It occurred to me last night after I got home from Pac Bell Park (or whatever corporation is now monikering the SF Giants pretty little ballground now), having watched the Florida Marlins smoke the gracious hosts to the tune of 6-0, that Fantasy is like a good, tasty, multi-layered cake.
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I don't mean to insinuate with the above collage that Hanley Ramirez is somehow the equal physically or mentally to a gawdy pinstriped one year old named Christopher's birthday cake, although I must admit the pinstriped similarity is worthy of mention. Also it's notable that Hanley is the #1 bestest baseball player on the #1 team in my league (mine) and that he has a son named Hanley Jr. so he is technically Hanley the first. Eat your heart out, numerologists. I'll eat cake, instead, thank you very much.
The actual point of the Hanley = Cake exercise is to elucidate my point about Fantasy being an extremely deep, many layered, multi faceted, you could even say corrugated, affair. I'll give you a simple taste of what I mean.
Before the game last night I was in high anticipation of Hanley tearing up the Giants shoddy pitching by whipping up a few RBI's, tossing in a handful of runs, and just for icing, a few pinches of stolen bases. (here ends pathetic cake cooking analogy, feel free to proceed) Hanley, however, just didn't have it. He went 1-5 with none of the above, and was happy to watch his Marlin team mates do all the heavy lifting.
Arriving home I was tempted to not check my stats for the day, worried that my other players would have had similar bad results, and I didn't really want to face that music. But who was I kidding? I live for checking my Fantasy stats. It's just how I roll.
I should have had more faith. (Enter now second level of Fantasy) I should have known that on a night when the team captain of my league leading squad has not faired well, that his mates would rise to the occasion and carry him on their shoulders for a bit. That is just what great teams do. Even the best players have down days, but a sign of a true team is that the lesser talents are there to pick up the slack and carry the day. I won't bore you with specific player heroics, but I will tell you that my boys racked up 13 runs, 3 homers, 15 RBI and a .467 on base percentage, each of which were tops for the day in league. Now, if you know anything about Fantasy, then you know that these players are not connected at all (most likely) in the real sense of a team. That should not stop us, however, from fantasizing (lower case f) that they are one big happy gang of merry comrades.
Slicing deeper into my Fantasy Cake I imagine the pep talk that one of my over achieving-for-the-day players had for Hanley. He would also try and cheer up Ervin Santana, one of my pitchers who turned in a great 7 inning, 1 run performance, and having left with the lead against the Eastern Division leading Devil Rays, had to watch his win evaporate due to the donkey pitching of a reliever who doesn't have the skills or good luck to wear OUR uniform. No cake for you, Scot Shields. Face the wall and think about what you've done.
As my Fantasy fantasy continues I pull all my players together to give them a home stretch inspirational locker room talk, a closed to media type of thing that's not over the top, but maybe a few of them cried just a little, being so moved. What can I say, I'm an inspirational fantasizer. Nothing like a little man on man weeping to bond a team in the dog days of a pennant race, when all you really have in the end is your imaginary clubhouse relationships to carry you through.
And then I sent each of them on their way, from the third degree of Fantasy, back to Reality, full of fantastical we're #1 cake.
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1 comment:
Sounds to me like your fantasy team might be just a *wee* bit overrated. Melvin Mora is carrying you right now, not good news when he remembers that he sucks.
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