Auction memories

[Moonlight J]

Share some of your favorite stories from your local auctions

[Bob Kohm]

Hey Jason, smell that? Smells like whore.

[jackmadden]

It was the 2nd time we had done an auction and two guys got into a bidding war (one of the guys is Russian and the other is American). Once the bidding started to get into the high teens, everyone who wasn't bidding started a USA chant. The American guy got the player but the Russian guy ended up winning the title.

Two years after that we did an auction at somebody's condo. During the middle of the draft one of the guys left to use the restroom. We assumed he would be sitting out the next couple of players, but after a few minutes he cracked the door open and started yelling out bids.

[Erik]

That bathroom anecdote reminds me of one from my main league.

One of our owners is kind of a space cadet. One year, we were having the draft at a Morton's, and after a bid toward the end, he got up to go to the bathroom. Didn't tell us to skip him or anything, didn't imply it was anything other than a quick routine bathroom trip. We waited for five minutes. We waited for ten minutes and started wondering whether he'd been swallowed by the toilet. We waited for fifteen minutes and came to the conclusion that he must have found a teleportation device in his bathroom stall and sent himself into another galaxy. He finally came back after about twenty minutes, not realizing in the slightest that he had been gone that long, nor that we had stopped the auction to wait for him. Every subsequent auction has included at least one "bathroom teleportation" joke, and every time we draft in a new location, we ask him whether he likes the bathrooms as much as those at Morton's.

[Moonlight J]

Hey Jason, smell that? Smells like whore.

Judgef**ker!!!!

[Moonlight J]

It was the 2nd time we had done an auction and two guys got into a bidding war (one of the guys is Russian and the other is American). Once the bidding started to get into the high teens, everyone who wasn't bidding started a USA chant. The American guy got the player but the Russian guy ended up winning the title.

Two years after that we did an auction at somebody's condo. During the middle of the draft one of the guys left to use the restroom. We assumed he would be sitting out the next couple of players, but after a few minutes he cracked the door open and started yelling out bids.

I got a painful migraine at the start of one of our NL auctions one year to the point it led to nausea and I had to do my bidding from the floor and the hallway as I did the boot scoot boogie to the toilet a few times.

I won the the league that year

[swampdragon]

We have always had a few mystery players drafted in the late end game of our only auction. Our rules allow you to draft anyone so every year one guy always throws out a name of player long since left baseball - this is referred to as "the junior felix" pick

One year my arch enemy and I wrote out our strategies and sealed them with the promise to show after the draft. My super secret pick was a rockies farm hitting guy - Todd Helton. I waited until he had filled 1b/co/util and threw out helton for a buck - no one else cared and he was livid. His strategy said - get that helton guy for a buck once swampdragon had filled the spots. Helton turned out OK in a OBA league.

Two owners of the same team once got into a bidding war with each other - nice

remember - Bobby Hill, Mike Thurman, Kevin Foster,rockies catchers in the late 90s - all stud prospects on my teams

[Sharky]

We have always had a few mystery players drafted in the late end game of our only auction. Our rules allow you to draft anyone so every year one guy always throws out a name of player long since left baseball - this is referred to as "the junior felix" pick

One year my arch enemy and I wrote out our strategies and sealed them with the promise to show after the draft. My super secret pick was a rockies farm hitting guy - Todd Helton. I waited until he had filled 1b/co/util and threw out helton for a buck - no one else cared and he was livid. His strategy said - get that helton guy for a buck once swampdragon had filled the spots. Helton turned out OK in a OBA league.

Two owners of the same team once got into a bidding war with each other - nice

remember - Bobby Hill, Mike Thurman, Kevin Foster,rockies catchers in the late 90s - all stud prospects on my teams

Nice story about Helton!

[umjewman]

Going back several years, thatrogue (you remember that guy!) and I had some fierce bidding wars on absolutely awful players. Karim Garcia comes to mind.

Anyway, in 2006, and we were coming to the tail end of the auction and I nominated Wade Miller for $1. Due to a discrepancy about whether thatrogue was in at that point (we have a slow-paced bid in order type auction system), I was enraged that he was permitted to bid $2 and acquire him (I was in dollar days). I moved to the next player on my list - a minor leaguer by the name of Cole Hamels, who I then took for $1. That one worked out pretty okay, as I took the title in 2007.

[heyelander]

I had a few dollars left in PONY two years ago and was saving it for some random OF prospect. A guy that was down to dollar days threw out some other OF Prospect who I thought was Micheal Saunders from SEA. I thought about it for a moment and decided he was just as good as the guy I had in mind and called out $2. The guy went nuts and declared me his nemesis for the rest of time. I get back home a few days later and look over my roster. I don't see Saunders but I see I actually bid on some guy named Michael Stanton. That worked out pretty well.

[Vecmizer]

I had a few dollars left in PONY two years ago and was saving it for some random OF prospect. A guy that was down to dollar days threw out some other OF Prospect who I thought was Micheal Saunders from SEA. I thought about it for a moment and decided he was just as good as the guy I had in mind and called out $2. The guy went nuts and declared me his nemesis for the rest of time. I get back home a few days later and look over my roster. I don't see Saunders but I see I actually bid on some guy named Michael Stanton. That worked out pretty well.

Tyler still curses you to this day.

[Erik]

Two owners of the same team once got into a bidding war with each other - nice

We had one team that was a partnership between a Yankees fan and a Mets fan. One year, the Mets fan bid up himself, causing the Yankees fan to go all Three Stooges on him. Later in the draft, he threw out an opening bid on Jon Niese that was far more than any non-Mets fan would ever consider, and got crickets. The Yankee fan dumped him this offseason.

[Don Quixote]

2000 (2001?)--Earlier in March, it had been announced that John Smoltz was having TJ surgery and would miss the whole year. Everyone ignored him. My team was in rebuilding mode anyway (in other words, my freeze list and my auction to that point sucked), so I waited until everyone with a pitching slot left was in Dollar Daze (and I held an extra buck in case someone else had the same idea), then called out, "John Smoltz, $1". A hush fell over the room, then one guy goes, "You whore". Sure I got nothing from him that year, but I got a year of him closing for a buck, then two at $6 after extending his contract. Sweet!

[heyelander]

Tyler still curses you to this day.

I'll miss tyler this year. He was a good nemesis.

[Teenwolf]

I've never done a live auction, but I'll never forget my draft from 2010.

Late in the draft, the chatroom is buzzing with people wondering what the heck I'm doing with $28 or so left for 9 spots, when everybody else was close to dollar days. Then it starts to happen. I wait until everybody is down to a max bid of $3 or so, and start grabbing them. CJ Wilson $3, Matt Joyce $3, Michael Brantley $3, Fausto Carmona $3, Carlos Carrasco $3, Dallas Braden $3, Colby Lewis $4, and so on. Guys went NUTS. "WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!?! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!?!!"

It was the greatest manipulation of a draft I've ever experienced. I played it as if I were clueless, saying things like "I have my sleepers." And then purposely got everyone into $3-$4 max bids and picked up every single good player left available. Awesome.

Ended up winning the league by 0.5 pts on the final day of the season, which came down to the very last at-bat, over one of the best baseball minds on this site, Mike Fast aka Kevin Seitzer.