Deadlines and Demerits

The Nadman chimed in with an additional concern. He suggested we also have demerits for failure to send out instructions in a timely manner. It's hard to get games played if you live away from everyone else and don't have instructions. So how about if we add this to the previous proposal:

For all mail games, unless both teams have spoken and reached some other agreement, the road teams must have instructions or computer managers sent out by July 4th. The home teams should reply to confirm they have received them. One demerit for each team you fail to connect with in a timely manner.

Is that too late? Can you guys living outside of Texas get enough games played in March thru June with a July 4th deadline for instructions? Should it be earlier?

And again, this addition and the previous deadlines proposed are just common sense things. The goal is to get games done without having to cram in a ton of games in November, like the last five or so years.

I know some have commented that we should enforce the rules we have now. The problem is: the rules we have now don't have any consequences for not playing games, except that somebody else will play them for you. I don't think that's much of a consequence. I mean... You hate your crappy team? Hate watching them lose games? Easy! Just don't play the games! Somebody else will play them all for you!

With this rule, there are deadlines. And if you don't meet them, there are consequences. The consequences aren't even all that drastic, unless you miss a lot of deadlines. I don't think the deadlines are all that drastic, either. The pace isn't all that breakneck.

I think the best thing about it will be reporting our results every time we play a series. Those results can be reported on Big Innings and added to the records on the Standings page. That should be fun to read and interesting to keep up with.

Thanks, Nadman, for helping out. I've heard back from others, too. Sounds like it's something that will work. Let me hear from the rest of you.

Pigman