The 2013 season is closer than you think… I guess we are just around 100 days from playing.

There are some Knights info/news items I’d like to bring up with everyone…

• Thanks to Kilker and Cesar for our end of year party in September… it was pretty great.
• I still have post season awards for a bunch of you… I’ll send those guys a note so we can meet up to get your award.
• 2 of our rookies from ESPN are leaving us. They unfortunately got jobs elsewhere, and moved away. We will miss Matt Doyle and Drew Yukelson. They were solid and fun additions to our team last year, and we’ll miss them for sure. Stay in touch fellas.
• A couple of our long time former players have contacted me about returning and playing again this year after some time off. I’m looking forward to having these guys back. Any guesses on who?
• I’ve been contacted already by 2 or 3 potential new players, that could be nice new additions in 2013. More on that later.
• We are always looking for new guys, especially pitchers… so if anyone has any potential new players in mind that you think would want to play and would help us get better, let Scott know.
• We’ve been contacted to possibly play in a pre-season charity baseball tournament on the weekends in early May-ish. This tournament would be down in Southwestern Connecticut, and are part of a Charity Tournament to raise some money for Sandy Hook. This is something I’d like us to try and do, and we’ll likely have to commit to pretty soon. It’ll be a chance to play some solid pre-season baseball against some new teams, and do it all for a great cause. When I get more info, I’ll pass it along.
• Some of you never turned in your jerseys from last year… please contact me (Scott) if you still have yours.
• We have our first league meeting in the middle of February. If you have any issues you want brought up… rule questions, ideas, suggestions, anything… let Paul and Scott know.
• I’d like to do a pre-season indoor batting/pitching session sometime in February… so stay tuned.
• Lastly… Start up  your off-season training (lifting, long tossing, running, swinging a bat, etc.) if you haven’t yet.

Here are some Manchester Twilight League news items:

• The league is now on twitter… follow @MTLbaseball
• The league will likely grow from 8 to 10 teams in 2013… 2 (possibly 3) groups are seriously looking to enter teams into the league. One is a group from Manchester, mostly young guys 18-20ish guys that have been playing together for a while. The other is basically an All-Star team from the remnant of the old UBA B-League teams that still remained. That league that was part lower division of our league until we sort of split a while ago. They have struggled the last few years to stay afloat… and are now basically condensing down to their best players and the very committed guys who ran their teams. Both teams will likely be very solid additions to our league… and we should have fields in Manchester and Portland.
• The Twins are likely switching their management (Nate is no longer running that team), and I think they are going to get an infusion from another group of guys that wanted to start another team from the Marlborough/East Hampton area (that is if they don’t join as a team on their own).
• We still plan to do a deal with BWP bats to sponsor the league and our teams again… so we’ll be putting in a bat order again for our team.
• The league is setting up a deal with the Norwich Tigers to play some games in their beautiful stadium each year. So over the next few years, all our teams will rotate through playing at least one some game at Dodd Stadium.

I’ll update you all as new stuff comes in. Start your 2013 season prep, and see you soon.