may just want to send instructions to the home team manager. OR, as I said, no pressure, just let em rip.

The whole procedure of setting up games, playing them, then sending the results back to me is not a difficult task. I talked Roger through it on the phone in about 30 seconds the first time around. The rest of you who tried the test league did it from the instructions without any problems. It is simple.

We will try an 84 game schedule to start this year. I would like to start the league sometime in late September. Why mention this now??? Because we will draft by E-mail. This will take some time to get people together an pick when it's your turn to pick. I would like to start the draft by August 1^st. I hope this will give up enough time to draft, if not, We can submit lists and go from there.

The players from 75 are posted. the file will take some time to load. There are some 800+ players listed along with their ratings. They are posted by roster. They are also posted by roster of who they STARTED the season with. This STARTING team is important as that is what determines who you have on your team for the following year.

Sounds simple huh??? Hope to just have fun with it.