Palmchat Legends Heading Opposite Directions

[Huckleberry]

12/7/2111
Santo Domingo

With today's announcement that the Santo Domingo Palmchats will be reacquiring Cheslav Zamorov, some of the sting has been taken out of the recent trade of John Pottle to Ottawa. While fans had been furious about losing Pottle and have been flooding local media with requests for comment from the team, retailers around the Dominican Republic have already started clearing Pottle jerseys off the rack and replacing them with Zamorov merchandise.

GM Huck L. Berry met with the media today and addressed the recent moves for the first time.

"First, and to me most importantly, as was reported in the WBA Times last week, John (Pottle) actually came to us to discuss his future with the club. There is no denying that he has served the Palmchat organization well and not just on the field with the big league team. He did not complain at all about moving to the minors last year to help with the development of our younger prospects. We felt that out of respect for his contributions and his service over the years that it was the right thing to do to honor his request to be traded to Ottawa. This will allow John to be nearer his family to close out his career. While he may be physically in Canada for this season, he will always be a Palmchat and our doors will always be open for John."

"At the same time, we are ecstatic to have the opportunity to welcome Cheslav back to Santo Domingo. He is also a legend here who along with John helped lead the way to our back-to-back WBA titles. While cynics may claim that we are doing this only to help PR after trading John away, the honest truth is that talks to acquire Cheslav did not even begin until after John's deal was finalized. We did not even know it was a possibility until after that point and each deal was completely independent of the other."

Despite the happiness felt in the Santo Domingo front office, many analysts view the Zamorov trade as a questionable one for the Palmchats as they seem to be at least another year away from contention. Some have even publicly questioned if it was merely a ploy to acquire a trading piece for later in the season. Even off the record, though, Berry insisted that Zamorov was acquired to play in Santo Domingo for the long term.

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

Some questionable journalistic integrity going on here, telling us what the GM said off the record.

[Huckleberry]

No, you see, he just confirmed off the record what he'd said on the record. So it's totally cool. Basically the reporter said "off the record, though, is he possibly going to be traded?" and the GM said "I don't care if we're off the record or on, he's here to stay."

Only the highest standards at the WBA Times.