by cirills » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:09 pm
AP 9:05 EST
The Pittsburgh Pipers (formerly the Sandlot Shrinks) have fired their long time and successful General Manager - Sandy. As reported earlier, the club was very disappointed by their second had performance. Even though they still finished with the 4th best record in the league, they wound up a distant 3rd in their own division. Sandy has shown great loyalty to his players over the years, and apparently was differing with management over the best course too take next year. The team promises lots of changes for their fans in order to get back to their previous dominance. Sandy leaves with one World Series to his credit.
He will be immediately succeeded by the recent winner of the USKL title - Detroit-Tigers. D-T has a terrific winning percentage over the years and should be able to fill Sandy's shoes admirably. The Shrinks have a lot of talent returning and some of the game's best young prospects, so the pressure will be on him right off the bat.
Said Sandy on his departure "I will miss the HCKL. I (we) had a lot of success here and have built some lasting relationships. But in this is not a bad thing for me. I have been wanting to spend more time with my family for a while, and I could no longer run two teams effectively (Sandy is also the GM of a team in the GMKL where he has yet to win a title. He did win a title in the USKL but retired from running that team at the end of last year). Sandy continued by saying, "I also have never been a fan of doing an early FA draft in this league and that was one of the reasons I almost retired last year (ironically his successor then was to be Detroit-Tigers who in fact held the position for a week).
But, it is time. Now I can concentrate on winning the title in the GMKL thus completing a career slam. If I do that, I think I will then retire from all of SOM. I really do want to spend more time with my family since my kids are older now, so I do not regret this firing one bit."
The team echoed those sentiments by saying, "Sandy will sorely be missed. He was the architect that put this team together, but we just decided it was time to go a completely different direction. This is not meant to be an insult to Sandy, whom we have no doubt will continue to be successful in the GMKL."