In recent months, same as last year and the year before, several have brought up that there is some kind of "club" or fraternity that exists within the veterans of the NFBC and somehow, if you are not part of this exclusive club, you are treated rudely or unfairly as an outsider. Somehow your voice is not heard by the management of NFBC or you are simply an outcast, with multiple "insiders" teaming up against you.
I find this amusing, as when I first joined the NFBC in 2009, I didn't consider myself an outsider, I WAS an outsider. I didn't join so I could be part of any club or fraternity. I joined so I could be a part of the elite high stakes drafts that the NFBC was famous for, and maybe actually have a chance at winning some money. I have made a few friends through the past 5 years. I have made some enemies.
I would go to the main events every year and other than having a few conversations with guys like Ante and Andy, I kept to myself, did my draft, chatted with a few guys after the draft, looking at the draft boards, and headed home. It wasn't a social event, to me.
Last year, I had heard about a special draft being done, because a veteran of the NFBC has a little girl who was in the midst of battling illness. I did not know Roger Martin, so I obviously knew nothing about his daughter Mia. We were speaking on the message board of one of the DC drafts and they asked who wanted to be part of the draft. I did. I have 3 young boys. I cannot imagine if one of them were very ill. It hit home for me and I joined the draft. From the time Mia picked the draft order out of the hat, throughout the draft, and for weeks after, I was engulfed in this little girl's story. It consumed me in my thoughts and prayers, and it effected me in the way I treated my own children. Only a few months earlier, in a town just down the road from us, 20 children went to elementary school one day, but never came home. Their lives were taken by a killer in Sandy Hook, CT, and this was still on my heart as Rog shared the story of Mia's surgeries. All of this was overwhelming to me. I met Rog and his wife in Las Vegas and tears were in my eyes as I hugged her and thought of what she must have been through. It was a moment that I will never forget. I am sure many of the guys who were in that draft and those who had heard the story and watched the video, feel the same way.
Life brings us in so many directions. I never considered any of these guys from the NFBC my friends. I have a lot of friends.. these guys were my competitors, not my friends. But, the events of last season changed things for me.
We were all new once. We have met each other, but that alone doesn't make us friends. We felt pain when Rog had to deal with Mia's illness, and we had a draft and the bonds between the guys in that league will be forever, but that alone doesn't make us friends. We laugh and pick on Gekko and MTM and people pick on us, and yes there is a kind of fraternity that we have been part of for many years that is earned by the ups and downs of the baseball season, and the craziness in our personal lives, but that alone doesn't make us friends. All of it together, makes us friends. We don't always agree and we might even piss each other off, but in the end, you can say the name "Mia" and it all goes away. Or say the name MTM and we all have a laugh. Call it whatever you want, a club or fraternity or whatever, I am happy to be a part of it, but it takes time. It didn't start when I was a new guy.
It was earned, just like everything that is decent in life.