Fantasy Reflections: The True Signifier of Spring
Many words have been spilled onto the pages of the good-for-nothing-but-fishwraps newspapers about Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season. Scriveners from Santa Monica to Long Island write in rose-colored prose about how Opening Day signifies to the American zeitgeist the coming of Spring and the hope and jovial feelings of the season.
It’s all bogus.
For the 21st Century sporting man who plays fantasy baseball, that feeling comes weeks earlier at the fantasy baseball draft.
The oppressive winter air weighs heavily upon the sporting man’s shoulders in early March. With the drunken violence of the professional football season having been over for a month, the sporting man has only the prospect of drafting well in his fantasy baseball draft to look forward to.
Indeed, three months into the new year, the sporting man likely realizes that the world is just the same as it ever was. Society’s bleeding hearts will cry, the conservatives will be dicks, and meanwhile the sporting man is one year older than he was at this point last year. This is not unusual. However, the sporting man has nothing to show for a year of useless passions other than fourth-place finishes in his fantasy football, baseball and basketball leagues.
But the fantasy baseball draft is truly a chance for a new start, a clean slate – except for those pesky keepers.
The way my fantasy baseball league is set up is that we can each keep five guys from the year before, and then we have 18 guys to pick up in a snake-style draft after that.
Something about shoring up the infield seemed like a good idea, so I kept Dustin Pedroia, Evan Longoria and Ian Desmond to take care of 2B, 3B and SS. I also kept pitcher Chris Sale for no other reason than that he was a top-10 pitcher according to ESPN, and Texas outfielder Shin-Soo Choo because he’s got the most awesome name in baseball.
I was very pleased to have drafted Coco “named-after-a-cereal” Crisp, Pablo “Panda Bear” Sandoval, and Zack “socially awkward as shit” Greinke on my team. The relevant parts of the rest of my draft picks can best be described in hyphenated descriptors:
The somewhat-educated-sleeper pick: Sonny Gray, pitcher, Oakland.
The maybe-might-have-something-left-but-probably-not-late-round pick: John Lackey, pitcher, Boston.
The totally-a-homer-late-round pick: Andre Ethier, outfield, Los Angeles (Yes, haters, I’m a Dodgers fan).
The this-guy-is-certainly-going-to-suck pick: Brett Gardner, outfield, NYY.
The you-know-this-might-pick-up-some-pitching-category-stats pick: Koji Uehara, pitcher, Boston.
The maybe-I’ll-look-really-smart-in-August-if-I-hold-on-to-as-my-last-round-pick pick: Byron Buxton, outfield, Minnesota.
As you may have already surmised, I’m still a novice at fantasy baseball. This is only my second year playing in this or any other fantasy baseball league. The draft, though, is the best part. You get together with some friends, watch the ACC basketball tournament, if someone chooses a player who had already been picked in an earlier round you call him “virgin” like a bunch of fraternity brother at a Baptist Bible College, and drink White Hawk IPA beer (brewed by the Mendocino Brewing Company).
In a few weeks the dogwood flowers will bloom here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yet, with the completion of a fantasy baseball draft, the renewing breaths of spring air arrived early for a sporting man.
For more on the cultural and societal significance of fantasy sports, check out Brett’s blog, The First Draft.
