The Lady Is a Champ

With the start of pre-season training camps, I was spending a lot of time working the phones to find trades to package off a few fairly promising non-roster players that had looked good in practice but couldn't win a roster spot with us for this season. I'd found a deal that I thought I could live with but I was still frankly hoping for something a bit better when I decided to give Frank in San Antonio a last minute call one Monday morning to see if he was interested in putting in a counter-offer. Instead to my surprise I found that I was speaking with Margot again.

"Hello Margot, nice to hear from you again. When are we going to do that pizza? Is Frank out of the office today? What about his assistant Toby?"

"Neither Frank nor Toby are with the Coyotes anymore. I discharged them both after a meeting on Saturday night." Her voice sounded a little cold but with more than a hint of satisfaction. I got that little warning tingle down the back of my neck that something was terribly wrong with the universe.

Frank was fired? Since when did a VP of Operations have control over the football side of things? Obviously since the owner's grand-daughter was now running things… namely everything at the Coyotes now. She was apparently the acting owner in all but name. The Czarina of all that she surveyed. I wasn't at all sure that she was ready (or suited) for that sort of power.

"Discharged? I've always disliked that term… too Dickensian. It makes me think of poor huddled workers in rags being forced to stick their fingers repeatedly into electrical sockets. Zap! Kind of like a giant electric bug-killer, except for getting rid of unwanted employees. Messy… not the way my boss does things around here, although he does get a bit free with his use of cattle prods occasionally, but that's why we all have lawyers and secrecy clauses in employment and termination contracts."

"Well… what did you want to call Frank about?" Her voice sounded bored already, or maybe she was worn out already from wearing every management hat in the company.

"A trade offer my dear. I have a couple of fine young fellows that won't quite make my team but I promised to help them both find happy homes. White picket fences optional."

"Not interested." She was abrupt and her tone suggested she meant it.

I tried my best wheeler-dealer spiel but she wasn't buying.

"Not a chance. You've already screwed me over in a deal once – not again."

"Once? In over four years? That's a great average. I'd take that in a heartbeat! Ned Phillips in Kansas City has gotten the better of me lately three deals in a row and I don't know how he does it? My reject ends up going to the Pro Bowl with him and his player promptly busts up a knee for me on his second day of practice. But do I hold that against him? Of course not! The next time we deal, I'll have my revenge and the tables will be turned. If you're holding a grudge that a single simple deal went south on you years ago then you'll never be able to work deals with anyone ever again. That's being a bad GM and that's not at all in the interests of your team."

"Not a chance in seven hells." She firmly reiterated, already quite bored with our conversation.

"Fine, I'll take my deal elsewhere. I just thought that you needed more bench depth in your defensive secondary, and I'm looking for a raw but speedy wide receiver that needs more development time than you're probably willing to give him. Honest, it looks like a good honest deal to me, but then again I'm biased. I operate in a world of facts and figures, and the applied use of logic. There is no place for raw emotion behind the desk of a GM. Quit your little emotional snit-fit and play hardball… or at least come out to play. I'm going to work the phone for the next two weeks to make my team just a little bit better, because I think, with a little luck, we're going to make the playoffs this year. Your team almost made the playoffs last year, but you've lost a few of your better folks to free agency and your rookie draft frankly confuses and frightens me, and not in a good way. You've got issues with both your starting position players and your bench and I'm not sure I'd take even money on you to even have a winning season this year. So, if I were you, I'd go swing your ass out there in the wind and start making some deals or your season is going to be virtually over before it starts."

A nice sermon, but the audience wasn't going "Amen".

"You go do your job and let me do mine… and your team has no prayer of making the playoffs."

"Ooooo, a challenge! Are you ready to throw down? What do you want to bet?"

"I don't steal money from the terminally stupid." Click. With that she hung up on me.

What a total bitch!

One of the secret rules for being a good GM is to never get too far down emotionally or too exhilarated. Keep it all on an even keel. Never get mad… just work harder to get even the next time around. I worked the phones like a madman and eventually a few days later found a deal that I was more than happy with. I ended up trading three fringe players to Cleveland, getting back in return two players that I felt had long term potential, including my raw but talented speedster wide receiver and a very unrefined defensive back that had every skill to be a starter, if he could be coached up. Both made my season starting roster and gradually worked their way fast into our substitute rotation. The young defensive was starting every game of us before mid season and ended up winning the Defensive Rookie of the Year trophy. One man's trash in this business is very often another team's treasure.

******

Right from the beginning of the season our team was kicking ass and taking names. We were an undefeated 5-0 and a heavy favorite to win this Sunday on our home field against San Antonio. The Coyotes are also in our division and we play them twice a year, every year, both at home and away.

In past years, the Coyotes had ravaged our dead carcass; repeatedly. We split the series with them last year, but both were hard games and there was a decent amount of luck involved with our sole victory. This year I felt more confident that we could take them, at least on our home turf. Mentally I'd penciled us in to win at home but to just barely lose in our later match-up in San Antonio. Home field advantage sometimes makes the difference between two good teams.

Margot suddenly now had different ideas about wagering with me and called me up to make me a bet that I couldn't refuse. The Coyotes weren't having a very good season so far, having won just two games so far, but she thought it would be a sure thing that her team would beat us again as usual in Houston this coming weekend.

"Jeff? This is Marguerit in San Antonio. I've got an offer for you that I'm certain your adolescent mind can't resist. I'm so confident that we're going to whoop your butts this weekend that I'm willing to wager mine against yours. If I win… and I will, you get to become my office boy for a day running all of my pointless little errands while I berate your stupidity, often and loudly, to my entire staff. On the other hand, if you win, I'll let you take me out for that pizza."

How could I refuse? Even if she was using her full name, as I apparently was unworthy of the simpler Margot now. This should have been an omen that something wasn't at all right and that the terror of the Coyote front office (and coaching staff) was up to some sort of trick, or now ready to exact her long sought after revenge, or both.

******

To put it mildly, something did go terribly wrong that next Sunday, or rather it seemed from the start of kickoff, absolutely nothing at all ever went right for us. It was the longest and worst sixty minutes of football I had ever watched in my life! By half-time, I was joining the owner in drinking heavily. Everything went wrong, from start to wretched finish as they utterly shellacked us 37-3. Only several miscues on their part prevented the score from being even higher.

Watching from high up in the owner's box I could tell that we were really the better team, but somehow we were always in the wrong position or calling the wrong plays at the wrong time. The coaches down on the field were equally confused and frustrated. It was a debacle from start to finish.

It wasn't until about three o'clock in the morning the next day while I was lying wide awake in bed that I finally figured out what had been bothering me. The Coyotes seemed to know about every play we were calling in advance, and they were ready for it. If we called a running play, they loaded up the line and had their linebackers ready. If we called a passing play their defensive backs had exactly the right defensive coverage planned. When we were on defense, they seemed to know exactly what defensive coverage plan we were in and expertly exploited every gap for big plays.

This wasn't just a better team outplaying or outcoaching a rival, this was something more… apparently a very clearly marked line of competition zeal had been crossed and I intended to get to the very bottom of it.

First thing Monday morning, I called a major meeting of the top officers of the team, starting with the owner, the senior coaching staff, our VP of Operations Bill Nylan, the head of security Ryan Masters, our Operations IT Manager Jeff Scanly, and our chief corporate lawyer Desmond Hopper. I skipped the trivialities and jumped to the meat of the matter.

"Gentlemen… we've been scammed, and by professionals. We were set up to deliberately fail and I want to know exactly who did it and how it was done! Somewhere there is a traitor in our midst."

"Ryan. You've got 48 hours to completely take apart our stadium if necessary and review every single inch of stadium security, jumbotron and network film footage until you have an answer for me as to how the Coyotes were able to intercept our coaching signals and rebroadcast them to their QB and defensive team captain. If you can't do this job I will expect your resignation on Bill's desk on Wednesday morning and we will find someone who can get us these answers."

"Jeff. Likewise. My guess is that somehow one of our playbooks has either gone missing or has been scanned and emailed. The coaching staff will check and verify the whereabouts of every single playbook and you will scan every single email and fax that has left our offices this season. Every single fucking one. Get with the Office Manager and obtain the receipts of every single mailed package or FedEx just in case our spy did it the old fashioned way."

"Desmond. You will grab every single personnel file and review every single employee and intern that works in either the front office or has contact with the coaches or the players. By tomorrow morning I want a listing of suspects that warrant a complete and thorough investigation."

"To repeat myself, we have a mole somewhere in our organization and I will fire people, starting at the top, until the leak has been found and isolated. No one will take any direct action upon this individual until I give the word. Furthermore, I do not want any leaks of this spying to reach anyone outside this room, including our office manager. Tell whatever lies you like but I do not want the slightest hint to leave this room that we've been the victims of a complete communications exploitation. Now, go find my spy!"

Technically, I had way over-exerted my authority and stomped all over Bill Nylan's prerogatives at least half a dozen times during that meeting, but I had the owner's support for this witch hunt and he was gracious enough to not make a departmental war over this issue. Frankly he was just as horrified and scared about this security breech as I was.

It took everyone nearly the two full days but they did solve the crime. The culprit was one of our starving unpaid interns who upon further investigation ended up having ties with the Ross family, her brother worked as a Sales Manager for one of the Ross auto dealerships. She had obtained a copy of the playbook from an unlocked desk in the front office, scanned it into pdf file and then emailed out to a private investigation firm located in San Antonio. She had also obtained our top secret master listing of the radio frequencies that we used for our on-field communications and she had faxed that page to the same firm as well.

Those frequencies covered the coaching staff, the assistant coordinators higher up in the stadium, and the senior coaches who called the plays in to the field. Needless to say we changed all of these frequencies immediately and fired the assistant security supervisor that our intern had gotten flirty with and who talked about things that he definitely shouldn't and had give her unrestricted access to most of our security secrets.

All of the network and stadium TV and the security camera footage took longer to review, but in the end we found a convincing set of four suspects who were all sitting together near the 50-yard line right behind our bench up about ten rows in the stands. Each was wearing Motorola professional style headphones and upon further magnification, lapel microphones could be barely detected. Once we had their seat numbers we tracked the tickets for these seats as having been sold by a local Ticket Exchange store. The buyer paid cash and used a fake nane. Going through a stack of 60+ thousand used ticket stubs we did find all four used stubs and managed to extract useable fingerprints from two of them. Using contacts at the HPD (and with a bunch of free game tickets for the crime lab folks) we had them run those fingerprints and received hits on both suspects, both San Antonio residents.

One of the fingerprints belonged to a licensed private investigator in San Antonio, who I assumed was one of the technical brains of the spy group. The other, upon further investigation, ended up being a low level front office employee of the Coyotes. Bang. Now we had our smoking gun and it was time to have an unpleasant little talk with the Commissioner of the League, Terrance Jefferson.

**********

"Mr. Jefferson? Hi, this is Jeff Leeds, GM of the Toros. Are you busy right now? I mean really

really

busy right now? I've got some news that you won't want to hear… and certainly not over your official league executive office phone. Can you please give me your private personal cell phone number so that I can have a frank person to person chat with 'Terry', rather than the Commissioner? And you'll want to be somewhere out in the middle of Central Park too, preferably with something alcoholic in your hands as well."

He was a bit flabbergasted but I stuck to my guns. If I told him what was going on 'officially' he would be absolutely forced to act, and not in the way I would prefer. My way at least gave him a tiny amount of deniability. An hour later, I gave my new best friend a call, told him the bare facts of the situation and then waited for the loud screaming to end.

"Fuck! You have to be joking… the Cajun Ice Queen hired rogue PI's to intercept your game communications and bribed an intern to steal playbooks? That's a firing offense, for everyone in their front office… including ownership. Does Archie know about this? I'm going to have his balls! Plus there will be a loss of draft picks, insane fines and lots of noisy stories on ESPN. After that will come angry speeches and phone calls by congressmen and senators, followed by committee meetings in Congress as they investigate us for months to see if they need to appoint a government Czar over us to ensure that there is 'competitive balance'. We don't need another scandal right now – this one would nearly kill us!"

He was right. It had been a bad year for player scandals; guns in bars, drug related shootings, domestic violence calls and plenty of cases of player entourage posses gone wild. The scandal concerning another team illegally videotaping the practices of their opponents just last year had only barely died down. This situation was far, far worse. If even a hint of this scandal got out the ramifications could cost the league not just millions, but billions of dollars potentially. It would be just like the 1919 Chicago 'Black Sox' scandal all over again. Professional football would soon have the respect and trust accorded to professional wrestling, and that couldn't be allowed to happen.

"That's why it's just Jeff and Terry talking hypothetically right now. I'm as mad as you are, but this is so far just a single isolated incident. I don't think that Archie knew anything about this, Margot seems to be calling all of the shots over there right now. She probably did this in revenge for me getting the better of her in a trade deal a few years ago. Apparently her holiness doesn't take a tiny loss of face well. We can take advantage of this, use her vanity against her and teach her a lesson. If it doesn't work, we can have a more official conversation later in your office, call in the lawyers and break out the bigger sets of spanking paddles… and then we get our best suits nice and laundered for a long and unfriendly trip to Congress."

I told him my plan and he didn't like it… at all. On the other hand he didn't have any better (non-official) ideas and in the end he decided that we had never had this conversation and that he was going to go and drink lunch at his favorite uptown martini bar and probably not return for the day, unless he ended up throwing himself off of the Brooklyn Bridge into the Hudson River instead. This was about what I had figured.

Still, it amounted to a 'go' and I was now set to exact my revenge and paybacks can be a bitch!

******

First, for my plan to succeed I needed my resident spy Marcie firmly back on our side and I had just the tools to make sure that I would have and keep her complete undivided attention. I couldn't trust her with so much as a burned out match, so she was going to need constant 24/7 babysitting until this whole sordid affair was over, but that's why there are security companies in the yellow pages, complete with ex-military mercenaries willing to skirt the fine edges of the law for a fat paycheck.

Our Marcia Adams, starving unpaid intern and amateur spy, was more than a little surprised to find herself in our largest conference room with our owner, our entire legal staff, plus another half dozen grim looking attorneys from another law firm we had an outstanding retainer for services with. Not to mention the glaring of her future handlers who were all hard men bulging with muscles and mostly had no necks. The wolves began to circle and recite their growls of implacable legal actions against her, and nearly immediately our little lamb began to bleat.

When we scared the poor girl enough that she had wet herself right down her legs, we harnessed the sharks and clearly informed our little ungrateful guttersnipe about how she had one chance only to avoid decades in federal jail, with quite unambiguous promises of further future unpleasantness while incarcerated within. She bobbed her head pathetically eager to make any sort of deal that she could and we laid out our plans for her. She bleated once or twice but in the end she agreed to be a good little girl and obey, and she signed every piece of legal paper we put in front of her. Even her frightened mind could tell that the alternatives were far too nasty.

She agreed to be held 'in protective custody' for a few weeks under the thumb of our hired thugs and would jump through any and all hoops that we put in front of her. At the end, if everything went to plan, she'd sign some more paperwork that promised that she'd be a good girl and never even hint that any of this unpleasantness had ever occurred, and she'd be free to go… someplace out of state until she found a large enough rock to crawl under and stay.