Calling All League Members (A Fantasy Draft Retrospective)

Well, before I start calling: Thank you, Peter, for another splendid hosting and feeding. I hope everyone slipped him some ‘support’ for the meal. Also, don’t forget to slip me ten for league fees. Don’t remember who did and didn’t. Well, there you go.

And now the (!) message. I don’t make a list of teams as we draft, so it would make the BCL’s life a lot easier if you sent me a list of your players. I’ve entered my team and that great sucking sound you hear is ….

Some first draft thoughts: I don’t have a sense which teams should be favored. It strikes me that for a newbie Ed collected a strong pitching staff. It strikes me that there were some great bargains in pitching, but I didn’t get any of them. It strikes me that maybe Berger should be favored simply because he spent his money often and early and should therefore (I conclude) have gotten more value because so many of us were throwing money at the better players at 1b and 2b simply because we had it.

Great fun, though. Next year Bob will be tanned, rested and ready. I have no doubt that Larry (Bubbles) Brown will make his long delayed debut. And, of course, we yearn for the banquet.


Today I count my blessings, and I have so many, even though I did not acquire any new ones at the draft yesterday.

The BCL

Charge of the Light-hitting Brigade

Image via Wikipedia

Saturday is draft day for my fantasy baseball league. It is our 27th year, and I am the only member who has been there since Day One. For about 15 years -- through the 90s and into the zeros -- I was a league power, possibly *the* league power -- winning money about two-thirds of the time, about twice the rate chance would predict.

But I've been out of the money for three years in a row, which suggests it may all have been chance after all. Or maybe the Internet has caught up with me in just this sense. I have a little mathematical way of ranking players that seemed to give me an advantage back in the day. I was very good at finding bargains, getting players for a price lower than their actual value. If that was indeed an advantage, the Internet has undercut it, since the Net is filled with up-to-the-minute evaluations and draft lists and even suggestions of how much you should pay for players, given your league parameters.

I've tended to ignore the Net, fooling myself with the notion my pen-and-paper methods could beat the Net. And in recent years, pressures of the job have cut into my prep time.

Like this year.

Sigh.

Yet the draft itself is such great fun. There is much what some people would call horseplay and perhaps a certain amount of the sipping of adult beverages. I guess that's what I'll have to settle for, the process and not the result. Because tonight and tomorrow I am surely going to go online and Google "draft list" and "sleepers" and "injury risk" and hope for the best.

Oh I will keep you posted, frequently and proudly or seldom and rueful.

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My Droll Wife

My wife and I were talking about the strengths and weaknesses of an acquaintance, and she said she figured his greatest strength was "twittering about vegetables."

At least I think she said that was a strength.