Fantasy World

Stud.
Risk/Reward.
Five-tool player.
Handcuff pick.
Sleeper.
Bust.

If you have ever participated in fantasy sports with even a passing interest, chances are you've heard some of the above terms (perhaps even all of them). This language of the egregiously over-informed sounds, in many ways, as oddly appealing as a Fergie single. It's privately embarrassing to listen to London Bridge on your I-Pod on a crowded bus, just as it is acknowledging that you keep a fantasy mag and highlighter in your bag for the purposes of "scouting" players leading up to a draft.

If you do this, then you belong to the genus of dork known as "fantasydork" which belongs to the "sportsgeek" family. Your standard fantasydork says things like, "Pitchers and catchers is my favorite time of year" and "Is Ron Mexico still on the board?". Fantasydorks usually dwell in dark rooms, smelling of stale B.O. with scattered empty beer cans mixed in with mountains of printed-out stats. They will shuffle through those stats before they go to bed each night, commit a new trend to memory and vanish into a dreamland with little more than a notion of abstract greatness. This fantasydork spent Thanksgiving laughing with aunts, hugging grandparents, chasing nephews and eventually finding his way into the den with the father and the uncles. Football was on. Good beers were drunk. Fantasy implications were discussed. Life, as it happens, churned on.

That's how the existence of a fantasydork builds momentum, each season brings new conversations, new questions to ponder. Now, it should be known, that fantasydork's second cousins "problemgambler" and (the often self appointed) "fantasyguru" bare only casual resemblances. Problemgambler is a hopeless condition rooted in self sabotage. Covering spreads and predicting the upset are what keeps this species upright (but never for long, sadly). Fantasyguru is a rare syndrome by which the veil of fantasy has impaired the stabilizing ability to reason and rationalize. Under it's spell, the so-called fantasyguru will begin spouting non-sensical third person statements like, "Grant understands his superiority and welcomes the responsibility" or "Grant likes to take dumps bigger than your entire team’s output this week". These effects, however, can usually reversed with a healthy dose of humble pie.*

As an entrenched fantasydork, I've played just about every sport at least once:

NBA- As far as I'm concerned, this is the crown jewel of fantasy sports. Perhaps because MY WHOLE LIFE between the years of 1991 and 1998 was dedicated to hoops, however I think there's something else at work here. I love the fluid nature of the NBA, the way an extra ten minutes of playing time a night can transform the confidence and efficiency with which a player approaches the game. Let's put it this way, you're watching a seemingly meaningless game between the Jazz and Hornets last year. You notice that Deron Williams is being constantly compared with Chris Paul who is a lock for rookie of the year, even though the Jazz passed on him for Williams. You watch a hungry guy like Williams through college and into The League and he's struggling, but finishing the year strong with nothing but time in the off season to watch people love on Chris Paul while he represents USA in Japan. Flash forward to this year, Williams kicked up the conditioning, tightened up his game and is now taking over games for the 9-1 Jazz. He's averaging 10 more minutes a game, 8 more points a game and 6 more assists a game. And it unfolded very organically in front of everyone.

Now, if I wasn't a such a jackass taking the DeSagana Diop's and Channing Frye's of the world in the late rounds, I coulda had him.

MLB- This is strictly reserved for people who either A) regard baseball as their absolute forte or B) get a woody looking up OBP (On-base percentage) on baseballreference.com. As it turns out, fantasy baseball very closely mirrors being an actual baseball fan. Your team WILL slump from time to time and there is NOTHING you can do about it. Pitching can win it all for you although balance with your position players is crucial. HUGE trades happen all the time. Fantasy baseball has become, for me, an invaluable way to keep tabs on players in both leagues in what sometimes feels like a never-ending season. I like knowing what journeyman and utility players are all about. I also like mapping the course of a superstars career because you never know when the Cubs are going to offer him 136 million over 8 years. That's the thing about fantasydork's who play baseball every year - there are so many captivating plotlines, players, trends, possibilities, etc. that it can completely consume you, rendering your penis completely useless to women.

NFL- The clear favorite of America. The most inclusive statistically. The greatest potential for drama (since the games only happen two days a week). This is like the training wheels for an aspiring fantasydork because there are no categories to obsess over. Just pick players that rack up yardage and get in the endzone. I also find the universal appeal of fantasy football it's greatest strength. Have you gone out to a house party with a girlfriend that you had absolutely no interest in attending? You're not a big hit with her friends, but you love her, so you sack it up and pretend like you couldn't be happier to mingle with 50 drama majors for three hours. If you're anything like me, you bring a pack of cigarettes, smile your way to the porch where the keg resides and find another guy with the frantic "why am I here" eyes... you smoke and drink and talk football with this individual until your girlfriend tells you it's time to go. That's why fantasy football will never subside.

NHL- I'm currently in my second year of fantasy hockey and I still have no idea what is going on. I figured that since I didn't watch hockey but had some interest in it, that this would be the logical step. The problem is even with the new rule changes, I still don't watch the sport (possibly because I don't get OLN) but mostly because the Blackhawks are a joke. What I don’t fully grasp is that you GET points for penalty minutes, there is a seemingly arbitrary plus/minus stat and goalkeeping comprises 50% of your score. So if I had the foresight to draft Giguere and Brodeur in the first two rounds, I'd be doing a lot better than my current 6th place standing. Thanks Steveo, you're fucking up my entire universe.

This leads me to the league I just joined (thanks to Olivia) and the real impetus to this blog post. I think I may have found the rival to the NFL as far as universality goes. Ladies and Gentlemen, this Fantasy Celebrity League. Everyone knows about celebrities because we all live in a celebrity obsessed culture. Scoring occurs daily based on a calibrated "buzz index" and turnover is great because each season lasts just under a month. Although I’m a rookie compared with Olivia and Meg, I'm riding my first two picks Brit and K-Fed (the Larry Johnson/LaDainian Tomlinson combo platter) to the promised land. Never have I watched The Soup so closely and I'm not at all ashamed to admit this. If you have any interest, lemme know. A new season starts in December. Mahalo.





* To Grant's credit, he's having a great football season. He earned the right to talk some shit. But these days, he comes off like the spastic kid with a debilitating fear of girls who tries to hard to be liked at parties. Sometimes, you just gotta grab a beer and relax. The jackass who lets everyone know they have been on the beerpong table for two hours never get anywhere...

Writer's Block

I haven't been writing as much as I used to because I don't really have anything to say anymore and that bothers me. There was once a time when I'd be sitting in the back row of a 500 person lecture writing letters to good friends about the future, about the limitless possibilities and where they might lead us. I suppose the reason I'm so idle now in my thinking isn't the approach, but the fact that I'm freshly arrived at what I once day dreamed about... and the results are mixed.

I think the most difficult thing about life sometimes is not having remarkable things to share. By remarkable, I don't necessarily mean noteworthy or profound, but rather something consistent, something you can stake a claim to as an honest reflection of how you actually feel. For me, for these days, there tends to be an increasing emergence of subtle posturing, all the while just sitting back and letting the world trickle in at a convenient pace. For instance, I might stay in on a Saturday night, switch my phone to off and try to watch all three of my Netflix movies (usually falling asleep halfway through the last one). Or I might spend an hour walking around a secondhand store, listening to Coltrane on the headphones, wondering what kind of sandwich I'm going to make when I get home. I might even put a Rolling Rock or two in my jacket pockets, go to the park, sit under the first tree I get to and scribble curious little drawings in one of the dozen notebooks I keep amassing but never finishing. These are all nice little distractions during what, these days, amounts to an underwhelmingly normal life. I feel like I do these things because I enjoy them, but who knows, maybe I do them because I want other people to associate these things with me. With a void of substantive purpose, perhaps we spend our time subconsciously conjuring up a role we would be well suited to play to give ourselves (and others) something to talk about. Like all these little routines fuel us to tilt closer to that personal light we seek, quietly trying to tell the world just who we are and what we stand for.

Some people keep score at Cubs games to make everyone seated around them aware that they are true fans, students of the game. Others stand outside Starbucks with clipboards asking perfect strangers if they want to be part of the solution to display their honest dedication to *pick a cause*. Then there are those that are so tortured for attention and recognition that they begin a blog to write sentence fragments about how confusing twentysomething life can be (I know, I know, it's true). Perhaps these things that fill time in our lives, whether it's a side job or a co-ed sports league or a mild drug habit or a loving pet give us some momentum. They illustrate our ability to get out of bed on a rainy Monday and not curse whatever deficiency exists in our daily lives. Hell, maybe that very thing we hang our hats on is our primary deficiency and, unbeknownst to us, there is a gaggle of our good friends somewhere behind closed doors wringing their hands and wondering what's to be done about it.

I guess what my original thought on this matter was: What does the writers block mean? Does the lack of a persistent series of remarkable mini-miracles (like the recognition of watching seagulls strafing against the wind at sunset) mean anything? Am I asking too many pointless questions? Is the grass greener as far as memories go? Are we helpless to attain that exact thing we seek if we can't fully verbalize what it is? Do we pick up rocks on the side of the road only to one day trade them in for a rock collecting hobby because that's who we are, or does the twinkle of the amethyst distract us? It's all too much sometimes. I guess I should just leave it at that.