Written by Nigel
Monday May 20th, 1901
I had spent most of the last two months “Barnstorming” around Kansas playing baseball against the local teams, it had been a good time, we had won more than we had lost, but we are unfortunately, not that much richer for our tour. I decided to cheer myself up on the way home with a visit to a dear old school friend, Henry, who had settled in Detroit whom I haven’t seen in ages and apparently now is someone big in this new “Automobile” fad. He reckons that before long every house in America will want one of these “motor vehicles” he designs and builds. Can’t see it myself, far too noisy and dirty in my opinion.
Henry opened the door to me and was most surprised to see me.
“Nigel! I haven’t seen you for, for years. How are you, come in young man? I have been keeping tabs on you though, friends tell me you’ve been touring around playing baseball.”
“That tis true, I am at this moment on my way home from our latest trip to Kansas. Not very profitable I’m afraid, but plenty of fun especially this time. The team voted me the manager and coach, exciting but it certainly made my time very busy; basically, I was running the whole show, organising everything. All the guys wanted to do was play, drink and sleep, I had to do everything else.”
“Well, maybe I can solve your money woes, I might have a job for you”
“Ha Ha, I don’t think I’d be any good at Automobile things Henry, playing and organising baseball is my forte now. Your motorcars would be all the poorer for my involvement”
“And it’s for your baseball nous that I have a job for you. A group of associates and myself are keen to see the Giants become winners again and we want to help that along”
“You want to oust old Finchie? Good luck with that, I think you’ll find the Michigan Stove Company will continue to back him to the hilt.”
“But don’t you think the Stove Company is so last century? We need a modern 20th century backer with finances to take Detroit to the top again. Baseball will expand vastly these coming years and money will be the root of it, we need vision, leadership and money to take us forward.”
“And where will you find that? That sort of stuff doesn’t grow on trees you know?”
“I will provide all that, my Automobiles are on the cusp of fulfilling my prophecies. I will have the money to do this in the next few years, but in the meantime, we need an inside man to steer the club’s decisions in the right direction. I think you can be that man. We have men with the ear of Mr Finch, we can make him think it’s his idea that he needs a new GM to run his team”
“And I suppose you’ll tell him I’m the man to do that? Me with no professional baseball experience, with no standing in the game and no qualifications?”
“You have run barnstorming teams for years now, it’s the same but with more money involved and more order. You can do it and we will feed you the ideas and backing. Detroit will be top before the decade is out, you can be sure of that.”
“Ha, sounds like a long-term job to me, and I don’t do that sort of thing for free.”
“We don’t expect you to Nigel. We have already discussed this ourselves and we have decided that we could offer the right man a salary of $220. You just happened to come along at the right time, you can be that man we need.”
“$220 !! I don’t earn that sort of money in two or three years! You can certainly count me in for that sort of money!”
And that was the story of how Mr Finch came to appoint me as GM of the Detroit Giants in the Legacy Baseball League. Little inexperienced me, running a LBL franchise that had two Pennants to it’s name already. I hope it will work out.