2006 NFBC Champion Profile - Yoni Bornstein

[Tom Kessenich]

Yoni Bornstein isn’t going to lie. He was more than a little happy when the 2006 baseball season came to an end.



It’s not that Bornstein doesn’t love the game. He does. But with $8,500 riding on the first-place finish in the $1,250 Las Vegas Mixed Auction League, Bornstein just wanted the season to end with his team still on top of the standings.



Fortunately for Bornstein, he got his wish – and the cool prize that went with that league title.



“It was more relief than anything else to win the title,” said Bornstein, who co-managed the team with Sammy Zahler and Jason Shapiro. “We were in first place for most of the season but it got pretty competitive in the last four or five weeks and it really could have gone a lot of different ways.”



Ultimately it went Bornstein’s way and a key reason why was his team’s productive offense.



“The key to our season was our consistent offense,” he said. “At the midway point of the season we had 73 of a possible 75 offensive points and finished the season with 70 of 75.



“We were packed with studs like Joe Mauer, Jim Thome, Justin Morneau, Corey Patterson, Carlos Lee and Jason Bay mixed in with some quality guys like Hank Blalock, Edgar Renteria, Mike Piazza and Tadahito Iguchi.



“From early in the season, once some of our breakout candidates started to break out we knew as long as we could stay healthy we would be there in the end.”



Bornstein, who recently relocated to Miami after being born and raised in Toronto, has been in the NFBC since its inception. He loves the auction format and said one of the key plans his team had in the Vegas league was quite simple:



“We got the guys we wanted,” he said. “We may have paid an extra dollar or two for certain guys but we got the guys we believed in.



“That’s the beauty of auction leagues. You have a chance to get anyone you want.”