- Tell us a little about yourself and background – My name is Yamin Patel, I’m from Flushing, Queens. Outside of the diamond, I’ve been with Samsung in retail management for 20 years now. I’m a father of 3 beautiful children and husband to an amazing wife. I love sports since I was young, and I play all sports except Hockey.
- How were you introduced to the league? Who brought you in? What were your initial thoughts? – My cousin, best friend, brother, Dynasty captain (Sajid) brought in to SASL in 2014. I loved playing from the beginning and I loved the South Asian vibes, the fun environment and the whole idea of all of us getting together on Sunday. This league serves as a relief from other aspects of work, especially work!
- What’s your opinion on having 2 divisions again? How would you compare to the 1 division last year? – I liked the one division better because it was more competitive league round. I prefer one league. Now with two leagues, we’re setting expectations where there are superior players and non-superior players/teams. League needs more balance using points system, or another system in some way. NL has to kind of look upto AL or vice versa
- Dynasty is a veteran team in the league and many believe Dynasty has not met expectations, what can you say about that? What do you think will put you guys over the hump? – This year we added some new additions to the team, we are still transitioning things, making adjustments, and mesh well, etc. Our main focus is to have the right people in the right place and eventually this will translate into better chemistry which will lead to a championship and many more.
- Give us some insight on your team: who is the best hitter? Who is the best infielder? Best outfielder? Who’s the most fun to play with? Who is the brains of the team? – Best infielder is Ray (he has tremendous work and knowledge), the best outfielder is Nitin our LCF (has all the right skills to really play any position), Best hitter is Amit Bhasin as he’s the most consistent, most fun Amit Bhasin because hes so positive and uplifting, Brains of the team is Sonu Bhasin because he is all about strategy and he’s very vocal, which drives us.
- Which team has surprised you the most so far in the NL? – Purple Reign because they are the new young blood, but yet they were so confident and was picking each other up always when we played them. I played with a lot of these guys before and look at them as younger bros but when we played them last week, they came back as one unit against us in game 2 and that was surprising at the fashion they did it.
- Who is your favorite player in SASL and why? Captain America because of the bombs he hit, we all love to watch him play both offensively and defensively. But the way he crushes the ball gets me every time.
- What’s your thoughts on SASLs old regime (Ammad) vs new regime (Anwar)? I think the biggest difference between the two is that Ammad was very approachable and very involved, showed face a lot and was well known to everyone. I don’t know Anwar well enough but I feel he needs to incorporate himself more, be more visible, cause more dialogue, hear people out and get more facetime with the league members. It seems like there is a disconnect between umpires. Anwar is doing an awesome job so far and I’d like to see and hear him more.
- In your veteran career, what is your favorite moment of all time? My favorite moment in my career was in the fall of 2014 against Hit Squad because I hit 2 grand slams in those championship games.
- Every NL team in the league would like to know, why does Dynasty want 8:30 am games always?! We want those early morning games because we a bunch of old farts and we like to get everything done with our day early and enjoy the rest of the weekend with the family. Plus, us old guys need all the hours of rest we can get before going back to work.
I like what we do in this league, I love the community work, I love the networking, and I LOVE the brotherhood, but guys give us some time off during Ramadan!
