Take Me Out of the Ballgame

This weekend marks the first final weekend before the "real" baseball season starts in--what, 14 years?--that I haven't been nervous about the fantasy baseball auction. For 14 years I played in the Busch League, a loose confederation of guys (and one lady, back in the old days) who were mostly affiliated with Mountain Valley High School in one way or another. It was a great run for Buck-ner's Boots/The Black Sox/The Bridesmaids. We started out horribly, with the immortal Kevin Koslofski on the original roster, but Scott Erickson provided the highlight of my first season, delivering me a no-hitter. That was worth some points in those days.

There were ups and downs, and lots of almost-were's. About halfway through the team's existence, I almost quit over a fellow owner's accusations of being a cheat. Rather than quit, though, I renamed my team the Black Sox. It was not time to quit at that point. After a run of three or four years where my team came in second, I renamed the team the Bridesmaids. That name actually got my team mentioned in a national column on Rotoworld.com by Jonathan Gangi, where he was soliciting clever fantasy baseball team names. I was pretty proud of that.

In fairly recent years, it became a desperate battle to win the league. It was a second job, beginning in January (when the first fantasy baseball publications came out) every year, trying to devise a new plan that would take me to the promised land. There were years where I threw all caution to the wind, taking the best players in the draft for large sums early on. There were other years when I conserved my money for the middle rounds, trying to have "balance" in my lineup. Invariably, the best laid plans failed. And the desperate pursuit of a championship became less and less satisfying, even as I came closer to winning.

Through it all, the best part of fantasy baseball in the Busch League was auction day, which almost always turned into auction night: at the height of the league we had (I think) 12 teams, each filling 23 spots. Early rounds flew by, with people spending like drunken sailors on Alex Rodriguez, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Juan Gonzalez, and Roger Clemens. It was the game of trying to hide a prized player--a first or second year Magglio Ordonez or Carlos Beltran, for instance--into the middle or late rounds, where you could get them for a decent price. But that was sometimes difficult, because the owners of the Busch League are a shrewd lot. They make a big show of not having prepared, or not knowing any of the players, but they knew. In fact, they'd gotten the same fantasy baseball publication I got, and probably the day it came out, just like me.

For every year but two, the auction has been held in Joe's basement. Once it was held in Bob's game room, but that didn't seem quite right. Another time it was held upstairs in Joe's house, but in recent years we returned to our roots and went back to the basement.

So this evening I had the pleasure of spending some time with the Digital Backpacker, who is giddy about tomorrow's auction. We got a chance to reminisce about past seasons, and he bounced some strategy off me. It dawned on me that I will be able to root for all of the Red Sox wholeheartedly this season. I'll never have to root against a Red Sox pitcher because my batter is up. As trivial as it seems, one can start to feel pretty conflicted. At the same time, rotisserie baseball allowed me to develop some favorite players I might not have grown to love otherwise. I can root for Jim Thome, Grady Sizemore, Alex Rios, Greg Zaun, Curtis Granderson and Joe Borowski whenever they aren't playing against the Red Sox. That is liberating.

While my friends are in Joe's basement tomorrow, Ben and I will be shooting some arrows at Central Maine Archery. Then we will go shopping in Auburn, to late lunch at Margarita's for Rach's birthday, and we will probably be home quite a bit before the fun ends at Joe's. I'll be waiting by the phone for Mike's account of how the day went.