DMBL History Lesson, Part 3: the Return

The MLB Strike left the MicroLeague in shambles even after the work stoppage was over. Many baseball fans were angry with the league and vowed to never attend, watch, or even follow another Major League ball game. But the MicroLeague was saved by another league. In 1995, Butch Garretson started the Steve "Bye-Bye" Balboni Newark Rotisserie Baseball League with six owners. One of the owners dropped out midway through the season and Garretson recruited Yaro Zajac to take over the delapidated roster. After being reintroduced to baseball, Zajac decided that he couldn't let the MicroLeague die. He recruited three of the Balboni League owners to take over for three of the owners who were no longer interested in reviving their MicroLeague teams - a fourth owner would drop out, and once again, another Balboni League owner was called on as a replacement. The three new teams would take turns picking apart the rosters of the three deserted teams, forming the Newark Sugar Bears, Jerusalem Rabbis, and the Toledo Mutthens. The league was successfully resurrected.

1997 saw a big change in the league for numerous reasons. MicroLeague was becoming old and stale and the new version, MicroLeague III was not a suitable upgrade. Garretson and Zajac had investigated a different simulation game - Diamond Mind Baseball. The game boasted more realistic results, with a lot more statistics in consideration and a lot more control for the owners. MicroLeague was cast aside and DMB became the new game engine.

With the success of the 1996 season and more interest in the league, the DMBL decided to expand to 14 teams in 1997. To accommodate four new expansion teams, the league instituted the first protected list rules. Teams would protect 15 players, then, as a player was selected in the expansion draft off their rosters, they could pull back one more player, up to two total players pulled back, for a protected list of 17 players. Austin owner Steve Zajac was vehemently opposed to the new rule, but the majority won out. In fact, most of the owners liked the idea of limiting the protected lists and kept the rule in place for each subsequent year.

Finally, the 1997 was perhaps most significant for the creation of the new league web site. Hosted on Yaro Zajac's AOL service, the site featured a lot of what it features today - stats, rosters, box scores. Finally, most of the league had a way to follow along with the happenings of the DMBL. About half of the owners had internet service at the time, but that number was going up.