Know That Owner: Jacob Maurer

My name is Jacob Maurer, but most people call me Jake. My WIS handle is jemaurer. Mordecai was the first world that I joined and I also have a HBD team in Big Sky Alumni. I am relatively new to HBD (5 seasons) and believe that the best way to learn is to talk to you guys and pay attention to the chats and forums. I owe the veterans in Mordecai a debt of gratitude for their readiness to help a newcomer. I have dabbled in GD a little, but just enough to turn me off to it. I do truly enjoy HBD, however, and I know I will be around for a long time. One last tidbit concerning WIS, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank David (dwhit34) for introducing me to the game and giving me my start in Mordecai.

I am 33 years old and was born in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am of Pennsylvania Dutch (which is actually German, from Deutsch) and Swedish descent with a handful of other genetic spices sprinkled in. I am descended from Scranton / Wilkes Barre coalminers on my Dad’s side and God - fearing Lutherans on my Mother’s side. I was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes at the age of 3 and have been dealing with the ups and downs of that as long as I can remember. I grew up a Philadelphia sports fan – 2 of the first 10 words in my vocabulary were ‘F--- Dallas.’ I graduated high school, dropped out of two universities, and at 20 years old God saw it fit to place me in New Orleans, Louisiana (1996.)

I am now living in New Orleans and I work as a cook (in dwhit34’s restaurant!) and also as a barista. It feels as if I’ve found my niche. I am a recovered alcoholic and my sobreity date is 28APR2008, so God willing, I will pick up a two year chip in a couple of months.

To get a superficial idea of my tastes, here are my top fives as of tonight:

Albums

1. The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
2. The Who – Live at Leeds
3. Frank Zappa and the Mothers – One Size Fits All
4. Ween – Pure Guava
5. Thin Lizzy – Vagabonds of the Western World

Books

1. Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita
2. David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
3. Kurt Vonnegut – Sirens of Titan
4. Richard Brautigan – In Watermelon Sugar
5. John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces

Films

1. Doctor Strangelove
2. The Big Lebowski
3. On the Waterfront
4. The Outlaw Josey Wales
5. Deconstructing Harry

Well, that’s me in a nutshell. It’s me and I’m in a nutshell… ANYWAY, at least it’s an intro. Like I said, I plan on sticking around for a long time so I look forward to knowing each of you better and revealing more of the intricacies of my character in time.

Know That Owner: Billy Robinson

I'm Billy Robinson aka jimrome76 to most of you WIS guys. Some folks call me Bill, William, or Billy-Bill. And some coworkers have been known to call me Dollar Bill, Brother Bill, Doctor Bill and Bill The Deal. I'm not sure why. I'm one of the original members of Mordecai and have been on WIS since waaaaaay back in 2001. I also played GD for quite awhile and the main reason I picked Mordecai when HBD came out was that I had already played GD with a lot of the owners so I already knew some of them.

I clock in at 31 years old and dont have kids or a wife but for the past couple months I am in a committed relationship for the first time in about 5 years or so. Growing up I lived in Huntsville, AL with my dad and Nashville, TN with my mom. It was a strange contrast of suburbia in Huntsville and inner city ghetto in Nashville but I think in the long run I'm a more well rounded person for having to adapt to such different extremes of society.

When I was 15 I got a part time kitchen job in a restaurant. I enjoyed kitchen jobs and caught on quick so I went full time in kitchens after high school. By the time I was 25 I had 10 years experience including pretty much every position you can think of. Dishwasher, fry cook, saute cook, grill cook, prep cook, banquets cook, banquets service, kitchen manager, night cleaner, dessert cook, pizza cook, these are all positions in a kitchen that I worked under various different chefs at different restaurants. Ive worked for too many guys like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qGDNA7GPzI&feature=related I learned from them all but by then I was just burned out on the business. The long 60+ hour weeks and working nights and weekends all for low to mediocre pay had gotten old so it was time to make a change.

In the sumer of 2004 I moved to Auburn, AL and started college at Auburn University that fall. WAR EAGLE! I went to AU for 2 years and completed the core curriculum but could not decide on a major and didnt really like the whole going to classes and studying thing. I forced myself to do it but it was just incredibly boring and tedious so I decided it wasnt for me. Im a lifelong AU fan and I fell in love with this little town so I decided to stay. I got a job at a local Chevy dealership selling cars and eventually parlayed that into a job working on cars which something that Ive loved to do since I was a teenager. So for the last two years Ive worked on cars and made decent money and have a nice easy M-F 7:30-5:30 schedule with an hour lunch break. Ive found the perfect balance.

In my free time I enjoy playing guitar. Ive only been playing for a year and it is ridiculously more hard to learn than I thought it would be. I listen to mostly metal and classic rock but the guitar has opened me up to blues. Guns n Roses is my all time favorite band. Chinese Democracy was on of the top 10 rock albums of the last decade. I like old Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Sepultura, Slayer, Biohazard etc. When it comes to classic rock I like all of the standard stuff you hear on the radio. CCR, Skynard, Deep Purple, Zepplin, The Beatles, etc. On Thanksgiving weekend I got a noise citation for blasting this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_6IjeprfEs at earth shaking levels.

I am obsessed with SEC football. I love my Auburn Tigers. Jordan Hare Stadium is a 10 minute walk from my apartment! We are about to land a top 5 recruiting class and mark my words we will win at least 10 games this year. Gus Malzahns offense is sick but now with a stable of elite talent coming in and a JC QB who fits the offense like a golve we are primed and ready to fire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6dlRzu_mBc A BCS title is coming soon.

Well there you have it gentlemen. Thats everything but my drivers license number and my DNA sequence. Hope its as interesting to read as it has been for me to live! WAR! DAMN! EAGLE!

Know That Owner: Steve Oelheim

Hi everyone, and thanks for stopping in to enjoy the newly revamped Mordecai blog! It’s time for the second installment in our “Meet the Owner” series… or in this case, “Meet the Commish”!

I’m on a first-name basis with a lot of the owners in Mordecai, but for those of you who don’t know, my name is Steve Oelheim, aka smoelheim on WhatIfSports. I am an original member of Mordecai, but not its original commissioner. The league founder bailed after the first season, and when nobody else stepped up, I decided to do what I could to keep the league running. It was a great choice, as this world is filled with great people and dedicated HBD owners. I expect to be here for a long, long time.

Outside of HBD, I am 38 years old, married for the last 8, and have two kids who really keep me running. When I’m not chasing them around the house (or the park, or the zoo, or the kids museum, or wherever), I like to escape for a round of golf in the warmer months, and we have season tickets to the local hockey team (the Rochester Americans of the AHL, hockey’s “AAA” league) in the colder months. I’m not real good at sitting around the house doing nothing.

I was born, raised, and still live in Rochester, NY. I work as a Sr Programmer Analyst for the #3 Company to Work For in America (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/index.html). It started out as a part time job when I was 16, and I’m still working for the same company today. How many 38 year olds can say they’ve got 22 years of seniority with their current employer?

I grew up as a Yankees fan (primarily because my first little league team was the Yankees), and the first game I ever specifically remember watching was the Yankees/Red Sox 1-game playoff in 1978, when Bucky Dent hit the infamous HR. I still remember running around the house celebrating. But a cancelled World Series, the length of the games, the “steroids/wound ball era”, and lack of a salary cap to level the playing field have all turned me off to the game. I find it completely unwatchable anymore. But I DO miss the statistics aspect of it, because I’m a huge numbers guy. That’s what brought me to WIS so long ago!

My dream WIS game would be Hockey Dynasty, but I’m not holding my breath for it anytime soon. I’m sure that a pro football game is higher on WIS’ priority list. If either of these games ever comes true, I’ll have a team in each, but will always leave my Mordecai team as my one remaining HBD team.

I think this was a great idea by rbedwell, and am glad that there was interest in resurrecting the Mordecai blog. I look forward to reading more owner bios in the coming weeks and months. And if anyone has other content they would like to submit, please talk to myself or Ralph, we’d be happy to publish submissions by everyone!

Know That Owner: Ralph Bedwell

We're rolling out our updated blog with a new feature: Know That Owner. Brief bios of Mordecai owners so we can put some real people to those WIS usernames. I'll start!

As some of you know around these parts, I'm Ralph Bedwell, or rbedwell on WIS. To the right you can see me during Spring Training with Dover Diamonds' slugger Dude Perez (I'm the one in the sunglasses); now that I look at it, I can see why so many other teams have said, "That Perez is a monster!" As you can tell by all the gray hair, I'm an old guy. I always tell my students that I'm 112 -- which sadly some of them believe -- but actually I'm 54. What you'd notice first thing about me is that I'm 6'3" and weigh in at around 250.

When not engrossed in HBDland, I teach tenth grade English at Kennedy High School in Richmond, CA. It's your typical inner city school, with gang violence, poverty, high dropout rate, a busy childcare center, etc. Teaching at JFK is a big challenge, but the kids there need good teachers a lot more than the kids in the 'burbs, which is what keeps me plugging through the day-to-day frustrations.

Family is the biggest thing in my life, though. Despite being a near-Methuselah, my wife and I have three young kids, daughters aged 5 and 9, and a 12-year-old son. My wife just turned 40 herself, so I have to stay young to keep up with all of them! We love going places as a pack -- museums, parks, zoos, aquariums, science centers, libraries, parks, hiking trails, book sales, etc.

Somehow I've managed to become over-educated. I have a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and two M.S. degrees from C.S.U. East Bay. For years, my secret goal has been to become a college instructor, but those jobs are hard to come by in the S.F. Bay Area, so no-go so far.

Sim baseball has been a hobby since I was a kid. I made up a dice game, sort of a crude APBA, that I played for years, then eventually got engrossed in the Bill James Classic Game, which was sort of like WIS sim baseball except it was played by telephone and snail mail (which was delivered by the Pony Express, of course). HBD is the best one yet, slam dunk. See ya'll on the virtual field!

If you're into Facebook, look me up and add me as a friend.