Stinging Heat Bites Ace Bandit in the Capital

The Deep in the Hole inbox has taken an absolute pounding over the past few weeks with things like this

“One post per week – wow you must be busy”

“I thought you were meant to be Australia’s biggest baseball brain, can’t you come up with something?”

“Can you speak with some of your contacts and get some information on the ABL?”

“Defensive Specialist what are you wearing right now?”

Ok, so one of the above emails may in fact be spam. Anyway, no matter which of the notes you believe to be true, the underlying theme is that people are A) hungry for more information and B) starting to doubt the Defensive Specialist’s chops when it comes to delivering information. Believe it or not, the Defensive Specialist takes his role as national baseball icon very seriously, so the Deep in the Hole scouting team was dragged into the Deep in the Hole boardroom with the implicit instruction to come up with a topic or topics that the Defensive Specialist could freestyle on.

A couple of less experienced scouts coughed up things like; “hey you had good success with the Bryce Harper post, why don’t you pick another draft phenom and write 1500 words on them?” or “how about a post on the schedule”. It’s moments like that when the Defensive Specialist’s brow furrows and he has to remind himself that not every individual is able to walk in his shoes and deliver above average performances at all times – especially when a little heat is applied to them. It’s what separates the Hall of Famers from the run of the mill guys, the ability to deliver under pressure.

Anyway, with nothing even remotely interesting being delivered to the table, the Defensive Specialist ended the session and demanded that the group reconvene in 24 hours. The scouting team was to pump their contacts for any slice of information that the Defensive Specialist could fashion into a solid post for the loyal Deep in the Hole readers.

24 hours later, the usually buoyant group was back in the Deep in the Hole conference room looking decidedly downcast. The Defensive Specialist went around the room, stopping at some of the most experienced members of the team. Not a single nugget to be found amongst the group. As the Defensive Specialist began rolling up his sleeves and figuring out how he was going to go this alone, Debbie the office administrator looked up from her note book and said “Hey DS, I found a link on a message board that may be interesting?”

Members of the room scoffed at the audacity of an office administrator trying to contribute to Deep in the Hole but the Defensive Specialist hadn’t just hired Debbie for her amazing ability to haggle down stationary suppliers’ prices.

The Defensive Specialist dismissed the room and had Debbie find the link. Debbie brought up her ‘favourites’ list and led the Defensive Specialist to the Baseball National Radio message board. From there she jumped onto a SA Baseball thread and straight to a post dated June 21, 11.01pm. The Defensive Specialist took one look at the post, dialed up a few trusted advisors for their opinion and came away fairly satisfied that the information in front of him was pretty damn accurate.

The Defensive Specialist looked at Debbie, extended his hand and immediately promoted her to Chief Operations Officer of Deep in the Hole.

So what did Debbie stumble across? How about a random post identifying a number of the new team names?

Now with any message board, there has to be an element of scepticism because there is no way to qualify who is saying what and how accurate the information is – hence the Defensive Specialist seeking some form of clarification from reasonably trusted sources.

Here’s the link to the board:

http://baseballradio.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=southaus&action=display&thread=1185&page=2

Anyway, the post supplied the following information regarding team names: 

• Perth HEAT (this must surely be a no-brainer)
• Adelaide BITE
• Melbourne ACES
• Sydney STING
• Canberra (I have nothing)
• Brisbane BANDITS (heard 1st hand from a few sources) 

The Defensive Specialist has also learned that we’re about 2 weeks away from this information being made official but isn’t it so much better when you find out earlier? It’s like sneaking a look at your Christmas presents!

So what are the Defensive Specialist’s thoughts on the names above? Well let’s assume that they are fairly close to the mark. First off, the only team that has cranked out something a little left of field is Sydney with ‘Sting’. The Defensive Specialist is assuming that some form of insect will be the mascot. The name isn’t too bad unless of course the team turns in a warm turd of a performance and all of a sudden you see fine publications (or websites like this one) referring to them as the Sydney Stink. The Defensive Specialist would probably prefer to see them call the ‘Stingers’. The Sting also sounds a bit like a netball team. At least the Stingers are an actual thing whereas ‘Sting’ is an act.

A name that could easily be applied to the Canberra franchise is the ‘Capitals’ obviously because they’re located in the nation’s capital. It is a little boring of course, but then again so are a lot of the people who live there (excluding all firework and porn manufacturers and distributors!).

The Adelaide Bite is weird, especially when you consider that their logo could very easily be a large set of teeth. Additionally any poor performance could see them being referred to as the Adelaide Shite (Although this is unlikely to occur in mainstream press, the Defensive Specialist pledges to use it liberally). Once again, ‘Bite’ is more of an action than a thing so the Defensive Specialist is assuming that some sort of fierce looking shark will be the mascot.

Brisbane Bandits? Not too bad, although it does hark back to the old days of the ABL and the name may in fact be a direct reference to the state’s longest serving premier – Joh Bjelke-Peterson who’s government was fairly corrupt. The Defensive Specialist doesn’t really have a problem with the team name as long as they don’t have a caricature of Joh on their caps.

The Melbourne franchise going with the “Aces” is kind of boring unless they have the players wearing dealers hats in which case it becomes quirky. It’s a safe choice and ties into the Victorian Aces name that they have been using for the Claxton Shield in recent years.

Perth have led the charge with nothing names. ‘Heat’ is just a weird team name and by that rationale, it is feasible to assume that Brisbane could go with ‘Humidity’ or Canberra ‘Cold’. The name has been around for nearly 20 years now so the Defensive Specialist is prepared to let it slide due to the historical significance. The Defensive Specialist will provide even more leniency if the logo can be updated to something a little less pre school and the team promises never to wear black vests with red sleeves again.

The Defensive Specialist is eagerly awaiting the official unveiling of team names (especially to see how accurate the message board poster was) and even more excited to see uniforms and logos. We’re not too far way from November so hopefully we can see some more information start to trickle out, or at least for Debbie to stumble across a couple more nuggets!

A special shout out to Liam Hendriks who was named to the World Roster for the Futures Game to be held over the All Star Weekend in July.