Antiques
MemoAntiques
Memo
| Date: | February 2, 2002 |
| To: | Members and friends of the Antiques Baseball Club |
| From: | Denny Brown, President |
| Subject: | Plans for the 2002 Season |
The 2002 season is nearly here! I hope you are all healthy and ready for another great baseball season.
We are planning many changes for this year. We hope that you will enthusiastically support what we're trying to do, and pitch in and help out where you can.
The changes include:
2001 was a difficult year for me. My goal was to reduce the amount of my time devoted to baseball, while keeping the Antiques a viable team in Norcal and in tournaments. I resigned as treasurer of the Norcal League and passed that on to George Dean. I asked for help with the Antiques, and got yeoman efforts from Sal, Gus, Patti, and Rena. But I was not able to reduce the time spent on baseball-related tasks. This negatively affected my family and my business. Moreover, I don't think I did a very good job in running the team either.
I was disappointed that some club members were non-supportive, and in some cases openly critical, of the way the club was being run. I fault myself for this. In trying to reduce my time commitment, I was unable or unwilling to communicate with everyone in a way that might have minimized the discontent.
Based on input from Gus and Sal (and a few others), I plan to make some things clear that might have led to miscommunication and misunderstanding in the past. Fundamentally, the question is "What is the purpose of the Antiques"? Candidate answers might be:
My initial vision in starting the Antiques was some inarticulate combination of all of these, along with some more. Some of the criticism last year included:
Notice that these come in pairs of opposite opinions. In each case, I got both kinds of criticism.
My conclusion from all this is that my attempts to balance the various goals and make everybody happy is doomed to fail. So I am revising my vision of the club.
Instead of thinking of the Antiques as a team in the Norcal League that plays in many outside tournaments, I am now envisioning an Antiques Baseball Club that is really a collection of teams. Instead of trying to satisfy conflicting needs with one team, the Club will become an umbrella covering multiple teams each with its own goals.
I propose the following as the mission of the Club. Please make suggestions about how to improve the mission statement.
The purpose of the Antiques Baseball Club is to provide an organization of volunteers who develop and promote opportunities for like-minded individuals to play baseball in a spirit of friendly competition. We respect the game of baseball, our opponents, our teammates, our supporters, umpires and other officials, and those who organize the leagues and tournaments in which we participate. We endeavor to play as well as we can, but understand that wining or losing is not as important as playing.
Since its inception in 1997, the Antiques have been run informally. For 1997 through 1999, Dutch and I shared most of the work. In 2000 and 2001, Gus Manning and Sal Esposito, with help from Rena and Patti, provided lots of assistance with the many tasks required to run the Club.
During 2001, Gus and Sal suggested that we establish a formal governing structure for the Club. Both wanted guidance on what was expected of them, and what they could expect from other Club members. In a series of meetings, we decided to:
We are working on the by-laws and hope to have them published before the season starts. Sal distributed to the three of us the by-laws of the San Jose Oldtimers that we are using to guide us in writing our own.
We have chosen to begin operating, pending completion of the by-laws, with the following officer positions:
Although not a formal member of the club, Patti O’Neill CPA is assisting the officers in maintaining our books and establishing fiscal responsibilities. Patti has spent many hours of professional time updating and reviewing the books and past accounts with club officers. What has come out of this is an established set of books, a preliminary budget, payment guidelines, and an invoicing system. We now actually have a formal set of books in which all the financial history since the beginning of the team has been tracked. Over the past years, it was difficult for players to know exactly what was owed by whom and for what. The Antiques books are especially complicated due to tournaments and transient player responsibility.
When the by-laws are completed, we expect that there will be additional officer positions that we need to fill. Please let one of the acting officers know if you want to volunteer for any position.
A primary concern of the officers is the collection of current and past dues from club members and tournament participants. Some players owe fees for previous years' activities. Some players have operated on a "pay-as-you-go" basis in previous years. In our discussions, we decided that a change was necessary to make the Club financially sound and to ensure that no members are required to pay more than their fair share. In making these changes, however, we did not want to prevent any member from continuing to participate in the Club and play on our teams.
With all of this in mind, the acting officers decided to make the following guidelines effective immediately and to incorporate them into the by-laws.
For the 2002 season and henceforth, all fees will be due and payable prior to participation in any Club activity. Each team (that is, a league team or a tournament team) will determine the fees associated with that team and collect those fees on a published schedule. No player will be allowed to play in a game until their 2002 fees for the team in question are paid in full. There are no exceptions to this rule.
For players with outstanding balances for 2001 and previous years:
Also effective immediately, please direct all payments to the Acting Treasurer, Sal Esposito. You can deliver your fees in person, or mail them to:
Sal Esposito
1828 Bel Air Avenue
San Jose, CA 95126
I will no longer accept or collect any playing fees. If you have any questions about the new policies, or your financial status, please contact Sal. His phone number is 408-244-3486. His email address is sal@Softskills-Consulting.com. Each current Club member will receive a statement from Sal in February.
Many of the details contained in this section are preliminary; final versions will be spelled out in the by-laws or future memos like this one. The purpose of this memo is to give everyone some notice about what we are planning.
We plan to sponsor the following teams in 2002:
The following teams are under consideration for 2002, but we do not have commitments yet:
Other teams could be sponsored by the Club, depending on interest from Club members.
For completeness, we do NOT plan to enter teams in:
Each team will establish its own fees and due date for the fees, a playing schedule, a general manager responsible for communication with the league or tournament directors, and a field manager responsible for all game-time decisions. The following descriptions give our current best guess on each of these issues. We expect to finalize all of this by mid-February.
$250 fees due 2/15. Schedule available. First game 3/3/2002 vs. San Jose at West Valley College. To play in this game, you must have paid your Norcal fees or bring cash or check to the game. General manager: Denny (acting). Field manager: Denny (acting).
Fees & Schedule TBD. General manager: Denny (acting). Field manager: TBD. Games will be played on selected Sundays. They will conflict with the Norcal schedule, so we need to work out a "split squad" arrangement to compete in both leagues. Details need to be worked out. Denny is acting general manager, working with TriValley on the schedule and fees.
Fees & Schedule TBD. General manager: Denny Brown. Field manager: TBD. Games will be played on Saturdays, so they do not conflict with Sunday games in other leagues. Denny is working with TriValley on schedule and fees.
Fees & Schedule TBD. General manager: Denny Brown. Field manager: TBD.
Fees $0 for last year's players, assuming we have at least 9 returning players; fees for new players TBD. Schedule TBD. General manager: Denny Brown. Field manager: TBD.
Fees & Schedule TBD. General manager: Denny Brown. Field manager: TBD.