This year, the Minnesota Millers created our own Hall of Fame to recognize players and volunteers who have played a crucial role in the development of the team. We also inducted our first two members, Dr. Jim (Doc) Mastro and Robert (Father Time) Moore.

Dr. Mastro helped form the National Beep Baseball Association, NBBA, and served as its third president. He played for several beep baseball teams throughout the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. In the 2000’s, he played for the West Coast Dawgs before helping to bring together the team that became the Millers in 2010. Since then, he has occasionally played for the Millers and continues to cheer us on as we improve.

Robert Moore also played beep ball during the 1970’s and 1980’s, before taking an extended break because there were no local teams. He was a founding member of the Minnesota Millers, and played with us through the 2014 World Series. He is now retired, but continues to cheer us on as we improve.

The Millers have retired the numbers 6 (Mastro) and 14 (Moore) and awarded them a commemorative plack and framed jersey. The coaching staff also awarded the following players for the 2015 season:

• 2015 Contribution Awards: Riley Schmitz, Ben GoodRich, Stephen Guerra, Patrick Lemke
• 2015 Sportsmanship award: Gary Boettcher
• 2015 Coaches Choice Award: Josh Xiong
• Golden Pin Award: Matt McCoy
• 2015 Most Improved Player Award: Chris Peterson
• 2015 Most Valuable Player Award: Evan Van Duyne

Congratulations to one of our founding members, Stephen Guerra, for winning the first annual Stephen Guerra Humanitarian Service Award from the National Beep Baseball Association. Steve was unable to be reached for comment, which is the first time we’ve ever seen Steve at a loss for words.

Congratulations Steve, it is very well deserved.

In 2014, the Millers reached seventh place in the World Series, ranking better than we’d ever ranked before in team history. 2015’s tenth place ranking may at first seem like a setback, but let’s look at some math and some history to be sure.

In 2014, 19 teams attended the World Series. 24 teams attended in 2015. Doing some simple math, we find that seventh place put us in the top 36 percent, while 10th place puts us in the top 41 percent. However, in 2014 we won five out of nine, or 55 percent, of our games. In 2015, we won four out of seven, or 57 percent of our games. Statistically, then, our record is virtually unchanged.

Individual standings haven’t been officially released yet, but we’ve done some calculations ourselves, and we believe that every player made a marked improvement from 2014 to 2015. For example, Evan Van Duyne had a batting average of around 668, which is higher than it’s ever been before, and he continued to be one of the team’s strongest fielders. Meanwhile, Chris Peterson scored six runs, obliterating his previous personal best.

One of our newest players, Josh Xiong, is proving to be an amazing offensive and defensive asset because of his incredible speed and powerful swing. We also continued to see strong performances from our veterans, Ben Goodrich, Stephen Guerra, and Matt Mccoy.

Dan Eliason and Kelly Peterson’s pitching/catching combination gets better every year, and even our relief pitcher/catcher, Zak and Nate Kanouski, put several runs on the table during their appearances. We think this puts us in a position to return on an even stronger footing next year.

That has happened before. The Millers were in tenth place coming out of the 2012 world series in Aims Iowa. The following year, we were only able to take twelfth, but in 2014 we fought our way all the way to seventh. With all this in mind, we’re confident that we’ll fight our way past seventh in 2016.