Plenty of White Sox fans have pleasant memories of former players, especially ones that didn’t garner much attention around the league. There have been many “tank commanders” that fans have been fond of for a while now. Lucky for them, some of those players have now been drafted in the new Dubai-based baseball league called Baseball United.
From the Baseball United Website, there seem to be four teams in this league to start. There are The Cobras, The Monarchs, The Wolves, and The Falcons. Very interesting that they only started with four, but I can’t imagine that there are enough high-quality baseball players to have more than that.
The Falcons have the most ex-White Sox players or minor leaguers, as they drafted Alex Liddi in the first round, who briefly played in the minors for the White Sox. More notably, they picked Andre Rienzo in the second round who pitched for the White Sox for two years, 2013 and 2014. The most notable pick on this team was outfielder Alejandro DeAza, who played for the Sox for a few years and was actually pretty good. I thought he was done playing, so it is nice to see him still out on the field. The funniest part is the honorary GM is also a former White Sox player, Nick Swisher. For Sox fans out there who want to tune into this league, the Falcons might be their team.
The Monarchs seem to only have one player who has played for the White Sox, and that is Bartolo Colon. Yes, that Bartolo Colon. At age 50 he is still playing baseball. The honorary GM for the Monarchs is MLB legend Adrian Beltre, and they are managed by Miguel Tejada.
The Wolves drafted former first-round pick, Courtney Hawkins. One of the bigger busts for the White Sox, Hawkins never made it to the major leagues. Good to see that he is still playing professional baseball in some capacity though. Their honorary GM is Mariner Legend Felix Hernadnez, which is pretty cool.
There don’t seem to be any former Sox players on the Cobras, but their GM is Barry Larkin, which is a nice pick. They do feature an old Chicago Cub friend and longtime Atlanta Brave, Andrelton Simmons.
Other notable players in the league include Pablo Sandoval, Didi Gregorious, and Robinson Cano. This will be an interesting league to follow and I am curious to see how the older major league players will perform in this league. I am also very curious how much they will be getting paid.
It should be fun to follow and they will be streamed on their website.
