The ending of my basketball season Tuesday night turned the page on my life. Whatever is happening, whatever the weather, it's now spring. Winter is over. Moving on ...
These last few weeks and months took a lot out of me, and I am still in recovery mode. Mentally, just clearing my head of all the stuff I've been working on, and physically, with my hip/thigh/butt.
Most nights since Tuesday have been spent sitting with my wife, watching the figure skating championships from Calgary. I'm not into that, but my wife loves it, so it's fine with me--especially if I can doodle around with stuff on my laptop while sitting next to her. As long as I'm near and my warmth helps keep her warm, she doesn't mind. Next week, with the skating done, maybe we can get into some movies again. Along with some documentary series I got recently. (More on those later--once I actually get to see them.)
The BIG thing for me, though, is something I have never written about here before--a part of my personality I haven't revealed to you. The time is right. I'm going to show it to you now. Here we go. I'm going to whip it out ...
I run a fantasy baseball league.
Not a fly-by-night one, either. Ha! This one has been around since 1989, when I helped form it with four guys in town. This year we are expecting 9 or 10 teams, and the nucleus is still from here in town.
It's for money--sort of. We each pitch in $40 for the prize pool at the end of the season. Last year, the first place team won $125 or so. Very small potatoes in the realm of fantasy sports, and I suspect all of us spend a lot more than $125 on our preparations for the Biggest Day of the Year: Draft Day. But the bragging rights? Priceless.
Draft Day this year is a week from today, Saturday, April 1 (insert your own joke). We gather at my office (I'm the only one here on Saturday) and conduct an auction draft. It lasts about eight hours, during which we hold mini-auctions for about 200 major league baseball players.
I know most of you don't know much about this (and probably could care less), so the "how it works" part is the next paragraph only. Feel free to skip past it.
How it works: We have 12 categories (six for hitters and six for pitchers). We assemble teams of 23 players each, moving guys to and from a reserve roster. The goal is to compile better totals in these categories (home runs, batting average, strikeouts, earned run average, etc.) than the other fantasy teams in the league. These are compiled using the real-life statistics of the major league players we have drafted on our team's active roster. Standings are decided by the rankings in each of the categories: first place would be worth 10 points, second place is nine, etc. The totals for all categories are added together, and that decides where you are in the league standings. Simple, right?
I'm the commissioner and run the whole kit and kaboodle. In the early years, I also did the statistics-keeping, using a little computer and spreadsheet program. When the online world revved up, we went to those services. Now, I just have to maintain rosters, organize things and keep the peace.
It's a lot of fun for us. In the last couple years, we decided to hold an "Owners' Meeting" on the night before the draft. This consists of visiting several bars in the area, culminating with a visit to the Gold Nugget, about 40 miles away--the only strip club in many miles.
The theory is that imbibing beer and observing the fascinating gyrations and undulations of the unclothed female body is the optimum method to prepare for selecting baseball players by auction--starting at 9 a.m. the next morning. You should have heard the groaning from the hangovers as we got going last year. (BTW, I drink very little and don't mind being a designated driver.)
It's a guy thing, I know. But the guys in the league (like me) consider Draft Day to be the biggest day of the year. Over the years, most of them have gotten married and are raising kids. They're good guys who have had a lot of their wild ways toned down considerably by adult life. They deal with the heavy rock of responsibility in their lives. They know that life gets too damn grim if you don't have a little fun once in a while.
This is fun for them and for me. We all love baseball, we all love its link to a more idealistic, happier time in our lives, and my little fantasy league is that link. It's a part of us.
This weekend is the deadline for the eight holdover teams to submit six-man "protected" rosters, around which they will fill their rosters. Later today, I'm e-mailing them out to everyone. (Everything is done on the internet now--another huge change that has transpired over the years.)
Then we all study and plan strategy and dollar values and get ready for Draft Day. Not to mention the Owners' Meeting!
No comments:
Post a Comment