Hip Trip, Flip Fantasia
Mar. 19th, 2008 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
I'm going to stay on the topic of baseball for the remainder of this week, so those of you who don't care much about professional sports might as well tune in next week, when I will write at least 300 words about the first topic, any topic, suggested by any reader, in the comment section below.
But right now I am thinking about my fantasy baseball draft, which takes place in about four hours. I kind of wish I could just get it over with right now, because I'm tired of having so many names and numbers swirling around in my head that I just want to narrow it down to the 30 on my team, already.
I have at the ready my handy-dandy cheat sheet (which ranks the players I want to target and when I should expect them to come off the board), various statistical projections for each player, team and player health reports, self-prepared mock draft results and my trusty Baseball Prospectus. I am ready. If I had been this prepared for my SAT exams, I might have gotten into Harvard.
Looking on, from a distance, will be my poor girlfriend. She will have a look on her face that is painstakingly crafted of equal parts curiosity, amusement, exasperation, confusion, frustration, anger and pity. I am not ruling out the prospect of casually dismissive hand gestures or barely audible recriminations.
J. does not understand why I am so immersed in the fantasy sports experience. Actually, she does not understand why anyone would plumb so deeply for meaning in what is essentially a child's game being played by petulant, entitled, steroidal millionaires. She does not share my competitive urge to crush my friends-slash-opponents in tiny trivial battles over which I personally have practically zero control; conversely, her competitive ambition is reserved for accomplishing her actual work tasks and sustaining our ability to obtain food, shelter and luxuries. It's kinda cute.
While J. isn't philosophically opposed to organized sports -- she has attended many games with me, after all, and is at least a mildly attentive fan of the Michigan Wolverines' football team -- she still views sports fanaticism in a fundamentally binary way: You have a favorite team. If they win, you are happy. If they lose, you are sad. Wait until the next game. Repeat.
But fantasy sports allows people like me to experience the game much more robustly. By diffusing our perspective so that we can see all the players in the whole league, we can observe patterns and trends that would have otherwise escaped our attention. By participating in the rise and fall of daily action, we are experiencing the game, rather than simply watching it. Of course, J. would be plenty satisfied if I never watched baseball, either.
J. seems to tolerate my playing of softball, though that may just be so she can stay home alone and watch the E! channel without me teasing her about it. While she is smart and athletic, she defers all invitations to play herself, claiming that her lack of skill would hurt the team. So she does subscribe to the seductive power of victory, which means there is a competitive spark in her yet; I just have to figure out how to harness it for my own purposes.
Back when I started playing fantasy sports, I used to say that my fantasy teams always did well when my real life was in the toilet, and when my real life was going pretty good my fantasy teams inevitably suffered. Some of this might have had something to do with the women I was seeing at the time, who generally viewed my fantasy hobby in much the same way a person would view a used diaper.
But last year I reached all-time highs in my personal, professional and fantasy life, leading me to believe that maybe -- if I continue to keep my priorities in order, and continue to respect my girlfriend's needs, and avoid my basic instinct to obsess beyond rational boundaries -- I really can have it all. Including, hopefully, Rich Harden in the 20th round.
- Albert Einstein
I'm going to stay on the topic of baseball for the remainder of this week, so those of you who don't care much about professional sports might as well tune in next week, when I will write at least 300 words about the first topic, any topic, suggested by any reader, in the comment section below.
But right now I am thinking about my fantasy baseball draft, which takes place in about four hours. I kind of wish I could just get it over with right now, because I'm tired of having so many names and numbers swirling around in my head that I just want to narrow it down to the 30 on my team, already.
I have at the ready my handy-dandy cheat sheet (which ranks the players I want to target and when I should expect them to come off the board), various statistical projections for each player, team and player health reports, self-prepared mock draft results and my trusty Baseball Prospectus. I am ready. If I had been this prepared for my SAT exams, I might have gotten into Harvard.
Looking on, from a distance, will be my poor girlfriend. She will have a look on her face that is painstakingly crafted of equal parts curiosity, amusement, exasperation, confusion, frustration, anger and pity. I am not ruling out the prospect of casually dismissive hand gestures or barely audible recriminations.
J. does not understand why I am so immersed in the fantasy sports experience. Actually, she does not understand why anyone would plumb so deeply for meaning in what is essentially a child's game being played by petulant, entitled, steroidal millionaires. She does not share my competitive urge to crush my friends-slash-opponents in tiny trivial battles over which I personally have practically zero control; conversely, her competitive ambition is reserved for accomplishing her actual work tasks and sustaining our ability to obtain food, shelter and luxuries. It's kinda cute.
While J. isn't philosophically opposed to organized sports -- she has attended many games with me, after all, and is at least a mildly attentive fan of the Michigan Wolverines' football team -- she still views sports fanaticism in a fundamentally binary way: You have a favorite team. If they win, you are happy. If they lose, you are sad. Wait until the next game. Repeat.
But fantasy sports allows people like me to experience the game much more robustly. By diffusing our perspective so that we can see all the players in the whole league, we can observe patterns and trends that would have otherwise escaped our attention. By participating in the rise and fall of daily action, we are experiencing the game, rather than simply watching it. Of course, J. would be plenty satisfied if I never watched baseball, either.
J. seems to tolerate my playing of softball, though that may just be so she can stay home alone and watch the E! channel without me teasing her about it. While she is smart and athletic, she defers all invitations to play herself, claiming that her lack of skill would hurt the team. So she does subscribe to the seductive power of victory, which means there is a competitive spark in her yet; I just have to figure out how to harness it for my own purposes.
Back when I started playing fantasy sports, I used to say that my fantasy teams always did well when my real life was in the toilet, and when my real life was going pretty good my fantasy teams inevitably suffered. Some of this might have had something to do with the women I was seeing at the time, who generally viewed my fantasy hobby in much the same way a person would view a used diaper.
But last year I reached all-time highs in my personal, professional and fantasy life, leading me to believe that maybe -- if I continue to keep my priorities in order, and continue to respect my girlfriend's needs, and avoid my basic instinct to obsess beyond rational boundaries -- I really can have it all. Including, hopefully, Rich Harden in the 20th round.
