Mid-Offseason Update

‘Tis the season. American Idol, the Super Bowl, and Major League Soccer are back. What does this mean? No…not another Emwa wet dream (we’ll explore that later in a mid-season feature piece). It means that Leisure League Softball pitchers and catchers report back in less than 60 days. Given the uncertainty involving availability of other players, this might represent the core of the new decade’s Puzzle Makers.

As we embark on the team’s historic 11th year in existence (according to the official Conundrums Record Book), TWICS Publications is compelled to provide the second bi-annual, mid-offseason Conundrums/TWICS update. For the first time ever, this pre-season TWICS update features an historic scribal partnership between Jason Emmot and Bob Tomey – Not since Lennon-McCartney has the artistic world been vexed with such a collaboration of this magnitude.

Broken Batt
Extensive negotiations between Conundrums Management, the Leisure League Softball Players Union, and Denver Water broke down at the 11th hour, resulting in the transfer of Dan Batt to the Conundrums Steamboat Springs minor league affiliate, the Skinundrums.

Batt, the 2009 Comeback Player of the Year, 2005-2009 Golden Batt award recipient, and official team ham/photo usurper, will spend the next two years measuring water quality on the Yampa, perfecting his fly fishing cast, and making plans to divert the Western Slope’s “god-given” water rights to Denver.

Fret not, Batty Maniacs - you can still cheer Danny Boy in 2010; to spur ticket sales, the team plans on bringing Batt up to the parent club for selected games, holding several unannounced Dan Batt promotional nights. While Battman settles into his new Gothic City surroundings, H2O sidekick, and current Conundrum Eric “Boy Wonder” Swanson, praised him as a softball mentor of “epic proportions”, proclaiming Dan as the most important influence in his beer-league softball life alongside the Baseball Wii.

We would like to thank Dan for his commitment to the team and especially to Kentucky Bluegrass along the entire Front Range. Thanks Dan! We’ll think of you as we hose down our collective driveways.

Eddie = Elway?
Unnamed sources have indicated that Conundrum’s longtime backstop Eddie Layton is considering retirement. Calls to Fast Eddie’s agent were not immediately returned, but allegedly the 10 year veteran’s nagging injuries and lingering disagreement with the pitching staff on strategy are the primary catalysts behind his decision. Eddie’s representatives have apparently indicated that he has a burning desire to “go out on top like Elway” after going 4-4 in his last game, and securing what is thought to have been his first ever Crunchchocolaty Award. The team plans to honor Eddie during Waffle-Face Night at Lakewood Park. Run face-first into a chain-link fence and receive free admission to a game of your choice.

Injury Update(s)
Ries (ankle) listed probable
Tomey (back) listed as geriatric
Emmot (knees) listed as cyborgic
Sullivan (heart), no report
Butcher (gut) listed as bigger and better than ever
Wilcoxen – No injury, we just thought he would like to see his name in print


Site Traffic
TWICS Publications is happy to report that the team is actively tracking traffic to the site via web analytics software, and due to popular demand has added a hit counter. The site has already received its first International visitor (from Conundrum’s sister city Athens Greece). In honor of this gesture of international respect, the team plans to pay tribute to the Athenians by awarding the MVP recipient with a feta cheese gyro in the season opener. With this breakthrough, Pubs expects a spike from Beijing after we release our hard-hitting expose on Chinese abuses of human rights. A snippet from the article is below:

….”According to Chinese activist Bao Tong, governmental officials required clean-up hitter Gao Zhisheng to use the state-sanctioned wooden bat, and forced him to hit in the 8 hole during a game against the Chinese Ministry of State Security (the MSS Dawgs). Officials also restricted the intake of Gatorade to top players, and employed governmental officials as game umpires in violation of the UN ratified Easton-Worth Convention.”

WOW!