Will Fame And Love Return 

When It All Comes Crashing Down

Ocala, Florida

Saturday February 17, 2007

It was the first full day of spring training for the 2007 season for the defending National Conference League and the Carrington Cup Championship Series champions. Except for pitcher Nate Rudancyk who retired, most of the players from the previous season were returning for what everyone hoped would be another championship banner season. With the departure of team manager Bill Falstaf and almost all of the coaching staff had left with him for the Philadelphia Diamonds, including hitting coach George Blair, pitching coach Stuart Spencer 1st base coach Gus Sloan. The bench coach Al Muir retired, mainly because he did not want to move on to Philadelphia and he did not really like the new manager Edmond Hawthorne, although he was offered the assistant general manager position by general manager Gene Hallowell. The prevailing feeling was that it was going to be a much different type of team with Edmond Hawthorne around running the team on the field and even though he was an outstanding baseball person, he was not the caliber of Bill Falstaf. Sportscasters knew of this and the preseason favorite to win the division and a possible playoff series contender was that of the New York Royals who were a 8-1 odds maker favorite and the Baltimore Clippers were only a 10 -1 favorite, all because of the fact that Bill Falstaf was now going to be up north in Philadelphia and with their spring training camp opening up in Saint Augustine. It was going to be interesting to see how the players on the team were going to react to a new manager, especially one who had never been a team field manager in the past.

(C) 2021