earlier this summer, my wife and i decided that two chairs we've had and liked for ages really need to be upholstered. after getting estimates from several upholsterers in the albany area, i remembered that dennis reuter, a first-baseman with the 45+ cyclones this season and someone i've known for years in the league, once told me that he did upholstering.
so i gave dennis a call and i was pleased to hear that his estimate was not only considerably less than the others i'd gotten but, as a third-generation upholsterer, he easily had more experience than anyone i'd spoken to. so in june, we dropped off the chairs at his coxsackie shop and i picked them up today.
my wife and i are delighted with dennis's work it's absolutely terrific and i'd recommend him without reservation to anyone in the league. ( dennis may be reached at reuterupholstrey@aol.com; his cell number is 518 925-5636 and work is 518 945-2726.)
dennis' shop is 25 miles south of albany, but the trip's worth it not only for the fine work he does there but there's also the bonus of talking baseball, as we did, for a good half hour before heading back. (there's also a nice farmstand -- blackhorse farm -- just down the road from his shop. they sell tasty fruits and vegetables and great fudge at $9.99 a pound.)
the tie-in here is more than just the chance to talk baseball with a league-mate.
as i drove back, i thought i'd remembered that sometime ago guys in the league talked about putting up on our website a directory of work that fellow players do so that other players might contact them for estimates and perhaps do business with them.
if that directory's been put up, i'm sorry i can't find it. maybe someone can direct me to it? if not, then maybe the folks who run the website can still do it? especially with the off-season looming, guys may be looking for more work to do.
the directory doesn't have to be complex: it could simply have headings, from a to z, of the kinds of work guys do, and under the headings, a line with the player's name, his team, and the specifics of the work he does (its nature, hours, etc.), along with an email address and phone.
the guys who are running our website are already doing a terrific job and i don't want to add much to their workload. (i'd hope that any extra work they'd do could be offset with their own advertisements, which would bring them business.) perhaps the most minimal effort here could be to create a standard template that players who want to advertise could fill out, and their lines would automatically be posted on the directory much as the notes are here.
the idea of keeping our business within the league makes sense to me for two reasons. first, i would like to know that there's a permanent site that i can use whenever i needed, say, a handyman, roofer, doctor, tutor, musician, veterinarian, baker or batmaker. i'd certainly like it more than going to a fairly anonymous site, like the times union's or craig's list. nothing against those sites, they're fine, but i'd rather go in-house first, if i can.
and second, we could bring business to each other. in this hard economy, especially, it seems fitting we try to do what we can to help keep each other going. in the process, the consumers among us could get some pretty decent deals, and the workers might put a few of the dollars from those deals in their baseball jars for the next season.
it's a thought, guys. hope you like it and hope we can do it.
-mike
-- Edited by mhart on Saturday 24th of September 2011 04:02:00 AM
