Fantasy Nightmares

Before I get to Imperial business. I wanted give a shoutout to an infidel friend of mine who has joined the blogosphere.

He's a Met fan from Brooklyn, so he decided to call his site, well...Brooklyn Met Fan. I know, it's not terribly creative like Metstradamus or Faith and Fear In Flushing. Those names were actually sort of clever like the blogs themselves. But you have to figure that the gray matter has be a little shallow on the infidel side of the pool so you figure he must been at the back of the line.

Also the baseball gods have a very odd sense of humor. This infidel with two brain cells to his name has a smoking hot fiancee.....while one of the most loyal and faithful members of the Empire is, well....no comment. Grr....

All kidding aside, this guy is a very good friend of mine and his website should be a lot of fun to read and very creative as well. If you're a baseball fan or just enjoy creative blogging, be sure to check it out.

I have a serious problem. A Fantasy problem.

I sat through a 23 round, 18 team, two plus hour fantasy baseball draft last night. I thought that since I was laying low this weekend and I was going to be home watching the final four that it would be a good idea to sit through the first few rounds.

Normally the perfect size for a fantasy team is 10-14 teams. Anything over that and the fantasy talent pool becomes very thin. 18 teams is way too many. One of the managers complained and the league commissioner decided to start another league for those who wanted to drop out. It took forever, but we eventually got 10 teams for the other league. However, noone dropped out of the first league. We still had 18 teams. I guess the other managers didn't want to drop out because 1) they thought it would be a sign of weakness or 2)they're cracked out on fantasy sports like I am and will join any league available to them.

I avoided fantasy sports for years for that reason. I knew that I'd get hooked and that I'd be in front of a damned computer half the day. Now I'm a full fledged junkie, crusty beard and all.

Initially I was going to sit out and just autodraft. But with 18 teams, it's hard to do that. Because the talent pool is thinner, you have to know something about the game and the players. You also have to be there to see how the draft is flowing so you don't end up with 15 sluggers and two decent pitchers or vice versa.

After picking Albert Pujols with my first pick, I decided to go with pitching for the next several rounds. I figure that there would still be some decent hitters out there later on and that a lot of the players would go with players from their favorite teams as oppose to the best players available. So with my next several picks I grabbed Randy Johnson, Carlos Zambrano, Brad Lidge, Zach Duke and Felix Hernandez. Get the core pitchers out of the way and then go for position players.

The result is a team that I think I can live with. I fielded a decent position team and every pitcher is one that I picked. All those hours watching late games and Baseball Tonight finally paid off.

Everytime I thought about dropping out, someone made a move that made me realize that I had counter because I had too much of one and not enough of another. I fed myself iced tea intravenously. I was so hopped up on caffeine that I didn't go to bed until 6am!(5am but we lost a friggin hour)

I went to the local bodega at 4am to get some towels and buy a sandwich. I eventually fell asleep trying watch Doctor Zhivago (Gonna finish it today).

What did I do when I woke up at 9..I mean 10:30 still hopped up on the caffeine still in my veins? I checked the scores of my two Yahoo! fantasy basketball playoff matchups.

For those of you who care...I'm comfortably ahead in one league and in a life-death struggle in another. I'll keep you posted.

The dance of death begins again tonight in Chi-Town. I'll be watching as soon as West Wing and the Sopranos are over.