This is MLN. The monthly covering the sports which the other 86% of the country watches.

Minor league sports aren't just for the townies in the tulies anymore. They're big business (as this month's report from the Owner's Box points out.). Baseball's minors have gone from dog houses to kennels. If you don't have indoor batting cages and choice digs for your contracts, bet the league will walk your team to a new square on the board (See this month's feature:PCLopoly).

That's why we created this e-rag. For, as many of you as there are hanging around WKRPtown to catch a load of Junior dressed in his Marge Schott originals (Will they ever change those stale uniforms?), there are as many people cheering on Paul LoDuca, Timoniel Perez, Roy Oswalt or Nelson Castro. Who are these guys? Well who was Mark McGwire, before he was Mark McGwire?

The minors are about rising stars, falling stars, shooting stars, and athletes with stars in their eyes. What you see here, you don't see in the parks of the overpaid. Kids who make somewhere between a lot and nothing, who carry their own bags, and take long bus rides to play before a few hundred to a few thousand fans ranging from the rabid to the comatose. They play with energy. They play with enthusiasm. Men living out the dreams of boys.

Sure, you'll see some awesome talent in any sport at the major league level. But millionaire athletes don't like sliding in head-first. It can damage the manicure, and jeopardize that fat paycheck. Guys with a lot more to gain and little to lose give you 110%, usually at prices for a family of four that don't come up to the parking bill at Enron Field.

But no one in the mainstream media really cares. Finding information on the latest IBL scores, or heaven forbid, coverage, at the big sports outlets, on the web or on the tube, is a rarety. They fill their time between major league gigs with International Freestyle Rollerblading and Beach Bimbo Volleyball.

For all of you who love minor league ball, and want to follow the kids who come and go from your teams, we here at MLN offer a new voice, a take with attidude on the players great, small, and infamous who inhabit the hundreds of parks and stadiums thta dot the land.

We invite you to send us your takes, tip us on great players that deserve our attention, and even write an article if you think you don't suck (Those who think they suck probably shouldn't even inquire.)

We are your electronic magazine of minor league sports from coast-to-coast, from Altoona to Yakima. Accept no subsitutes.

To those players who endure nights on broken down buses, play in converted cow barns, suffer team names that sound more like diseases than sports clubs, we not only salute you, we cover you! (Remember when you get to the Bigs who loved ya first, baaaby...)

Read on!

 

Brian M. Ross
Publisher/Sr. Editor

Giving It Up For Altoona