There has been much conversation over the years about abandoning our single bracket standing system, which has been voted on (over and over again) in off-season referendum. I’m not 100% why we care so much, but the issue of divisions was recently brought up on our festering cesspool of a chat not too long ago, so I decided I would analyze some interesting ways we could split the teams up if we actually decided to create these divisions for the 2017 season.

Lets just get a little historical perspective for those of us who forgot what the long long ago past was (2013):

LAST DIVISIONS
AMERICAN		NATIONAL
TEAM		TEAM
Toms River 3peat OffendaZ		Angel in the TROUTfield
Scarlet Knights		River City Mashers
Barnegat Banana Slugs		WVU Bombers
Pine Lake Black Mambas		Whitestone Bulldogs
Orlando Stunnaz		Somerville Sluggers

Look at some of those teams… The good old days when we had MULTIPLE Tutoras, a suspected serial killer, Bombers and Mambas, an ACTUAL ANGEL in the TROUTFIELD, and a 3 time champ that just HAD to end their name with a Z. These placements in the divisions were from the original construction of the league (I believe), and had really no significance of any kind.

Here’s a few ideas I came up with while just sitting around, daydreaming of League Divisional construction. Yes, I actually gave this thought:

LOCATION BASED
TOMS RIVER		THE WORLD
TEAM		TEAM
River City Cuban Missiles		Springfield Isotopes
Pine Lake People’s Champs		Barnegat Banana Slugs
Rojo’s Resurgence		OG Trout Fishing Club
Main St Mooninitez		Dee-Generation X
Whitestone Bulldogs		Club Going Up on Altuve

OK, I mean this one doesn’t take much thought to comprehend. Seeing as how this league was created and constructed in Toms River, as well as most of the league originally living in Toms River, a natural divisional structure could easily be the CURRENT Toms River dwellers to basically wherever the fuck you others live (Classified as “The World“). This has been made much easier by the Mayflower Voyage that Dee-Generation X owner Mike Odom took out to the West Coast. Also, I think I heard T say that Connor lives in Jackson or something. Actually, even if he doesn’t and still lives in TR, guess what hes part of the world because I don’t care. From there you have MR NYC and the 2 South Jersey guys (NOTE: anything south of TR is SOUTH JERSEY. Deal with it) to round out the group. Fun fun everyone.

Now, if you follow the chat like the 4 of you do, you know that politics really is what we discuss the majority of the time. Whether you’re a Socialist piece of garbage (Smitty) or a Racist idiot (Greg), the political spectrum really does vary among the group. A veritable cornucopia of ranging opinions one might say. I took some liberties with affiliations, so maybe I’m wrong here, but here’s the POLITICS VERSION of the Backyard League:

POLITICS
LEFTIES		RIGHTIES
TEAM		TEAM
River City Cuban Missiles		Springfield Isotopes
Main St Mooninitez		OG Trout Fishing Club
Dee-Generation X		Whitestone Bulldogs
Barnegat Banana Slugs		Rojo’s Resurgence
Club Going Up on Altuve		Pine Lake People’s Champs

On a quick look, the Lefties really spell themselves out there easily. You have 2 teachers, a black, a vegan, and for some reason little old me! Who’d of ever thought I would be considering myself a DEM-E-CRAT? Well I’m not really, but for the context of this and the chat, lets just let our imagination fly. The Righties division is really where I took some liberties here. Thanks to our chats and his rantings and ravings, we know how Mikey T feels about social and economical issues, as he aligns with his boy Rafael “TED” Cruz. Greg has come out to agree with T on some of these issues, but has taken a more, lets say, racist approach. Hes an obvious Trump supporter, so that’s another easy one here. From there, you have a guy in the financial world (Cliff), who I’m just placing in this division, and two guys that I have NO WORLDLY IDEA how they feel about anything regarding politics. I do feel that the Ryan’s are 2 incredibly decent human beings, so their views wont align with Greg’s or T’s, but in the Republican bracket you go because I just don’t..know……

Now, if you guys are still with me here (maybe one or two of you are), this is my favorite. We’ve spoke often enough about natural rivalries for trash talk purposes, and I feel that I have put together the most reasonable set of divisions based off of each team and a rival in my eyes. Some teams have MANY MANY rivals, but these pairings work the best:

BIG RIVALRIES
AMERICAN		NATIONAL
TEAM		TEAM
River City Cuban Missiles		Springfield Isotopes
OG Trout Fishing Club		Barnegat Banana Slugs
Main St Mooninitez		Dee-Generation X
Rojo’s Resurgence		Pine Lake People’s Champs
Whitestone Bulldogs		Club Going Up on Altuve

The first pair is the BLOOD FEUD of the 2 league creators in Mikey T and myself. In reality, we are great friends and I love him like a brother, but get us onto the chat and in fantasy baseball circles and I hope all the bad things in life happen to him. Its really that simple. NEXT we have a pairing of a couple of South Jersey yokels. Greg and Brian have so many correlations, its almost hard to count at this point. You can use their vaunted trading habits, their complete contrast in the political spectrum, their differences in music, and I could go on and on but won’t go on. It just makes sense.

Next up are the former Co-champs (3 consecutive terrible years), and whether it makes DX owner Mike Odom sad or not they are DIRECT RIVALS. Other than that, they are uninteresting to me and I’ll move on. The Battle of the Ryans is next, which is location based, presence in the chat based, and basically that’s it so lets just call it the Battle of the Ryans and move on. Lastly, its the most obvious pairing in the league, which would be the Battle of the Faceless Men. This only works if you suspend your disbelief and believe that Connor is actually controlling his team, and not Mikey T, so let’s work off of that for these purposes. Despite the VERY WELCOMED appearance by our buddy Cliff at the draft, you just never really hear a lot from either of these guys during the season. It’s very hard to trade with either team, and neither one is lighting up the roster move wire, so couple that with the two guys having NO involvement with the chat, its the easiest pairing of teams to split.

So there, guys. I figured out a few really fun scenarios that we could use to split into the new divisions for the 2017 season, should The Commish decide to put it on the ballot for the 5th consecutive season. I hope everyone gets a lot out of my suggestions when it comes to voting time, or I convinced you all to just leave it the way it is. Maybe I’ll think of more when its on the ballot in 2018 AND BEYOND…..

-Lobman