Fantasy Baseball: A Warning to Girlfriends

You turned the corner, entered the living room, and found your boyfriend quickly stuff one of those Lindy's Sports Fantasy Baseball magazines into the couch hoping you wouldn't notice, or maybe you are using his laptop computer and found he left Microsoft Excel on and names like Halladay, Fielder, and Tulowitzki listed on the screen with numbers listed beside them. How about at the dinner table: Do his eyes glance at his smartphone searching for words like "cheat sheets" and "KiBBle Ratings"?

Yes, it is that time of year again: About a week or two from now, you armchair athlete/manservant will disappear one Saturday, join his fellow cavemen at a random house or eatery, and engage in what men call the "biggest night of their lives", aside from the Super Bowl. Now that the biggest football game in civilization is over, baseball loving dudes the world over, however few after the '94 Strike,  can turn their attention to Major League Baseball, and the complexities of the fantasy draft ^_^

Fantasy Baseball magazines such as Lindy's popped up at various bookstores in my hometown, and for the first time I decided to try my hand at fielding an imaginary team of various baseball players from various baseball teams in the fan-based, multimillion dollar industry. I wrote about baseball since the day I handed in my term paper about the evolution of the home-run and its role in shaping the New York Yankees in university way back in 2006; how hard could this be? After reading through three different magazines on the subject, analyzing cheat sheets, checking out MLB.com for additional advice on player value, crunching the numbers on prospective sleepers and power players, and asking my pastor for advice (I didn't do that...yet), I realize I have no idea how this works o_O

Why do so many connect with fantasy baseball? Perhaps it is the opportunity to live out a dream for the unathletic, unskilled, or out of shape to excel at in their adult years as opposed to those youthful days, or maybe the idea of being a general manager of a team inspires those who believe they can be a better general manager than the general manager of the hometown team that can't win a game if their lives depended on it? For whatever the reason, I decided to look at fantasy baseball with virgin eyes, and see if I should stick to just writing about it from the point of view of a goofball too stubborn to let the dream of being in the big leagues die. With that said, what about those who know too well about the perils of fantasy baseball: The frayed relationships, cancelled date nights, and the too familiar refrain of the ill-timed ring of the smartphone at the movie theater when his star player suffered elbow pains and went on injured reserve.

LET HIM HAVE IT: Like Valentine's Day to a woman, your dude needs one day to feel like he is king, and in the baseball world draft day is the best day to show not only his manliness, but his baseball IQ. By day, he lives with his parents and works as a stock boy at GameStop, but by night he is the general manager of the "Big Bautista baseball team"! He may be working a dead end job as a junior warehouse executive at the local paint store, but tonight his All-Star Swatters sit in third place in the Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball competition. Before you know it, another baseball writer sitting at his desk outside of Toronto, Canada, will look at his three baseball magazines, glance towards the heavens, and say "Hey, I can do this!" Then he'll shout at the top of his lungs "Leeroy Jenkins", and start his foray in fantasy baseball by choosing Yunel Escobar in the first round, and then get laughed at by the four other dudes in his online bracket T_T

To take away fantasy baseball would be like cutting off his throwing arm! The excitement, passion, imagination, patience, resolve, character, and decisiveness found in the aspiring wannabe general manager are just some of the things you find cute and adorable about your manservant in the first place; don't penalize him just because this Saturday he's holding a mock draft at his house, and he can't come to the art gallery with you to check out the new Picasso and Monet artwork on display "for one weekend only".

By the summer, he will be so sick of his sixth-place team of injured players and one-hit wonders that he will have no choice but to go antiquing with you for the next three weekends. Unless, he is in first place in his league; in that case, you can find me on Twitter: @PhilHollywood. I love antiquing and drives in the country for random garage sales o_O