[Jazzmosis]

Originally Posted by Y0DA55

Wow.... you are really pounding these out.

Question though. Are you "just being the manager" and taking the trades as they come, or are you acting as GM as well?

I'm doing a little of both - I'm trying my best to act as manager only, but it's hard for me to not be the GM - cause then I'd just be going with the team I'm given. I place guys on the block and such to feel around for offers, and in fact, in the case of the two trades in the chapter, those were CPU offered. But I'm doomed to like building teams, so it's not uncommon to see teams I leave do well afterward since I build their farms up like mad (such is the case with McDonald and his 43 saves. If I wasn't fired, I'd be in a much better situation there, because that team is playoff bound at this point in the story. Given the way the season ends, it's all in the storyline that I'm building to). I have to ultimately do what's best for the team and my own "career" in the game. After all, there's kind of two Jazzingtons. The game one, and the story one. I've been sticking to my focus of the season with the youth movement, considering how much of a mess the Cubs were when I came in. I had no money for free agents, nothing for promotional days, and the lowest payroll and 2nd lowest fan support. Basically, all I could do was try and dump payroll (which I couldn't do) even more and then I started to patrol the waiver wire. The transaction page before the season has me basically releasing and waivering for the entire free agency period. If there's one thing the CPU doesn't do well, it's manage their waivers. I picked up basically a ton of 3.0 MR specs that are in Chicago's AAA team and have some probable future on the team or at least some MLB team. I just needed a chance to stay employed long enough to reap the benefits of my rebuilding, but even I didn't expect this kind of play from the team. For example, Bejamin Lamar's ratings are 31 stuff, 69 movement, 35 control. His career looks a lot like you'd expect it to with those ratings... until 2008. The only thing I can really see being the difference was that at the start of the season, I had a little bit of money - so I looked at the FA's, and then threw basically all of it at a pitching coach with Legendary skills instead. I guess that was a good investment, eh?

But no, for the most part I don't explore deals while managing. I'm more prone to attempt trades with Arizona or Florida, because I've seen the players on those teams beforehand and I've grown to like them. In the case of Smith/Hollen for Aitken, that was just a ridiculously poor deal from Arizona. I even got 300K out of that, so it's like having Aitken for free. Smith doesn't get his ERA below 6.5 for the season and Hollen stays as a backup (albeit he gets more playing time). With the trades involving Raymond Kagan, that was just an astonishing coincidence. He's nothing special anymore. It's a shame though, when I drafted him in Arizona he was really looking to be sharp. One guy I'm waiting on right now in Chicago is a 20 year old pitcher named Raul Gonzalez, who was drafted before I got here. His ratings are absolutely sick (we're talking 100+ here across the board), and he's absolutely dominated both A and AA. He's far from ready, but if I let him slide away and see him turn into something sick, I'll be kicking myself. I've already seen enough guys turn into superstars after I leave (Kendrick Rizzo, Kenneth Andrzejewski, Mike English (who I'm SUPER pissed about, cause I let him slide off waivers from Arizona to Florida), Clifford Isoruko, James Vasser (who is a GOD now), Augustus McDonald, Kenneth Carlock (converted to 1B after I left and hit 26HRs and drove in 83), Mark Roberts, Benjamin Sizer even turned into something (remember, the Arizona farmhand that was injured every time I needed him in the big leagues?), and to a lesser extent, John McConnell. Some of these guys were dealt to other teams where they took off, but given the kind of bad luck I had, it's been a bitter pill to swallow watching other teams succeed while I flounder around picking up the scraps. With Chicago, it's about time I caught a break (at least to this point in the season). I won't ruin any part of the story, but considering how optimistic everyone's probably starting to think the season is, there's a reason I'm writing from a highly cynical perspective. September causes the most drama I've ever seen in this game. What happens there, especially in the last few weeks of the season (given who Chicago is matched up against) will probably be the longest, most in-depth chapters (and it'll definitely take more than one chapter) I'll write in the story. I've been waiting forever to get to writing that part of the story.

Which brings me to why I've been pumping out chapters. There's a few reasons, actually. The first is that I want to get up to that point, because I've done pretty much all the establishing I can handle. Second, I feel indebted to the readers since I disappeared back in August, dropped a chapter in early November, and then disappeared again until now. My notes have been spread out across my desk for what I want to write for 4 or 5 months now, but alas school and work slowed me down and I couldn't think much about this story, just stare at everything I'd written and formulate the story in my mind while writing pointless essays about Montage theory and Krakeuer, and the star system in films. It didn't help that I overloaded the past semester so I could be lazy now. However, that's the other reason I've been pumping out chapters. I start classes again tomorrow, so I won't have the kind of free time. I've been on lay-off at work for the Christmas holidays, so when I was home, I was bored mindlessly - and thus, inspiration to write. But alas, the updates will slow down, and probably return to my semi-frequent updates. After today, I'll be lucky to get two chapters out a month. If everything goes my way, this season will be finished by mid-Febuary. Regardless though, I'm trying my best to keep the quality up, because in truth, this project is really just me learning how to write more effectively. I've never been able to write on a "deadline," so I can't take writing courses because I know I'll just churn out crap that I'm not satisfied with. Way back when I was in High School I took a writing course and although I did fine, I hated what I wrote cause there wasn't any emotion or feeling behind it. It was more just a collection of potential stories without development or focus or anything. I had what I ultimately wanted to happen, but I can't just force the lead up to it - I once tried that in a two-book novel that I'm working on (which is really what this story is all about working towards). I had the scene I wanted, but I couldn't conjoin the places properly. Mark Jazzington is essentially me working on the middle of writing. The beginning is exciting in the season, and the end always has that prestigeous goal, so the end comes easily - success, or defeat. But it's the grind of getting there that can be unbelieveably hard to write. It's like teasing yourself to get to the point, but life's not like that. You can't 'skip' over the build up to get to the prize, it's the day-in, day-out work and the drama that happens from some of the choices you make that ultimately decides whether you make it. If it seems like I go slow and I kind of allow Jazzington's story to focus on multiple little storylines of people (like Hollen/Smith, and Harshaw), it's because they are all a means to an end, but I can't just say what they result. Harshaw's storyline was just build up to something much bigger in the season. He's part of what I've been working on. Hollen/Smith bring me Aitken, who becomes a mini-story in himself. Dolman I haven't said much past spring training, but there's literally one sentence from that chapter that plays a ton of impact on what happens later in the story. Popham plays in well, and there's a definite reason I keep popping Basil Dominguez's name in the story. Aitken and Dominguez kind of play off each other to get to Dolman and Popham's roles. Gober kind of helps things in the story, but I just grew a personal attachment to him so I felt he was worth mentioning, and Butler is some Brady Anderson of '95 (when did he hit 51 HRs?) story to a smaller scale. I've been overlooking a lot of the personalities of the offense only because throughout the season, their isn't much to talk about it. It's just more of the same - only Harshaw really has something interesting, and maybe Butler - but I doubt I'll get into him much, just because I can't think of a personality to give him. The pitching is far more interesting to talk about because they are overperforming to the extreme, and I spent the whole season waiting for a crack to appear. Needless to say, I never had much confidence in my pitching rotation past Koan. The way I write these characters in the story is really a reactionary way to how I mentally imagined them, and how I felt when they performed. If I had the capacity and patience to write this WHOLE thing like a novel insted of a pet-project, the chapters would be 3 or 4 times as long and I'd be running on 5 storylines at once. I'm not good/experienced enough as a writer to juggle that many storylines properly, and despite my best efforts, with the exception of the Harshaw chapter and parts of the Hollen/Smith chapter, I usually finish chapters feeling unsatisfied, like I could do more. I mean, I've been totally ignoring Irene during this time; and it's not because I want to, it's just because that storyline takes a back seat. In the previous years, I could write about Jazz's girlfriends more because the team wasn't particularly interesting. I really had four seasons of "same old", so throwing in the drama with his girlfriends was just bonuses.

Wow.. I ranted a lot here. I feel like a nerd cause I'm putting so much thought into this story when it's not even what I would consider my best work. I've written a few short stories here and there, and a couple poems, but honestly, only one of them was anything more than for myself. A lot of stuff is incomplete, I just like to experiment - and the sad thing is I try a ton of different styles all in hopes to make my planned novel (I've been planning this novel out since I was 14, but even then I knew I wasn't good enough to write it). For example, I once started a short story that was written from a group collective, where I never explicitly mentioned who was talking - they always talked as a group so I was trying to build personalities so the reader could "figure it out" just by the way each one talked without actually needing "Rick said" after every speech. Unfortunately, that was another partially-abandoned project when I turned it more into a reader's digest version of the characters. I've also tried writing from a female perspective, which for me was ridiculously difficult because I'm a male, but that one had potential. The only short story I ever finished is kicking around somewhere, and it's probably one of the few stories that I was mostly satisfied with. Again, I felt like I could have done more, but I restricted myself to 20 pages (I wrote 21) to see if I could do it.

In some respects, I'm waay too critical of my own work - I'm like this with my filmmaking too, and my recent project there is something I'm hoping I can fix with editing. But in other ways, I know it's good, because if I settle for something less then I know I want, I'll never create anything particularly good.

So that's some insight into this story and what makes it... sorry for ranting so much.. I just hope this makes sense and helps you guys understand what I'm trying to accomplish - I rely a lot on your comments and insight and criticism because this is the first time I've ever really put something out strictly for public. Once again, it's another one of my strange self-projects, but I've been lucky that this grew into a serious learning experience. I'll keep this up till I eventually get Jazzington to retire from managing, or until he can't get a job anymore. Or when the story gets too dry. I'm just lucky enough to have a game that creates 4000 players, and subsequently, gives me 4000 opportunities to build a different story. So what I'm trying to say is, thanks for everything you guys have done for me and this story. I write it for you as much as I write it for myself.

...I dunno if that answers your question.