Monday, April 18, 2011

20 Questions With blanch13

1. What should we call you?

Dan

2. Any hobbies or favorite pastimes besides HBD?

Yeah, hiking and camping for a long time. More recently, dabbling with martial arts and social dancing.

3. How did you fall into HBD?

I did just literally fall into it a couple of years back. I had played Purebaseball a few years back and enjoyed that a lot, but the whole thing didn't run very well. Played a lot of Strat-O-Matic as a kid, so I have a long history with the baseball sim thing.

4. How many teams do you run? How many hours per week do you pour into your teams?

I have 4 teams now, and spend virtually no time on them. Pretty much all my HBD time is spent on commissioner duties and blogging here - probably 3-4 hours a week.

5. Married? Children?

Divorced with one daughter who's graduating from college next month.

6. City/State you live in? Hometown where you grew up?

Happily reside currently in Austin, TX. I do actually come from the same hometown as Joey Belle - Shreveport, LA.

7. Occupation? Do you check in on your teams often during the workday?

I'm a self-employed sales and small business coach - I do a lot of 5-minute check-ins.

8. Tell me 5 things nobody in Belle knows about you.

I don't think anybody in Belle knows anything about me, but here goes:

1. I'm kind of a crazy, only-child, Type-A personality.
2. I once had to negotiate with gangsters when I lived in Singapore.
3. I'm 56 years old.
4. Was an all-state SS in high school ball in La.
5. I do all my work by phone.

9. What makes you laugh?

George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Lenny Bruce. That should confirm my age.

10. Top 3 all time movies?


Hard to pick a top one, so in no order:

The Shawshank Redemption, Rashoman, and Pulp Fiction

11. What popular song past/present do you most identify with?


I don't think I identify with popular songs, but when I think of my favorites they're frequently something by Led Zeppelin or AC/DC.

12. Real baseball team you grew up loving? Still in love with them?

I lived and died with the Yankees for a long time, starting in the Mick's last good year ('64) and going through about '78-'80 (when I got to see a number of the Reggie/
Randolph/Guidry/Chambliss/Nettles Yankee-era games). Now I think the Yanks are the evil empire...it just seems unthinkable to me that you can have 1 (or a few) teams with such a huge resource advantage over the the other teams.

13. Tell me 3 things you wish you knew about particular Belle owners?

Hmmm...favorite food, favorite baseball player of all time, and best HBD "secret trick".

14. You're very loud as a Belle owner. Why do you speak up so often?


Just a function of being commish...I'm pretty low-key in my other worlds.

15. What is your GM philosophy?


Still figuring that out. I do find that once I have a team in contention I tend to get bored with it...I think I like the building process more than anything else.

16. Any special meaning for your WIS nickname? Your Belle team name?

Nah, I usually get my team names from one of those internet team name-generator sites.

17. Who is/was your favorite Belle owner? Why?

I'll have to pass on that one.

18. Which MLB Commissioner do you admire or identify with most? Why?


I honestly don't know enough about any of them or the issues they've dealt with to comment intelligently. On the larger admin side of baseball, I'd have to say I admire Branch Rickey the most. He had to have a lot of vision and balls to bring in Jackie Robinson when he did, and contributed many other innovations.

19. General pet peeves about the HBD game?

The only real gripe I have is that prospects are pretty much sure things, and that fact in itself creates the urge to tank. I really think it would be a huge improvement if they could address that somehow. Seems like it would be pretty easy to "fuzzy up" the draft and IFA's. Another interesting approach might be to offer an "HBD Premium" version, with fuzzier scouting and maybe a "revenue model" component (where your available $$ goes up or down with W-L record and perhaps some other factors).

20. If I was Belle Commish for a day I would _______________ .

I guess I'd do what I'm doing...trying to get in a good bit of blogging.

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