Let’s get this toaster in the bathtub.  I feel like I’m reporting on someone else’s family reunion and looking up in the standing gives my trifocals a workout, but I’m a team player so I will fulfill my obligation. Barely.  First things first:  Welcome back, Linda! You are the glue that holds this league together and you have been sorely missed, your contributions to this league over the years have been nothing short of remarkable.  Now that you’re back at the editor’s desk we can continue on with some semblance of normality.  

STANDINGS

CO-NUMBER 1’S

CHIEFS/WAHOO’S

EVERYONE ELSE

I haven’t been running my team for a while now so I really can’t take all the credit for their dismal showing or any success they may have had. I’ve got an apprentice trying his hand at it and so far there have been mixed results. Back in June I was bored and was looking at my team and decided what the hell, I’ll take a run at Jeff’s team just for something to do.  I was sitting on a ton of innings and thought maybe it would be fun to run up and catch him and then let him get out ahead again and then do it all over just to help pass the summer.

Satan must have got to thinking that his boys were getting a little bored and so he took an interest in fantasy baseball and a special interest in my team.  Some of the guests have been bugging him about getting a fantasy league started down there.   Pol Pot and Sam Kinison have been playing catch with a lava rock in the back room.  Seems Ol’ Pol has got quite the arm, submariner, who’da thought.  Joan Rivers and Junior Samples from Hee Haw  ( I thought he was a little sketchy) have also shown an interest in joining.  I can tell you the exact day that Satan took over  my team, June 25th sometime between 9 am and 4 pm Central Daylight Time.  An argument can made for an earlier involvement, like draft day perhaps, but it’s a blurry line between what subliminal suggestions he may have whispered in my ear and my usual lack of preparedness.  He does like Wil Myers for some reason, so that suggestion could have come to me with a “southern” accent. Yet I am sure that the 25th of June was a turning point.

I checked my team early that morning as per usual.  On that day everything was quiet on the western front.  As always my first stop was to check the hitters, which didn’t reveal any surprises: 11 points-- a double, 1 RBI, a couple of walks, a combined 4 for 38-- nothing out of the normal there.  Next stop the pitchers:  None going-- a couple in my minors threw no-hitters, still nothing out of the normal. To make a run at 12th I knew I needed to start throwing pitchers out there so that meant I had to cut some driftwood loose.  I had been carrying Jon Singleton on my roster for a month and a half with only a couple of info blurbs, most of them stating that he had hit another homer in the minors but his promotion was being blocked by Chris Carter (my guy) and Evan Gattis, but nothing in the past couple of weeks, nothing out of the normal there.  So he gets the first pink slip.  I need people actually playing at this point.

When I got home from work that day I got back on the computer to check to see who is playing when I see an orange square by Byron Buxton’s name.  Hmmm, what’s going on there?  Well, it seems that sometime between 9 am and 4 pm Mr. Buxton hurt his wrist to the tune of a projected 30 day stint on the DL. 

I don’t complain about injuries for 2 reasons:  It doesn’t help and no one cares.  Injuries have always been and will always be a part of fantasy baseball and whether we want to admit it or not there is a certain level of schadenfreude that we all experience when we hear of another team losing a star player to an injury.  That’s just human nature. Nothing is lonelier than enduring an injury to one of your best players, not that Byron Buxton is any big deal, but we are the only person sitting in the waiting room when the doctor comes out and says a player needs Tommy John surgery or he has plantar fasciitis, the other owners don’t care, nor should they.

But as I took in the news of Buxton’s injury it was the next orange box, the one by Jon Singleton’s name that took me by surprise….he got called up THAT DAY, minutes after I let him go and it said that he would probably be taking some at bats away from Chris Carter (my guy).  Ok, that alone doesn’t signal DEFCON 5, It happens.  Actually that was probably the 10th time this year that the timing was bordering on the supernatural.   By now I’m getting that “picked on” feeling and it only gets worse.  Now I’m curious to see who takes Singleton.  Monday June 29th at 4 am in the morning he still shows as being available but only through the waiver wire process-- 4:30 am the same—at  4:45 he’s available as a free agent!  So I go to add him and drop another player……only the computer won’t let me.  It won’t highlight a player to complete the transaction nor can I move a player from my minors to my starting lineup.   It must be a problem at Yahoo so I wait until 5:00 am and try again. Nope, now I’m feeling frustration with Yahoo so I try again at 5:15. Nada, but this time he’s gone…Denny got him at 5:13 am. WTF.  It turns out my computer had a glitch in it that wouldn’t allow me to do certain functions….just CERTAIN functions mind you and our IT person was on vacation for that week.

Jon Singleton’s current or future value is totally irrelevant at this point and, like I said before, injuries really don’t bother me that much.  But when the Prince of Darkness starts elbowing his way into my biz, it’s suddenly personal.  I don’t know if he’s really interested in fantasy baseball and just wants to get his beak wet or he works in the cubicle next to Jeff and they’ve struck up a friendship.  So I spent the first part of the season lunging at unobtainable carrots, tip-- toeing through a minefield of computer cow pies, navigating my way through a woeful draft and swatting Lucifer’s hand away from jamming sticks in my spokes.  I would be really pissed if I wasn’t already in last place by a large margin when he decided to jump in.  So you know what?  I decided to let him run it for the remainder of the year.  Let’s see what he’s got.  So far it’s been a mixed bag, some good days, some bad days, but overall he’s doing a better job than I ever did on my own.  I hope he has some inside knowledge on Khris Davis that he’s keeping to himself.  I (we) have seller’s remorse on that one.  He scored 21 points THE DAY I (we) released him, far more points than his entire length of stay on the Tribe. He then followed up that feat with another 2 dinger day on Sunday.   You can’t make this stuff up and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t divine intervention, more like meddling from a completely different quadrant.   I haven’t received any signs as to his future plans, like whether he’s going to show up  next year to the draft with me or not.  If he does I’ll see if he’ll spring for the pizza, but I wouldn’t hold my breath …….he’s kind of a dick.

I’ve always felt that life is kind of like bowling.  Sometimes you don’t get a strike when you think you should have.  Sometimes you get one when you didn’t deserve one.  And over the course of time they all even out, as does everything in life. Yet it’s the length of your life and in what order you experience these “out of your control” events that genuinely determine how things go.  Some just don’t live long enough for it to equal out--one way or the other.  I’m not sure how many lucid years I have left but I’m hopeful a few more “strikes” are in my future, at least concerning fantasy baseball.  Life -wise, as of now anyway…..I’m on a roll.

Congratulations to Ted, Scott, Chuck and Mouse for having great seasons. You’ve all done a terrific job.

Good luck to everyone and I’ll see you in the spring where hope springs eternal.

Ub