Fantasy Baseball

I enjoy watching sports. I am riveted by just about any football game or basketball game, and I'm getting closer to that level of excitement with soccer and baseball.

Baseball has a soft spot in my heart because it was the first sport that I played as a little kid. Unfortunately, at the apex of my liking baseball, the players all went on strike for more money, which I, even as a little kid, thought was ridiculous as many of them were getting paid millions of dollars a year.

However, living in San Diego, I have come to enjoy baseball again. The Padres don't have a lot of money because they don't perform consistantly well, and so no one's salary is more than a million or two a year. In fact, some of the best players are getting paid considerably less than that.

Having said all of that, when I had the opportunity to sign up for a fantasy baseball league earlier this year, I jumped on the opportunity. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to learn more about the game as well as be somewhat competitive in the process.

Boy was I wrong.

Every day I spend time looking at scores and seeing how players are doing, and every week I find myself getting more and more behind in the rankings.

As a side note, the fantasy league that I'm in matches the teams up head to head in a cumulative score of ten categories, with five having to do with batting and five having to do with pitching. So, if you get better statistics in all of the categories (i.e. more home runs and a better ERA) you would get ten points for wins and zero points for losses. If you do better than your opponent in nine categories, you get a score of nine wins and one loss, and so on.

Let's take last week for example. I was ranked 14th out of 15, and I was matched up against the 15th place team. I was excited to be matched up against the last place team. I thought that this would be a good week for me to make up some lost ground. I thought that this was my chance to really advance after to abysmally for the last couple of weeks.

I think that you all alreaedy know where I'm going with this. Last week, I finished with one win, eight losses, and one tie. To reitterate, I got blown away by the last place team. This put me in a distant last place in the league.

And to make it worse, I'm playing against a group of theatre people, who I assumed wouldn't be doing this well.

I guess that's what preconceived notions get you.