The Oakland clubhouse has recuperated after months of emptiness. Nameplates are installed where others have been ripped off, boxes almost gone from the previous regime's storage. At one point, the clubhouse was like a moving truck, a shell of what it had been. Workers carried item after item out the door, players booking flights for a team in a newly-created league.

It wasn't the situation General Manager JP Panik had asked for. When he showed up at the Coliseum for his first day on the new job, few players would speak to him. His roster of remaining players could not even field a team.

"I never thought I'd be a GM in this league," says the general manager. He is a young man, just off the field. Behind him, a Twins hat sits amongst Oakland memorabilia. "But I saw the exodus and knew it was veterans duty to step up. So even though I knew I'd miss the player aspect I knew it was time to step up."

Step up he did. The biggest crisis in the MLR's short history had reached its apex, with the Minnesota Twins and Washington Nationals closing shop. Panik saw himself out of a job and in the midst of a free agent market, but he took his career to the front office of his hometown team.

"My favorite team needed a GM. That's when I just went for it," Panik explains. Despite his last name, he is cool and collected. He says he needed to be when building a team from scratch.