[Syd Thrift]

(note: the original way of keeping up with the draft was too much to keep track of and, frankly, not what I really want to do with this league. I mean, it was a nice idea but if it's not automated it's just too much house-keeping. I'm arranging the team in order of their wins so far this year instead, although the first two rounds will have teams picking from their own country only. I'm also going to bring something in from my earlier league, and that's making historical peepls into baseball players. That *is* the kind of thing I want to do because it is very realistic and accurate. Also, I worked really hard before to find 2 players from each team in each category. Here I'm going to try to find 1-3 guys for every team, more if there are more dudes of that nationality represented in the birth year per Wikipedia, less if there aren't).

Royal Canadian Mounted Baseballists
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Ben Blue, SP - Canadian bandleader and comedian. Stop crying, Canadians! At least he is actually from your country, unlike the next guy.

Vienna Musik
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Jaroslav Seifert, LF - Nobel Prize winning Czech writer, poet and journalist. Given that Vienna is currently the only Eastern European country outside of Russia (Austria stretches the definition of "Eastern Europe" but you get the drift), they get Hungarians (part of the same empire up until the end of the Great War) or Czechs if available.

Paris Revolutions
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Jean Dubuffet, SS - one of the most famous French painters and sculptors of the second half of the 20th century.

Chicago Defenders
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Mule Suttles, OF - Negro League outfielder.

Turkey Stearns, OF - Negro League outfielder, inducted into the real-life Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002.

Amsterdam Admirals
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Max Euwe, RF - Dutch chess Grandmaster, Mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion (1935–1937). Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978. Euwe was also a highly-regarded chess writer.

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, SP - Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966. Unlike his predecessors, Verwoerd was not born in South Africa, but immigrated at age two with his parents from the Netherlands.

Tokyo Rising Sun
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Emperor Hirohito, CL - the 124th Emperor of Japan.

Brussels Painters
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Leopold III, SP - reigned as King of the Belgians from 1934 until 1951, when he abdicated in favour of the Heir Apparent, his son Baudouin.

Mexico City Aztecs
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Hunahpu (CL) and Xbalanque (CF) Maya - In honor of the Mayan independent state's capitulation to Mexico this year, the Hero Twins of Mayan mythology were discovered and cloned using the Tesla Device. The specifics are very complicated and not to be asked about for world security purposes.

Shanghai Dragons
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Chen Yi, LF - Chinese communist military commander and politician.

Moscow Proletariat
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Vasily Kalinnikov, SS - a Russian composer of two symphonies, several additional orchestral works and numerous songs, all of them imbued with characteristics of folksong. His symphonies, particularly the First, were frequently performed in the early 20th century. In recent years his fame has diminished but the symphonies are available in recordings.

New York Giants
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Ed Sullivan, P - American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of a popular TV variety show called The Ed Sullivan Show that was at its height of popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.

Walt Disney, 2B - Multiple Academy Award-winning American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century.

Art Rooney - The founding owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise in the National Football League.

Cincinnati Reds
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Clark Gable, P - an iconic American actor nicknamed "The King of Hollywood" in his heyday. Gable's most famous role was Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh. His performance earned him his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor; he had won the award for It Happened One Night (1934) and was also nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).

Gary Cooper, RF - An American film actor and iconic star. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, individualistic, emotionally restrained, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made.

London Monarchs
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F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas, SP - The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent codenamed "The White Rabbit" during World War II. His particular sphere of operations was Occupied and Vichy France.

Madrid Matadors
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Joaquin Rodrigo, P - a composer of classical music and a virtuoso pianist. Despite being blind from an early age, he achieved great success. Rodrigo is considered to be among the composers most responsible for popularizing classical guitar music in the twentieth century, and his Concierto de Aranjuez is one of the pinnacles of the Spanish music and guitar concerto repertoire. This blindness is even more amazing given his baseball prowess.

Rio de Janeiro Carnival
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Suavoco do Cristo, CL - Portugese for "Christ's Armpit", this is the name of a prominent bloco in Rio de Janeiro. Blocos are a group of people who dress in costumes to celebrate the Carnival. This one is associated with the area around Rio's Botanical Garden.

Athens Philosophers
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Theseus, CF - Here's a guy who killed a minotaur. Surely he can play a little baseball. Also cloned using the Tesla Device.

Berlin Teutonic Knights
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Karl Arnold, OF - Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1947 to 1956. He was President of the Bundesrat and as such acting head of state of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, before the election of President Theodor Heuss.

Rome Cardinals
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Enrico Fermi, SS - Italian physicist most noted for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics.

Sydney Outback
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Gordon 'Nuts' Coventry, CL - Australian rules footballer who played for Collingwood Football Club in the Victorian Football League. With 1,299 goals over 18 seasons no football observer could deny that Coventry remains one of the greatest full forwards the game has ever seen.

US Army Baseball Engineers
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George Gallup, P - an American pioneer of survey sampling techniques and inventor of the Gallup poll, a successful statistical method of survey sampling for measuring public opinion.

Maxwell Taylor, MR - American soldier and diplomat of the mid-20th century.