Jose Abreu goes first in RCMBA draft

It’s draft time now in many APBA baseball leagues.  The Roberto Clemente Memorial Baseball Association is no exception as they conducted their annual draft last weekend.  When rumors of their top picks spread among my league’s email list, I contacted John Briggs of the RCMBA.  John responded by not only sending me the full draft results but by writing up a report and sending some photos! 

First the results, here is how the first round went in the RCMBA draft:

You can see all 17 rounds of RCMBA results at the RCMBA website. 

But who all attended the draft?  Fortunately, the RCMBA managers took a group photo (Illowa APBA League, let’s do this at this year’s draft!).

Left to right:  Joe Skovran, Joe Reagan, Joe Jutzi, Bob Fenili, John Briggs, Ed Morgans, Ed Farmer, Mike Fisher, Mark Gaudiano (seated), Ken Brand

I told John it was nice to put some faces to names that I’ve seen online for so many years.  John wanted to attest to the RCMBA managers’ dedication to the league. 

Joe Skovran flew in from Florida.
Joe Reagan drove from Rochester NY
Bob Fenili flew in from a business trip from Atlanta
Mike Fisher drove from Columbus Ohio area
Ken Brand drove from middle of Missouri
I drove from Syracuse NY area
Joe Jutzi drove from Baltimore, Ed Farmer & Mark Gaudiano from Pittsburgh.
Ed Morgans drove in for the draft on Saturday morning.

RCMBA in action!

According to John, in the above photo Mark (left) is listening to some advice, Joe Skovran (right) is eavesdropping, Joe Reagan (center) is checking what the cards look like of his potential selections.

Here is John Briggs’ fantastic report on the RCMBA 2015 draft:

We all stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Rockvale Outlet Mall in Lancaster. We’ve stayed there the last six or seven years. We used the breakfast area of that motel as you’ll see in the other photos. Everyone had their own tables, and if your needed some refreshments, soda, juice, coffee still left out by the motel.

We’ve been going to Lancaster every year since the league was formed back in the 70’s. It used to be we’d all go over to the game company and this would be everyone’s first chance to see the cards. Since the cards are available in early January the point of this annual gathering is to see each other and hold our annual draft. In our league only carded players of the current card set are available. We have 15 teams that can retain 30 players at most pre-draft. It’s 8 rounds and extra rounds are available if someone cuts their roster to below 30. This year with 10 making the trip (our best turnout in many years) it was fun to have so many available to swap draft slots during the draft. Fun to eavesdrop too. The other five managers were on-line in Rolz.org room. We began the draft at noon and selected 161 players in just under three hours. Mr Irrelevant was Odalis Perez.

All but one of the 10 arrived Friday and left Sunday morning. Debates about all kinds of things beyond our league always occur. Should this guy be a Hall of Famer? Best music, movies and 12 trades post draft are always fun. Of course where do we eat is always big. This year it was Brooklyn Pizza on Friday night. Saturday morning breakfast is always Jenny’s Diner but this year it was closed for remodeling. So for the first time ever we had to decide on where to go. Aunt Jenny’s won and it was just as good. The price is right and if you can eat more than one pancake you can be a hero. Dinner was going to be Miller’s Smorgasbord but waiting 90 minutes was not an option so Hershey Farms was the winner. The traditional Bob Evans for breakfast Sunday morning and goodbye handshakes until next year.

John, I want to thank you for sending all this info.  I feel I know ten time more about the RCBMA than I used to.  If you want to find out even more about the Roberto Clemente Memorial Baseball Association, check out their website.