As I mentioned last week, I sent in my ballot for the Illowa APBA League Hall of Fame. League VP Rob Moore announced the ballot results in the comments but I thought I’d give them their due here.
The members of the IAL Hall of Fame class of 2011 are:
You can click on each one to get to their bio, accomplishments and stats. Their ‘plaque’, if you will. Congrats to all four and the managers who had the pleasure of managing them. Here is the complete list of Hall of Famers now inducted in the IAL.
Tedd Mallasch and I were talking about the inductees afterwards and he brought up an interesting point. Both Maddux and Glavine were drafted as D pitchers in their respective rookie drafts.
Drafting D pitchers as rookies may be more common in larger leagues with a larger drafting pool but in the 10-team IAL, it’s pretty rare. Tedd did a poll among our managers to see when they last drafted one. A few names came up. John Smoltz, Sean Burnett, my last goes all the way back to the failed Scott Scudder experiment (remember him? probably not.).
Kudos to Mallasch, who by the way, drafted both Maddux and Glavine. Both obviously went on to have fine careers in our league. Not everyone gets so lucky (or drafts so well).
Who out there has drafted a D pitcher as a rookie and then see him go on to make good on his manager’s gamble? For that matter, anyone take a chance on a prospect with a less than mediocre card and have a great league career for you?
