Prologue | Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

Introduction

In October of 2003, I was granted rare, behind-the-scenes access to the Salem Cowtippers front office as the team prepared for the 2004 season.   During that time, I sat in on every meeting held between Salem GM Mike Glander and his staff.  I was granted full journalistic freedom, including access to transcripts of phone conversations, e-mails and memos, and one-on-one interviews with front office personnel, coaches and staff.

I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story.   It is the story of a man with an almost unhealthy obsession and desire for winning, yet whose stubborn insistence upon winning only under certain terms and conditions prevents him from achieving his ultimate goal.  While others see ultimate victory as a black-and-white absolute, Glander sees it as a matter of opinion.  While others pursue ultimate victory for the purpose of immortality, Glander pursues ultimate victory for the purpose of proving a point: that he is the best in the business.

"Monkeyballs" is the story of how one atypical GM spent one typical off-season preparing for the season ahead, from planning to trading to purchasing free agents to drafting.  In the winter of 2003, the Salem Cowtippers made a total of sixteen trades and signed two of the biggest free agents on the market, transforming a solid contender into a strong favorite.  This is the story of how it all happened.

Prologue

Michael Edward Glander was born and raised in the quaint New England village of New Milford, Connecticut. As a small child, he possessed an unusual thirst for competition. At the tender age of five, he set the East Street Elementary School record for both fastest consumption of a plate of franks-n-beans and farthest projectile vomit. At eight, he broke the playground record by sending three children to the nurse’s office during a game of recess kickball. No matter how meaningless the competition, his intense thirst for victory drove him to ever-greater heights of success.

By the age of twelve, Glander had become the greatest Little League baseball player in New Milford history (according to his parents.) Parents and coaches from all over town would line up along the sidelines just to watch him take batting practice. With his strong arm, quick wrists and confident-yet-quiet demeanor, Glander often drew comparisons to such New Milford Little League legends as Al Bracey and Dondi Ganyon. Oftentimes, one could hear opposing coaches talk about what a “great face” that Glander kid had.

It was during these formative years as an impressionable Little Leaguer that Glander adopted a philosophy that would later guide his every decision as a GM.  The perennial champions in the league at that time regularly employed dirty tactics such as the hidden ball trick, dancing off the bases to draw a throw, stealing bases when the pitcher's back was turned and intimidating the opposing team with taunts and insults.  This team would stop at nothing to win, including purposely delaying a game to earn a forfeit by rain or darkness.  It was at this time that Glander learned, through his father's teaching, that there is a right way and a wrong way to win.  It was a lesson he would carry with him the rest of his life.

It seemed that Glander was destined for greatness on the baseball diamond, yet despite his impressive tools and athleticism, a lethal combination of high school curveballs and bad coaching drove Glander away from the sport he loved so much. By the time he graduated high school, he had turned his back on the sport, never to return again (at least, not until his mid-30’s.)

Hungering for a desire to stay connected with the game he loved, Glander accepted a job as the GM of the fledgling Big City DT's of the Computer Baseball League in 1987.  By 1988, Glander had won his first championship.  The team he built had become so dominant, however, that it threatened the very existence of the league.  League members openly protested, and called for all teams in the league to be split into two teams: an American League and a National League.  Glander relented, for the good of the league.

In order to counteract the impropriety of having the same owner own two different teams, the league passed a rule that owners must treat their two teams as separate entities, and could not trade players from one team to benefit the other.  Unfortunately, because this rule was enforced only by the honor system, it went virtually ignored.  Teams freely began stockpiling one of their teams at the expense of the other.  Glander, however, stubbornly refused to take part in this practice.

"That's not the way the game was meant to be played," Glander says, plainly.  "Why have a rule if no one is going to follow it?  My goal was to play by the rules and win.  If I could have done that, it would have said a lot more about my team than if I had done what everyone else was doing."

Over the next three seasons, Glander's National League team would win two division titles while his American League team would finish one game out of first place in all three seasons.  Though Glander's teams enjoyed a great deal of success during the regular season, however, his first championship would be his only championship.  He went 1-5 in World Series play over nine seasons, evoking ridicule.   He was called the "Bobby Cox of the CBL."  His first World Series loss came when his opponent exploited a flaw in the software, stealing home in the top of the ninth in the final game of the series to plate the go-ahead run.

"There was a bug in the software," Glander explains.  "Basically, whenever there were runners on the corners, if you called a double-steal, the guy on third always scored.  He didn't score most of the time - he scored 100-percent of the time.  The worst part was, there was nothing you could do to prevent it.  It was something all of us in the league knew about, and we had an unspoken understanding that that wasn't something that should be exploited in order to win a game.  My opponent ran the play anyway, and that was the winning run of the series."

For years afterward, Glander's opponent absorbed heavy criticism for his decision.  Though he had won the trophy, the question always lingered whether or not he deserved it.

"Had that play not been called, he may very well have won that series anyway," Glander says.  "Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure.  It was then that I decided that I never wanted to be put in that situation.  If a trophy comes attached with questions about its legitimacy, then what's the point in winning it?" 

As he aged, the cruel slowing of his metabolism combined with the sedentary lifestyle of a computer programmer wreaked havoc on his once Adonis-like body. Though the athlete may have disappeared beneath a thick layer of fat and atrophied muscle, the competitor inside still lurked. For years, that competitive hunger raged from within, with no outlet from which to escape. Then, on one fateful afternoon in November of 1998, Glander received a phone call from the Salem Cowtippers organization, offering him a job as the newly-formed team’s general manager. Glander seized the opportunity with both hands and never let go.

After the Cowtippers roster had been filled through the inaugural draft, Glander became the first GM in league history to make a trade. That trade - the infamous Ray Lankford deal - inadvertently laid the groundwork for what would become Glander’s trading philosophy.

“A lot of people were upset by that trade,” Glander explains.  “They felt I had ripped off the other team, because all we gave up to get Lankford were a bunch of draft picks. Of course, they were right. That trade was a rip-off. Jack (Virginia Cavaliers GM Buchanan) offered the deal, and I jumped at it. I didn’t give a second thought to it. The trade made the Cowtippers better, and that was my only concern at that time.”

But as the din of protest grew louder, the consequences of the trade began to dawn on Glander.

“I realized that if we won the championship that year, the consensus would be that we had only won it because we ripped someone off,” Glander says. “I wanted to be known for my skills as a talent scout and baseball forecaster, not for my skill at ripping people off.  It doesn't take much skill to rip someone off.  I didn't want to become that team in Little League or that team in the old CBL, where the validity of my trophy could be questioned.”

In an effort to restore his team’s integrity, Glander offered to rework the trade. He eventually sent two players to the Cavaliers in addition to the five draft picks. Later, when one of those two players went down with a season-ending injury, Glander returned Lankford to the Cavaliers, allowing the team to keep the five draft picks.

Later that season, New Milford Blazers owner Billy Romaniello – a long-time friend of Glander’s from his days in Little League – offered to trade Randy Johnson to the Cowtippers in exchange for two prospects of dubious value. Glander refused the temptation, and told his friend it would be a terribly lopsided trade.

“There is no question in my mind,” says Glander, “that we would have won the championship that year with Johnson and Lankford on board. No doubt at all. But doing so would have proven nothing. It would have been an empty victory.”

Even without those two, the Cowtippers went on to post the best record in the Ozzie League that season. Then, as the Division Series approached, controversy struck the league once again. Salem’s would-be opponents in the Division Series, the Stamford Zoots, had lost their #1 and #3 starting pitchers (Kevin Brown and Rolando Arrojo) due to overuse.

“Beating the Zoots without two of their best pitchers wouldn’t have proven a thing, either,” Glander continues. “Losing Brown and Arrojo was a mere technicality. And there would be no pride in beating a team because of a technicality.”

The rulebook clearly stated that Brown and Arrojo were ineligible for the series, yet Glander lobbied the Commissioner’s Office to make an unprecedented rule change just before the playoffs began. The Commissioner’s Office complied, allowing Brown and Arrojo to play in the series with a small penalty applied toward the following season. The Cowtippers ended up losing that series in the fifth game of that five-game series.

“Better to have played a fair game and lost than to have played an unfair game and won,” Glander rationalizes.

The following season, the Cowtippers won their division with a significantly weaker team than the 1999 version. To no one’s surprise, they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the far-superior Los Altos Undertakers.

In Glander’s third season as GM, the Cowtippers formed what Glander calls “the best team I’ve ever seen.” The 2001 Salem Cowtippers offense included an all-star player at every position except shortstop, and a pitching staff that led the league in ERA by a comfortable margin. After sweeping their way into their first championship series, however, Salem was swept right out of it in one of the most bizarre series of all time.

“My (bleep) doesn’t work in the playoffs,” Glander admits.

In 2002, the Cowtippers finally reached the World Series for the first time in franchise history. Despite facing the most dominant team in league history, Salem was able to extend the series to the full seven games. With a 1-1 tie heading into the ninth inning of the final game, Ellis Burks ended Glander’s dream of winning the ultimate prize by roping a double into the gap off of righty-killer David Weathers.

2003 was a bizarre season in which nearly every player on the Salem roster under-performed. The Cowtippers got off to such a bad start, Glander threw in the towel halfway through Chapter Two and began rebuilding for the future. But after a series of nonsensical maneuvers by the first-place Marlboro Hammerheads, Glander fought his way back into a tie at the top of the division standings at the start of Chapter Six. Fate wasn’t in Salem’s corner that year, however, and the Cowtippers finished four games out of first place. For the first time ever, Glander was forced to watch the post-season from the sidelines.

As the 2003 season comes to an end, the Cowtippers enter into this off-season with a lineup featuring franchise mainstay Lance Berkman, veterans Jeff Bagwell and Ray Durham, and rookies Mark Teixeira and Sean Burroughs. The starting rotation is headed by Roger Clemens and Barry Zito, and the bullpen includes Guillermo Mota and Brad Lidge.

In any other year, that foundation of players might have been enough to win a division – or, at the very least, be competitive. But in 2004, the Cowtippers are moving into a new division that includes the defending-champion Zoots, the Litchfield Lightning and the New Milford Blazers. The Cowtippers will need to improve in several areas if they hope to take home a division title this year. Glander and his staff have their work cut out for them.

Fortunately, there is nothing Glander enjoys more than a challenge.

Next up:
Chapter One: Bear Market or Bare Market?