Hi Baseball fans,
My name is Ferrell Mayes (ferrell). Here is a little background about myself. I live in a small one traffic light town in southwest Michigan for the past 25 years. I am in my mid-fifties and have worked for Frito Lay as a Route Salesman for almost 20 years. I am married and have 2 daughters both of whom are still in college. I am credentialed with the State High School Association for sports photography for the local schools and media outlets. I do this for no charge as a –give back to the community- kind of thing. I am most proud of my 2 daughters and them chasing their dreams. Volleyball is a big deal in our little town. My oldest daughter loved the sport growing but was not very good at all. A late bloomer in the sport who rode the pine until she unexpectedly made her varsity team and was an All-State player her senior year who went on to be a scholarship player at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. My youngest daughter was fortunate enough to win back to back State Titles with her high school team. She currently attends the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. She currently plays for the U of M traveling club volleyball team. So volleyball has been what has filled all my “free” time for the past dozen or so years.
Ferrell’s Early Days
My love for baseball started the same way as many others growing up, Little League baseball, trading bubble gum cards and a couple of long car rides to Tiger Stadium as a kid. I was born in Tennesee and my family moved to Michigan when I was 5. We took a couple of vacation trips back for my parents to visit old friends and neighbors. This included visiting my godfather Ernie “Ferrell” Bowman. “Ferrell” was a utility infielder for the Giants in the early sixties. Not much of a stick but he was a legend for me to admire from afar growing up. He was out of the majors the year I was born and I never really got to know him growing up.
Sim Baseball Beginnings
I started playing sim baseball in the middle of high school. One day while hanging out at the local pizzeria one of the guys showed up with a brand new game he had just gotten. The 1978 Statis-Pro baseball game. It was incredible. I have never been the same since. We each drafted whole teams right there and then that gave us the rights to the same teams when the next season came out. One of those guys from that group was Wayne Pike (zebulon) that plays here and we still chat on the phone often like teenagers about the teams and leagues we are in.
My friend Wayne hooked me up when he had a few teams at S.T.A.T.S and I played a couple of teams there. I believe my first team won a hundred games and Holy Cow! I got to see my team’s name on the internet.
Hello Simnasium!
I made the move to Simnasium in 2007 and after checking out some of the message boards I could see it was a huge group of people who loved baseball as much as I did. I jumped into a standard league. My team was the Sweat Sox. I played in the Astrodome, drafted some favorites and I could not get home fast enough every day from work to check the results. Jessie Barfield, Greg Maddux and the fat tub of goo Terry Forster “who could stop us?”. We won the wild card and were headed to the playoffs. During the season I rode Maddux like Evel Knievel rode motorcycles. He won 30 games and had 383 innings. The team won the LCS in 7 games. I was nervous. The Sweat Sox are World Series Champions! was the coolest thing to see on that screen after it was over. That was the only standard team I ever played. I started to “meet” people online at Simnasium and jumped into the Custom leagues.
My second team I played also won the World Series and seemingly a few teams later I sought out the Ladder Leagues. The Ladder Leagues were where all the sharks seemed to swim. Played one season in the Ladders at the Major League level and was promoted to the Premier League. I had a crazy streak of good luck and baseball fortune to be able to win back to back Premier League Ladder League Championships. Those 2 consecutive World Series wins are the one thing I am most proud of here at Imagine Sports. That stretch pushed my Maxscore all the way up to #2 or #3. I have played nearly 150 teams here at Imagine Sports including some beta testing. Currently my record stands at 11,617 wins and 10,237 losses ( some of those still sting long after) with 31 World Series titles.
I love building teams. I am not a spreadsheet guy. I am a Ticonderoga #2 and 2 pieces of paper to make some notes on kind of guy. I play guys I like when I can get them and avoid the ones I don’t like when I can. I am sure it is like Bosox fans not drafting Bucky Dent. I like the camaraderie of the league boards, the diversity on the main and off-topic boards where you can see how generous everyone is with helping others with a hardship being overcome or as simple as sharing an experience that helps someone else solve a situation.
A day with baseball in it is always a good day. I hope everyone enjoys playing here as much as I do.
Ferrell
Very Nice read!