If you want to play in a tried-and-true format and create your team right now, standard leagues (Classic and SSG) are open to the public 24/7. But if you want to try something different, Custom leagues – created by customers – are there in abundance.

There are franchise leagues, progression leagues, captains leagues, high and low salary cap leagues, “rags to riches” leagues, alphabet leagues, place of birth leagues … the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Diamond Mind Online would not be the same if the Community did not include some of the most clever and prolific creators of Custom Leagues. We’ll be featuring one of these in this space each month.

This month we’re visiting with Bob (wolves1997) Stowell, Commissioner of the long-running Penny Pincher league series, now in its 66th season.

Tell us something about yourself: age, occupation, marital status, where you live, and interests (apart from DMO, of course).

Age 63. Occupation courier part-time for Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan. From 1987-2004 I worked in Las Vegas at Bally’s Sportsbook.

Married to Jeri Lyn since March 1987. Have two children Abbie and Adam; both are married now.

I’m a really avid sports fan. All Detroit teams, so championships are sparse. My wife likes Michigan State and I like (as my user name suggests) Michigan. “Go Blue”!

I like sports talk radio, the beach, our dog, and Horrocks Farm Market milk chocolate small peanut butter cups.

When did you start playing DMO and how did it first come to your attention?

I started playing Sim baseball way back when it was ESPN Classic baseball. When it moved I played a bit but then had a huge gap playing. Probably my kids growing up. Dived back in a few years ago.

I see that you play in many continuing leagues, including the Blind Date and Turbo R2R series, as well as your own Penny Pincher leagues. What do you find appealing about continuing leagues?

I like continuing leagues because it’s mostly the same owners. Plus the stats are all kept. It really helps.

I like the price of turbo and the pace of 18 games a day. I’m not the greatest player but have a few titles. This sim has some great players. Charles Liddane, Jeremy Visser, Karim Reyes. If you want to make great teams look at these owners’ teams. I could name more but the list would be long.

Is there any advice you would give to people who haven’t created a Custom League before, but would like to give it a try?

My advice to start leagues is look at what other players are doing on the custom league message board. Owners like Jim Mudrock, and Mark Fishman, to name a few, plus many others. Jim runs great leagues.
Penny Pincher started really at a low starting cost and we try different things every so often. Sometimes I do add more money so it is not a true “penny pincher” every season.

One time we ran through all the different eras. Sometimes we do franchise. We have been trying different park ideas. PP#66 is a double captain league and a park one or both played at. I tried to find Hall of Fame tandems and then we drafted them. We change other things up like having pitchers bat on a season ending in zero. We have tried the runner at second in extra innings a few times. I think in PP#65 we tried triples parks. We just float ideas and then try some of them.