Introduction: Recounting 2006

It's almost Valentine's Day and for thousands of us that means only one thing: It's only a few weeks or so until our fantasy baseball drafts.

For many of us, the bitter taste of last year's fantasy mishaps has only recently left our mouths. As we look ahead to our 2007 drafts, it can be difficult to not carry over our anger and disappointment in some players or even blame them personally for our painful defeats last year. As for me, I lost in our head-to head final on a tie-breaker. But of course, that only tells part of the story...

The real meat of my misfortune began during the week of my bye, during which Travis Hafner's hand injury went from bruise to deep bruise to bone bruise and finally to fracture two days before the semifinals were set to begin. As our league is a keeper league, I couldn't just drop Hafner or I'd lose him forever, and as it became clear that the paperwork for putting a player on the DL was going to be too fucking much to ask the Cleveland front office to do, I realized I would have to go into the playoffs not only without my best hitter available, but with his useless body clogging up my roster like Jessica Simpson on a college debate team.

Despite this, I reached the finals (upending my wife in the semis) and battled perhaps the luckiest team in the league for two weeks. I say lucky, because he was only where he was due to a rather unbelievable series of events which began with the playoff seedings changing at the last minute because someone missed the innings minimum in the last week of the regular season, continued with his 4 shutouts in the first round of the playoffs - including of course the Anibal Sanchez no hitter - and followed him into the semifinals where the best team in our league put up an OPS of .710 and ERA of over 6 - numbers he easily had bested in every other week of the season. (We needn't even mention this particular fantasy participant also ended my 2005 season. After finishing that season with a 25 game lead over the second place team, I lost in the semifinals due to Randy Johnson's untimely ejection from a game in Toronto, which resulted in my team falling 2 innings short of the minimum and my 2005 fantasy season ending. But that is neither here nor fucking there.)

Nevertheless, we found ourselves embroiled in a real barnburner. I led 6-5 going into the last day with only one category still in question: RBI (certainly Hafner's services would have been much appreciated...). At five minutes to 1pm we were tied in RBI, and with ERA as the tiebreaker and unfortunately well in the control of my opponent, I had to take the lead or remain tied with him in RBI to win the league and taste victory. Much to my dismay, I was about to be the victim of some particularly heinous bad luck. At five minutes to 1pm I discovered, to my horror, that of my 12 regular starting offensive players, 8 (eight) of them were riding the pine in their respective games, several of which were not even headed to the playoffs. Of course, Vernon Wells, Paul Konerko and Jim Thome needed to rest because they were going to be oh so fucking busy for the next month. Again, because of Hafner, I had only one bench player who could be switched in and so I went into battle with 5 offensive players, while my pigment deficient oppenent had 11. My chances were not good.

Early home runs from Dan Uggla, Jeff Francoeur and Jorge Posada put me in an early lead and falsely raised my hopes. Sadly yet fittingly, my season would come to an end at the hands of the same 4 players who had so rudely played above their heads during the entire 2 week finals period.
Chase Utley: 20 hits, 15 RBI, 19 runs, OPS over 1.000
Brian McCann: 4 HR, 17 RBI, OPS over 1.000
Aramis Ramirez: 5 HR, 19 RBI, OPS over 1.000
Tori Hunter: 5 HR, 17 RBI, OPS over 1.000
The last of which was truly the most painful, as Hunter was added via the waiver wire on the last possible day before our battle began. He spent two weeks on my opponent's team and absolutey dominated. It was in fact Hunter, whose 4th inning two-run homer officially ended my season, as the games involving all 5 of my players had at that point ended.

And so it was that the #5 seed won our head to head league. A team with a .472 winning percentage that finished 46 games out of first place managed to win the league, obviously proving just how much luck goes into head to head fantasy sports. Despite this however, I still think it's the most exciting way to play.

This blog will follow my 2007 fantasy season and hopefully paint an amusing picture of my painful and demoralizing eventual loss at the hands of a lesser team. Every week I will detail the things that went right, and the many, many things that went wrong. Including of course, the unheralded players who decide that for a brief 7 day period, that they will become Albert Pujols.

I don't consider myself an angry person, but when Jim Edmonds is picked off of first base and caught in a rundown, only to have the ball thrown away as he slides safely into second base, and the STOLEN FUCKING BASE that he is awarded gives my opponent the victory in that category, I can feel myself turning into a much smaller and admittedly far less scary version of the hulk, rampaging my apartment destroying tissue boxes, plastic dinnerware and other assorted, and easily destructable objects.

I hope you enjoy the blog as much as I hate the misery that will hopefully cause it to be entertaining, should I survive the season.