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 Bruce (RedHook) Warner, the current commissioner of the long-running Undroppables and TURBO for FUN AGAIN leagues.

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

I am 73 years old. My wife and I live in the Denver area near our children and granddaughter. We just celebrated our 50th anniversary. In the working part of my life, I practiced law, owned a small development company with my brother and retired as a regional manager for one of the large national banks twenty years ago. Retirement is my true calling in life. Upon retirement I went to wine school for two years and passed the exams to become a certified sommelier. That led to a 15 year “retirement gig” teaching wine and beer classes at a local university. I smile when I think that the state paid me to teach college students how to drink.

My wife and I are avid travellers. I have visited over 100 countries. I’m not sure of the count. I stopped keeping track when I hit my goal of 100 in 2009. We own homes in Argentina and Mexico, so we spend a good amount of time out of the country every year.

My love of baseball was inherited from my paternal grandfather, who was a good semi-pro shortstop in the Pittsburgh area. We would ride the streetcars to Forbes Field to watch the Pirates play. As a kid, like many of us, I was a passionate collector of baseball cards. My brother and I would invent games to be played with our cards. Over the years, I have played Strat-O-Matic, APBA and rotisserie.

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

Prior to DM, I played the Bill James Classic Game. I won the championship in my first Bill James season and was hooked. I loved getting the weekly newsletter in the mail. However, the commissioner of my Bill James league, the late Jack Cavin, convinced me that DM was a far superior game. I was skeptical, but decided to give DM a chance. Of course, Jack was correct.

You’re the driving force behind the long-running Undroppables and TURBO for FUN AGAIN leagues. Tell us something about the format for these leagues, and what it is that you find appealing about them?

The Undroppables is a keepers league. Each team must have a minimum of 4 everyday position players with salaries $14 million or, more and 2 pitchers with salaries at least $11 million. Of course, an owner can have more if he chooses. Our rules are very strict regarding how these players can be removed from your rosters. They must be carried over from season to season. It is a format developed by our founder, Roger Gradney. It provides some very interesting challenges in payroll management. We have had very little turnover in our league over 70 seasons, so the camaraderie among our owners is at a very high level. Unfortunately, we lost one of our initial owners, Don Conrad, this past season. He was a great guy. We renamed our league the Don Conrad Memorial Undroppables.

Our Turbo for Fun League is a basic Turbo League with a Salary Cap of $175 million and a total of $26 million in weekly payments. For me, the best thing about a Turbo League is that, if you are having a bad season, it doesn’t linger for a few months, which can be excruciating. With Turbo, you get to start over again in a few weeks. You also get to draft more often and accumulate mores stats, which are two of my favorite things about playing DM.

Can you offer a few tips for success for those inexperienced with these formats?

There is nothing revelatory about this. The best tip that I have read regarding playing this game is to choose your ballpark, then draft players that fit your park.

A key factor in any of the DM leagues is managing your salary cap. The Undroppables league provides a different level of challenges for doing that.

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?

Most importantly, have a format that you are interested in playing, not just as an experiment but for a longer period of time. If you are interested, so others will be. I would suggest a salary cap high enough so that each team can have some of the “all-time greats” on their rosters. To me, it is most fun to have some of these players. But don’t have such a high salary cap that everyone has a roster of HOF’ers. Having “holes” in your rosters filled by less expensive players requires you to look and learn about other players too. Listen to the feedback of other owners so that your league evolves and improves over time.