The GBOAT is Rollin' into the Hall of Fame
The story of Scott Rolen's time with the Blue Jays as seen through the lens of the then-nascent Blue Jays blogosphere
Former Blue Jays star Scott Rolen will be enshrined as a Hall of Famer in Cooperstown, NY, this weekend. Though it seems as unlikely that he’ll be depicted in a Blue Jays cap on his plaque as it once seemed that he’d get in at all, the big third baseman left an indelible mark on a lot more Canadian fans than you might realize.
I know this because I was there, deep in the trenches, writing about it.
Rolen's year-and-a-half Blue Jays tenure began in January 2008, when he was acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for slugging fellow 3B Troy Glaus. At the time, the Blogspot site some friends and I had started to swear and make caustic wisecracks about baseball, Drunk Jays Fans, was just a year old.
Recently I discovered that, after years of believing the site's entire history had been wiped from digital existence by the former employers of mine that now own it, I'd archived just about everything we wrote in the early years of DJF. Since it’s no longer online, and I don't own this stuff, I don’t think it would be wise to simply re-publish posts here. (Also probably not wise for… uh… other reasons). But I certainly think it should be OK to let some of those old posts help take a little stroll down memory lane on the occasion of the almighty GBOAT ascending to the pantheon of the sport.
(A warning for those who are new: Very salty language ahead.)
I’ll be honest here, friends. This site keeps the lights on for me, but it isn’t a cash cow. And I could live a lot more comfortably than I do right now if I was willing to put some of my work behind a paywall and push a bunch readers who are on the fence into becoming paid subscribers. But, the thing is, I know that times are tough for a lot of people and I really don’t want to become inaccessible to anyone. So, if you can afford it, and you value what I do and aren’t already a paid subscriber, I’d ask that you consider upgrading your free membership to a paid one. Thanks. — Stoeten
Enter the GBOAT
Troy Glaus managed to get into just 115 games for the Blue Jays in the 2007 season and he wanted out. The Rogers Centre's Field Turf, though not quite as bad as the carpeted concrete of the 90s, was taking its toll on his body. Several months after requesting a trade, the club found a willing partner in the St. Louis Cardinals, who had their own disgruntled — and oft-injured — third baseman in the form of Rolen.
The deal was initially panned by a lot of Jays fans, before it was understood that Glaus had asked to be traded, and made it clear that he wasn't going to exercise his player option for 2009 to stay in Toronto — something that was all but confirmed by a man I described at the time as "Glaus's agent (and popular stop-smoking gum), Mike Nicotera."
Glaus agreed to exercise the option in order to facilitate the trade — he'd long wanted to play in St. Louis, it had been reported at the time — and so three years of Rolen were ours, with two years of Glaus going the other way.
My take was that, even though Glaus was the better hitter and, according to John Dewan's The Fielding Bible, closer to Rolen defensively than their reputations would have suggested, there were ways that each player fit better with his new club. Rolen had more of an even platoon split, which added balance to the lefty-mashing Jays lineup. His defence “and the fact that he can score from second on a double” were also positives I cited. On the other hand, for St. Louis, getting a true power hitter behind Albert Pujols in their lineup was huge. “Plus,” I added, “Tony LaRussa presumably doesn't want to rip Troy's balls off.”
As for Rolen and his new skipper: “Something tells me that, even though Gibbers has had a couple of well-publicized bust-ups in the past, they won't have a problem.”
That's right. Cito 2.0 was still just a dorky pipe dream at this point. (Cito absolutely should have got a shot to manage elsewhere after his glorious first tenure with the Jays, for the record. But he didn't make sense to me for the 2008 Jays, nor did firing John Gibbons — neither then nor now. And don’t get me started on 2009 or ‘10!)
Rolen, who would turn 33 that April, was just a year removed from a string of five straight All-Star appearances, but was also coming off of a third surgery on the left shoulder he had first injured in a 2005 collision with then-Dodgers first baseman Hee-Seop Choi. His OPS had slumped to .729 in his final year with the Cardinals, but you could still dream on the bat that slashed .296/.369/.518 in 2006, and helped to lead the St. Louis to its first World Series since 1982.
Plus, he'd be reunited with his shortstop from that season! The Jays had just signed David Eckstein in an attempt to add more “dirtbags” to the team — the mid-2000s equivalent of the kind of desperate marketing that this year brought us stronger focus on “the little things” (and seems to have worked out just about as well). The Rolen move “would also seem to fall in line with the Eckstein addition,” one of my fellow DJF writers quipped, “in that Rolen is a gritty player. His playing style is that of the guys that get dirty and play hard visibly."
“I asked this question after the Jays new shortstop was signed and I'll ask it again,” he continued. “Is J.P. actually listening to those guys who phone into Wilner's radio show saying that the Jays need more heart?”
An awe-inspiring era of Blue Jays baseball this was not. But at least we now had the GBOAT. (Sadly for Eckstein, despite monumental displays of effort on every single play (and walk!), his tiny little arms couldn't muster the velocity required for a shortstop to make plays from in the hole and he only lasted 76 games before getting sent to Arizona for future reliever Chad Beck, and being replaced by a combination of Marco Scutaro and John McDonald).
An inauspicious start
The J.P. referred to above was, of course, noted liar and crybaby fan feeling-hurter J.P. Ricciardi. The Blue Jays’ then-GM, in the directionless final years of his too-long tenure, likely didn’t help the Rolen era get off to a rollicking start when he tried to all-but-laugh-off his new third baseman's shoulder issues in an interview with the Fan 590's Chuck Swirsky Show on the day of Rolen's “cornball” (per yours truly) introductory press conference.
"There's a lot being made of the operations, which, you know, there should be. But I think if you understand the operations: the first one didn't go as well as it probably should have. The second one was to maybe repair some of the stuff that wasn't on the first one. The third on was really a cleanup, so the cleanup really was just scar tissue that gets built up. It's kind of like getting your knee scoped. His range of motion is great — actually our doctors told us his left shoulder has more mobility and flexibility and strength than his right shoulder!”
Oh. Uh. Well... OK, then? Seems not terrifying at all???
Despite the incredibly valid (spoiler!) concerns about his shoulder, it was actually Rolen's finger that first threatened his, and the Blue Jays’, 2008 season.
“In no way do I believe in religion, mysticism or any other made up thing, but I'm willing to go out on a limb to suggest that Jesus has an enormous voodoo doll of the Toronto Blue Jays and really gets a kick out of plunking it with needles that he sharpens on the hooves of Beelzebub while God claps,” wrote one of my fellow DJFers as he announced that, during a fielding practice session before a March 23rd Grapefruit League game against the Phillies, Rolen had been struck on his finger by a ball that had fractured it and torn its nail off. The bloody mess of a finger forced Rolen to be immediately sent to Baltimore, where he would “meet with hand specialist Dr. Thomas Graham, who's as well know for his work at the Curtis National Hand Centre as he is for the tasty crackers he serves in his waiting room.”
"I don't think it's going to be a month," Dr. J.P. Ricciardi, M.D. explained. "I think it's less than that. It could be a week, two weeks, three weeks. I really don't want to speculate ... We'll know more after (the medical consultation)."
Well it's a good thing nobody was speculating, J.P.!
Rolen ended up missing just over a month (lol), after Dr. Crackers determined that he needed a pin surgically inserted into the finger to help it heal. He wouldn’t appear in his first game for the club until April 25th — time enough for the city to learn some fun facts about their new star 3B.
On April 4th, another of my cohorts wrote:
This morning, I caught a nugget of useless information from the CBC radio morning “sports update guy.” As far as I can tell, this guy knows nothing about sports at all but just reads out the results of scores from a sheet. But at one point he was talking about Scott Rolen. Not about his recovery time or anything, but the fact that he's "somewhat of an intellectual," claiming that he has been known to read books such as “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair. Contrary to what you might think, “The Jungle” is not an action-thriller about urban warfare, but a socialist manifesto about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry, outlining the poor working conditions and hopelessness prevalent among the have-nots compared to the Paul Godfreys. I don't know why CBC guy was bringing this up but maybe he gets the Toronto Star a month late.
So there you have it. While we have yet to see Rolen play for the Jays, he's an intellectual and he's a socialist. This would also explain why Limp Bizkit's “Rollin’” is his song of choice when coming up to bat. Not only is he smart enough to recognize the similarity in pronouncing “rollin’” and “Rolen” (his last name! How about that?), he also has looked beyond the surface of the lyrics to see it's actually Fred Durst's musical communist call-to-arms anthem.
In a wild twist, considering what the internet is like all the way here in 2023, Eckstein was then trashed as some kind of a dullard for having the temerity to read wrestling magazines.
Hitting his stride
The Jays held their own as they began the season without their future Hall of Famer, winning four of their first six games. However, they slumped their way through the rest of April. They were 10-13 when Rolen returned on the 25th, and finished the month with the worst record in the American League (11-17). None of losses could be pinned on Rolen, though, as he started his Blue Jays career with a bang.
“I guess this is kind of how the Scott Rolen story starts in every city,” I wrote, “but I'm pretty much ready to put him on the Level of Excellence. Four-for-eleven with two doubles, a homer and four RBIs? Move over Garth Iorg and Danny Ainge, you've got company on the list of all-time best Jays third basemen.”
Rolen began his season with a seven-game hitting streak. By the end of May he was slashing .296/.373/.472 (124 wRC+) with 12 doubles, two homers, and two triples somehow. A big improvement on his 91 wRC+ from the season before, and apparent validation of Ricciardi's lack of concern about the shoulder. And with him in the lineup the Jays turned things around — for a little while.
The team went 20-10 in May, ending the month just four games back in the AL East at 31-27. Unfortunately, the spiral that would cost John Gibbons his job began on the last day of that month.
Out in Anaheim on May 31, for the middle game of a three-game set, the Jays took a 2-1 lead in the top of the seventh on a Rod BA-RAH-HASS! home run off of John Lackey. Gibbons then, as a manager at the time would do, sent Shaun Marcum — who had allowed just one run through six, albeit on nine hits and a walk, and with just two strikeouts — to face the top of the Angels' order for a fourth time. LOL!
Marcum coughed up the lead immediately, giving up back-to-back doubles to Reggie Willits and Howie Kendrick, which tied the game. Then, in the bottom of the 10th, Brian Tallet — in to relieve Armando Benitez, who, to my great surprise, pitched for the ‘08 Blue Jays — gave up a single to Casey “Krotchman” (as we’d say), threw away a bunt attempt by Maicer Izturis that allowed Kotchman to get to third, issued the ultra-rare intentional walk to Jeff Mathis, and then lost the game on a Juan Rivera single.
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
That was the start of a 4-15 stretch that ushered in the Cito-refuses-to-play-Travis-Snider era and essentially ended the season. Meanwhile, the Rolen legend was... er... growing.
Of the previous game in the series against the Angels a fellow DJFer wrote:
“I know that when the Glaus for Rolen trade was first announce, Jays management was trying extra hard to induce boners by talking about Scott Rolen's defensive skills. But holy shit, that diving pick and throw from his knees to get Torii Hunter on Saturday night... six to midnight."
Things would continue going well for Rolen, if not the Blue Jays. But only for another month.
Shouldering the load
Rolen put up a 132 wRC+ in June, and pulled into Canada Day — when the Jays would get walked-off in a 7-6 loss in Seattle (plus ça change)— slashing .288/.377/.474 (128 wRC+) and continuing to play all-world defence.
Unfortunately, July would be a different story — albeit with a couple of massive silver linings.
“I've been having some shoulder trouble, some problems with it,” he would admit to reporters at the end of the season's fourth month. But by then it was obvious. Rolen was a shell of himself in July, going 13-for-80 (.163) with just three doubles and no home runs.
“Not strength, not flexibility, not surgery, nothing like that,” he continued. “Mechanically, it's not functioning right. The therapist looked at it. The doctor looked at it. I talked to Cito and J.P. and we're going to try to get some extra days off. I'll keep playing, keep going out there and doing what I can do. Back off in the cage a little bit. Extensive rehab-type program trying to get it functioning properly. Try to keep going and see where we are.”
Who could have possibly seen this coming? Certainly not the general manager of a Major League Baseball franchise!
Rolen did continue to grind through it, but only for another week or so. On August 10th he landed on what was then called the disabled list. The first silver lining would happen soon thereafter. Here's how Shi Davidi explained it in his 2016 book The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Toronto Blue Jays:
It was [Rolen's] August trip to the disabled list that prompted Alex Anthopoulos, an assistant GM at the time hunting for depth on the hot corner, to ask Ricciardi if he could put in a claim on José Bautista, who'd been placed on revocable waivers by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Ricciardi gave Anthopoulos the go-ahead and on August 21, Bautista became a member of the Blue Jays, in exchange for catcher Robinzon Diaz.
It's safe to say that over at DJF we were unimpressed by the transaction, but we were at least amused. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Blue Jays had a new home run king. Literally.
Here's how one of my cohorts explained the deal:
So, I was just going through the Jays lineup, which I'm prone to do every other hour, and I said to myself, “Man, do the Blue Jays ever need another mediocre utility infielder!”
Lo and behold, what do the Blue Jays do? They go out and get the most mediocre utility infielder ever to play the game of baseball. That's right. José Bautista is now a Toronto Blue Jay.
You'll be happy to know that Bautista's twelve home runs this year for the Pittsburgh Pirates are more than any other Blue Jay has hit in the Major Leagues this season.
Bautista would go on to lead the team in home runs in a few other years as well, I believe. The post continued:
With Joe Inglett, David Eckstein, John McDonald and [Marco] Scutaro already on the active roster, you're not alone in questioning the purpose of this move and wondering if this is a sign that someone else will be leaving Toronto shortly. It also asks the question, “Wasn't Hector Luna available?”
If you think that's funny you should read some of the things we wrote about trading Bautista in the middle of his breakout, 54 home run 2010!
Anyway, Bautista was more pleased about all of this than we were.
“I'm glad to be on a winning team,” he told reporters after joining the 66-61 Jays (who were in fourth place in their division, 11.5 games back of the division leading Rays, and seven games out of the lone AL wild card spot). “I've been up and down for the last five years, but never been on a winning team. It's going to be a great atmosphere for me to be in. Hopefully I can contribute to keep getting more wins and closer to that playoff spot.”
One of my fellow bloggers quipped:
“Hey, could everybody just cheer the fuck up already? We've got ourselves a winning team here! Forget the painkillers Rolen is on, what's José smoking? Heyo! Seriously though, I think the optimism behind referring to 'that playoff spot' as a tangible thing when you're playing for the Jays is awesome.”
“Doctor, it hurts when I do this!”
Meanwhile, Rolen wasn't just lazing about while on the IL. The following spring, Robert MacLeod of the Globe and Mail explained how he actually took the time to find a way around the nagging shoulder issues that had been plaguing him and genuinely got his career back on track.
The 34-year-old believes salvation is at hand, thanks to a physical intervention by Hap Hudson, a former major-league rehabilitation trainer for the Philadelphia Phillies, who now operates his own treatment facility in Oldsmar, Fla.
Rolen went to see Hudson after he went on the DL and Hudson suggested that the athlete lower his hands to shoulder level when he assumed his batting stance.
Hudson said the adjustment would dramatically lessen the strain on Rolen's left shoulder when he swung.
It was a tough decision for Rolen, who for as long as he could remember had always gripped the bat with his hands hovering over his batting helmet.
Desperate to find a fix, Rolen decided to give it a try and after working with Hudson for about three weeks in August he returned to the Jays and found the adjustment to his liking.
With the new stance, Rolen slashed .298/.350/.532 over the season's final month, smashing four home runs along the way — more than a third of his 2008 total.
The GBOAT was back. And though his career was undoubtedly winding down at that point, he'd go on to compile 11.4 WAR starting from September '08 and on through his final four seasons — two of which saw him selected to the All-Star team.
2009
I’ve already given away the short version of the ending of Rolen's Blue Jays story. He fixed his stance to avoid constantly aggravating his shredded left shoulder and was so purely talented that he was able to be one of the best players in the sport despite adopting a new swing while on the verge of 34 years old.
By the time the team limply pulled into the ‘09 trade deadline, weighed down by weeks of relentless speculation about the future of Roy Halladay, the rejuvenated Rolen was slashing .320/.370/.476 (122 wRC+). Like Roy, he was a shining star for the Blue Jays. His GBOAT status, though it began half-jokingly the moment he arrived, was cemented during this stretch.
But, also like Roy, he had just one year left on his contract after the current one, and no real purpose on a club stuck in the owner-induced paralysis that was inflicting the Jays at the time.
Franchise president Paul Godfrey had mercifully resigned at the end of 2008. Instead of finding a new one, team owners Rogers Communications named the legendary Paul Beeston as interim president and tasked him with hiring a successor.
It took him a year, and he ended up picking himself.
During that year, Ricciardi lingered — hey, they were paying him either way — but he was kneecapped by his own bosses. Opening day payroll went from $97 million in 2008 to $80 million in 2009. The Jays learned in September '08 that Shaun Marcum, who had pitched to a 3.39 ERA over more than 150 innings that year, would need Tommy John surgery and miss all of 2009. Soon after that, A.J. Burnett opted out of his contract and signed a big free agent deal with the Yankees.
To call the guys the Jays acquired to replace the pair underwhelming would have been putting it politely, so I didn't.
In a post titled "Welcome Shitbags!," I offered my thoughts on the off-season to that point.
Bloor Street really gets fucked up if you do it there, though I'm kind of partial to it as a street. Yonge is a dumb, but at least people can get from one side to the other through the subway stations. Maybe the Lakeshore?...
Oh. Hi there. Sorry, I didn't see you come in. I was just planning the route for the Jays victory parade next fall, because — have you heard??? They've now added ex-Tiger Mike Maroth, and former Astro [catcher] Raul Chavez to their already formidable list of off-season acquisitions.
That makes [Matt] Clement, [catcher Michael] Barrett and now Maroth. Oh man, this is totally going to be the best team of 2004. TWO THOUSAND FOUR WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!
I'll spare you the explanation of how Maroth was, uh... let's say "serviceable" a few years ago, before getting hurt and winding up on the scrap heap. And how it's maybe slightly possible but not goddamn likely that he'll return to form and at least be a decent inning eater this year.
Where have you gone, Victor Zambrano? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (woo woo woo)...
Neither Clement, nor Maroth, nor later SP arrival Wade Miller had pitched in the majors the year before (in Clement’s case it had been two years since he’d done so).
Shockingly, none of them ever pitched for the Blue Jays either — or in the big leagues again. Meanwhile, Jesse Litsch, who had posted sub-3.85 ERAs in each of the previous two years, would make just one start before getting hurt that spring, eventually requiring Tommy John surgery.
As a group, Jays starters not named Roy Halladay would end up pitching to a 5.28 ERA for the season. Big-money outfielders Álex Ríos and Vernon Wells were below-average at the plate, to the point where the Jays — surely not at the behest of Ricciardi, who by this point in his tenure was crying poor about the AL East and had (either delusionally or as a way to try to get the fans in his corner) suggested to Joel Sherman of the New York Post that he'd be "less inclined" to trade Halladay in the offseason because he'd prefer the team "put our best foot forward in 2010" and "try to win" (though he "would have to talk to ownership" about that) — let the White Sox take the former's contract off their hands for nothing in August (and promptly put the savings straight back into ownership's already unfathomably deep pockets).
The Ricciardi era was over. It was also very, very stupid.
Exit the GBOAT
Scott Rolen wanted to play closer to home. Or that was the story the organization and the GBOAT went with. But this was the year of the great clubhouse mutiny against Gaston, and though he wasn’t there for the last two months of this miserable campaign, Rolen still reportedly had a part in it.
“Over in the far-left reaches of the home clubhouse at the Rogers centre is a corner enclave of lockers populated by some of the Jays' deep thinkers, veterans and up-and-coming stars. Among them: Vernon Wells, Aaron Hill, Rod Barajas, Kevin Millar and, formerly, Scott Rolen," explained Richard Griffin in a Toronto Star piece from the penultimate day of the 2009 season. "It is from that Speakers' Corner that the leadership of the unfolding Cito Gaston revolt seems to have been spawned.”
By this point we'd already heard about some of Rolen's clubhouse issues. Mike Wilner, then of the Fan590, posted an episode of Jays Talk in early September that contained some nuggets about our departed GBOAT, which he said had been told to him "by an extremely trustworthy in-uniform Jays source."
I transcribed it:
What I heard was that he did his best to make the clubhouse a pretty miserable place — constantly talking about how much he hated it here, and how he couldn't wait to get out, and how he wanted to get out of this country, get out of this city — and he was making it difficult to be around him. So... that's what I've heard about Scott Rolen, and I'm sorry if that bursts any bubbles.
The city and country stuff, if true, well... that's his loss. As for not wanting to be around the mess of an organization that was the Blue Jays in 2009, who could blame him?
DJF readers wouldn't have had any bubbles burst by any of this, though. A month earlier I had passed along an anonymous comment — a very, very unreliable anonymous comment, I stressed — that brought together strands of both stories of clubhouse strife that would later emerge.
Now that they are back, I just found out from a good source (loose lips) the real deal on Rolen. Rolen politely told Cito that he appreciated every day he was healthy and wanted to play when he was so he did not appreciate the need to rest after a night game. Cito thought about it and politely told him to fuck off. This started a "polite" mini feud with Rolen and Cito, so that's when Rolen started bitching to JP. Rolen and Cito agreed to get this family bullshit story because it would be the third time that Rolen had problems with a manager and their disagreement never really got personal.
According to my source, Cito has a real nasty side when players question anything he does or says.
Now, I find that fascinating and at the very least plausible, but I would advise you to take the actually sourced reports far more seriously.
Whatever went down — and Wells admitted to Griff that "if something of that magnitude comes out obviously there's some truth behind what comes up. It's tough for something like that to be stirred up and be completely fabricated" — it put a blemish on Rolen's time here that it really doesn't deserve.
Rolen was an outstanding player from a Blue Jays fan’s perspective. A joy to watch play the field and a great hitter despite the lack of home run power. He helped the club turn the bad situation with Glaus into a good one. He wasn't going to be needed for where the Jays were going after 2009. And he left us with two incredible gifts.
The second silver lining I was referring to above was, of course, Edwin Encarnación.
Certain of us — me — were not enthusiastic about "E5" being part of the deal that sent Rolen to Cincinnati.
From a deadline day live blog:
3:40 PM ET: SI's Jon Heyman says Rolen to the Reds... if he waives his NTC. But for what??? If it's in any way Encarnación I puke and disown this team immediately.
3:55 PM ET: Puke! "The deal awaits only Rolen's approval, which he is expected to give; he has a full no-trade clause. In return, the Jays will get third baseman Edwin Encarnación and a minor leaguer," says Fox. It better be a damn good minor leaguer.
Ho ho ho. We had fun, didn't we?
Much to my chagrin, the minor leaguer involved was not Yonder Alonso — it was actually two: Josh Roenicke and Zach Stewart — but fortunately I'm an idiot. Some things never change. Edwin, of course, eventually became one of the best players in franchise history.
And, even more fortunately, one of my fellow DJFers was ready to give the GBOAT a sendoff befitting our stupid little blog in the form of a Game Threat post he titled "Keep on rollin' ... into a ditch, I guess," the top section of which I'll excerpt below. Pure poetry.
Oh man. Is it just me or beacuse of all the hype and speculation surrounding a possible Halladay trade that this deal with Rolen feels like an extra hard kick to the nuts?
I know that his name was being thrown around. And that it was probably even in our best interests to trade him (unless we really are going for it next year. ... Fuck, I'm confused!) but he wanted to leave? What, with our renowned baseball town status, an organization that backs this team 100%, a GM that's going for/not going for it next year and a surperior turf to any other park in the Majors? I just don't see it. A personal situation? Scott, I ... I love you, man. You were No. 2 on my list of reasons to keep watching this season. Doesn't that mean anything to you, man? What did we do? ...
I guess really none of this should come as a surprise. I mean, doesn't this guy hate being with any club? Just a month ago I was e-mailing with one of the Phillies fans I'd shitted on replying to his distain for Rolen that I love him as much as Philadelphia must hate him. Where do we go from here?
I want to think these personal reasons are honourable. But you know, there always was something suspect about Rolen. I mean, Limp Bizkit? Coldplay? And now reason #31 (number may be arbitrary) why we won't miss Scott Rolen:
You know, apart from the whole greatest Blue Jay of all time thing, I never really liked the guy.
Scott, I might serve you a mammoth burger and fossil fries. But don't bother texting me to hang out any more.
A Hall of Fame exit from a Hall of Fame mess of a era. Congratulations, GBOAT. You’ve earned your place among the greats.
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That was nice to go down the DJF memory lane. Could do with a bit more salt with my updates.
But some of those player names...wow.
That was a fun ride - cheers Stoeten.