29
January

League News: New MWWL website announced

A few days after announcing the draft date for the Mid-West Baseball League, Stray Corrado the busiest APBA fan I know, has announced the new website for the Mid-West Winter League.  Here is his press release:

The Mid-West Winter League Commissioner’s Office is proud to announce the launch of our newly redesigned website! After many months of development, the new site heralds a fundamental shift in our online presence.

http://www.straybaseball.com/mwwl/wordpress/

The new website has been built using the highest design and accessibility standards and offers the Mid-West Winter League Commissioner’s Office the opportunity to publish its materials and engage with its audiences using the latest web-based technologies.

MWWL provides vastly more information than any other APBA/Baseball for Windows league or website. Our site provides Mid-West Winter League followers, fans, franchise owners and anyone interested in APBA/Baseball for Windows a complete history of our league.  It’s an online resource offering knowledge on all aspects of the Mid-West Winter League.

And we’re just getting started! Exciting new elements are still in development with roll-outs over the next twelve months.  We’d love to talk about them but are holding off until they’re ready for prime time. We want to be sure the Commissioner’s Office has the opportunity to get them right.

It’s this commitment to providing as much information as possible that sets Mid-West Winter League apart from other retro leagues.

Enjoy the new website & as always comments are welcome.

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4
October

Mid-West Baseball League unveils new site

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There’s no doubt, Stray Corrado has done the impossible.  He’s improved on perfection.

The much heralded update to his Mid-West Baseball League’s website has been unveiled and indeed, it is a site to behold.  When Stray told me he was going to redesign the site, I told him it would be hard to make it any better.  It was already one of best APBA League web presences out there.

The MWBL is quite unique not just because of its well-developed online presence but also because of its very advanced draft and “futures” structure.  I already knew that the MWBL is not for the faint of heart, casual, APBA baseball fan. You have to be serious and you have to know your stuff. One look at the manager application for the league and you can see that. One wrong answer and I’ll bet you could be weeded out as a candidate.  Just kidding, Stray!

The MWBL boasts Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com as one of its members.  The expert in minor league baseball even went as far to do a testimony to MWBL:

“As someone who spends all of his working time in and around the game of baseball, I can’t begin to express how impressed I’ve been with the MWBL since I joined the league. The owners in the league are the most informed and passionate baseball fans I’ve ever come across. Every year there are great improvements made to the league and the recently re-launched website takes things to a whole new level. I’m already excited for the 2013 season to begin!”

– Jonathan Mayo – Iron City Yinzers & MLB.com.

Anyway, I really encourage those who are in leagues and who are looking for online inspiration to check out the MWBL web site.

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23
July

New web site address for OAPBA

We received a press release from the Orlando APBA Association’s PR department (aka Rod Caborn):

The “New Web site for the Orlando APBA Association (OAPBA) is www.oapba.org.  With Apple’s discontinuation of MobileMe and its Web site capability, OAPBA has adopted WordPress blog formatting until league member Rod Caborn can get better acquainted with orchestrating graphics and inserts.

It’s a real loss for OAPBA, but hopefully the Web site, in its more robust form, can return later in 2012.”

Take heart, Rod.  WordPress is pretty feature-rich.  It’s what The APBA Blog uses as its blogging platform.

Meanwhile, it looks like Rod and OAPBA have already gotten started on their new site.  Check it out.

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25
January

Chicago Champions Reach Century Mark

I have been playing APBA baseball since 1970, more than forty years, and have never reached the 100 win plateau in any format.  I’ve managed the Chicago Champions in the Illowa APBA League since the 2nd season of the league, more than 35 years, and have never gotten 100 wins, until now.  Two years ago the Champions finished in 1st place with 98 wins, last year we again finished in 1st place & won the World Series (our 11th title), but missed out on 100 wins, finishing with 99 victories.

This year with nine games to play, the Champs again had a strong hold on 1st place, but needed four wins to reach the century mark.  Prince Fielder hit a walkoff homer with 2-outs in the bottom of the 9th of the 1st contest turning a victory for Tim Lincecum into defeat in the opener.

The Champions beat the Gamblers the next three games, and it was The Freak’s turn once again to toe the rubber for Chicago.  Although he walked six men in the game, Three Rivers hadn’t a hit with 2-outs in the 9th, then the unthinkable happened, on the brink of 100 wins.  Lincecum only had 8 2/3 innings left, so reliever Sergio Romo was called on to get the final out, and we finally had our 100th win.  The Champs won two more games to finish the season with 102 victories, now it’s on to the postseason, and hopefully title twelve.

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15
December

New Illowa APBA League website

Last week, I holed myself up in a coffee house for a few days and reworked our league’s website. 

Here is the result.

It’s been a few years since I’ve paid any serious attention to it so this was definitely overdue.  I decided to use WordPress (which is what I use for The APBA Blog) as the web content management system.  WordPress is typically used a blogging platform but certainly can be used as a basis for a conventional web site as well. 

The advantage for using WordPress is its interactive features which I hope to use both internally and externally.  Internally, all league managers are now able to easily post articles and team updates if they wish via the WordPress web interface. 

Also, pretty much all the content on the site can receive feedback from anyone in the form of comments similar to The APBA Blog.  I’m hoping this gets utilized a lot both by IAL managers and other APBA players who come to the site. 

The site is not done and probably never will be.  I think we’re going to re-work our “About” page since the text is about 5 years old.  Also, I’m going to be in the process of migrating some of our old “news” items from the old site bit by bit. 

But it’s a good start. 

I encourage everyone to stop by and check out the site (and say hello).  Check out our History page which has links to our All-time leader pages and our Hall of Fame page.  To me, that’s one of my favorite parts. 

And most certainly, feedback is definitely welcome. 

My next step is to get Steve Stein to teach me how he does his stats on his web page. :-)

 

Postscript (12/16): As I was importing some of our old news stories, I ran across this rather incredible story from 2004 about Brandon Webb which I had almost forgotten about. 

Not only did Webb pitch back-to-back no-hitters but the first one was a perfect game. 

Webb did this as a rookie for the Todd Ventresca’s Aurora Gamblers.  It was made even sweeter for Todd because he did this against his brother.

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