A look back at seasons 1-5

As we recently rolled past the two-year anniversary of Sharkey's World, let's now look back on some of the dates & events that helped shape this world and turn it into the great world that it is.

February 16, 2007: Sharkey's World is created by sharkeyke. Badercubed, telecasting, jtrueblue & longdayintro, along with former league members gregg21, ejcory, canes628 & mfrone helped create the league and get it up & running. Current members peteskin, dupala, rockybill, krs, dubabe, pvc, snarfuller, bearclan, ripnsnort, johnderasmo & hausenpfeffe also joined on this date.

April 2, 2007 Cheyenne signed international free agent Pat Tamura. Tamura, 19 at the time, would go on to be one of the most dominant players in Sharkey's World. Now 27, he already has one AL MVP award on his mantle, and still 10+ years of dominance to look forward to.

Season One World Series Kansas City sweeps San Francisco 4-0. Far from the best world series in SW history- arguably the worst, if you get down to it- it was nonetheless monumental, as SW awarded its first champion, and unbeknownst to all, a dynasty was born.

May 15, 2007 Season two rollsover, and with that comes seven new owners. This was significant because after one season, it showed that 25 owners found the world worthy of giving another seasons worth of time & money to. And also, because of those 7 owners, 4 are still around: kalikgod, hallgren, irishfury & ohiopirate.

May 25, 2007 Kansas City & Jacksonville make a trade. The two teams who are most easily identifiable with the American Leagues postseason dominance in Sharkey's World, may be most responsible for each other reaching that position. In the offseason before season two, Jacksonville (then San Antonio) traded Ricardo Gongora, Paul Cooper and some cash to Kansas City, in exchange for Sam Gonzales, Domingo Gonzales, and Kevin Nakano. Gongora & Cooper are well known to be huge pieces of the Shuffle dynasty; what's overlooked is the fact that Gonzales, Gonzales & Nakano all were rookies in season 6 for San Antonio/Jacksonville, and season 6 was the year that franchise turned itself into a winner and a power.

December 19, 2007 Pawtucket & Louisville make a trade. A few weeks earlier, Kansas City & Pawtucket made a much more publicized swap of Julian Thomson and Rob Aldridge, but without this Louisville trade, Pawtucket may not have made 3 of the next 5 world series. Sending rookie pitcher Buddy Bako, hard-hitting 1B Wilfredo Bennett, and minor league journeyman Eugene Dillon to Louisville, the Polythene acquired Geoff Hunter and Charles Randall. Hunter has found himself on the NL MVP ballot twice since joining Pawtucket, while Randall ended up on the NL Cy Young ballot all 4 full seasons he pitched with the Polythene.

December 21, 2007 Season Four Draft. While many great players were drafted on this date, two names stand out among the rest: Pete West and Enrique Ortiz. Both players, both still very young, find themselves on great teams with great futures. Much like Nicholas Bryant & Billy Hernandez before them, these two offensive machines will be talked about for years to come.

Season Five World Series Kansas City vs Pawtucket. The greatest world series played thusfar. A season earlier, the Polythene defeated teh Shuffle 4 games to 2, giving them their first world series, while KC has won 2 already. After two games, this series appeared over. Polythene ran out to a 2-0 lead, convincingly, and the series was returning to Pawtucket for the enxt three games. This led PVC to proclaim that he thought it was over, and that maybe Pawtucket was the best team in SW history, not his Shuffle like many believed. Kansas City won a nailbiter of a third game, and then Christopher Ramirez won game four for the Polythene, giving them a 3-1 series lead. Games 5 & 6 went to Kansas City, which set up an epic game 7, pitting the aforementioned Ramirez against the only pitcher in the world that can be considered his equal, KC's Dennys Shin. The hype was better than the game. Up to this point, the world series has been great. The first 7 innings of game 7 were great, as the pithcers pitched to a 2-2 deadlock. In the end, KC's offense was too much for Pawtuckets bullpen. The Shuffle erupted for 6 runs in the bottom of the 8th, then retired Pawtucket 1-2-3 in the top of the 9th, and won their 3rd World Series.

There are many more great dates & events that took place in seasons 6-9, but many more dates & events from this current era won't be known to us until things play out over time. For now, we appreciate the first five seasons.