Fantasize This
I was recently invited to participate in a Fantasy Football League by a friend. While it was very nice to be asked, I have been trying ever since to think of something I would like to do less. I keep coming up blank.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sports fan. I love hockey and football. I’ve even been known to enjoy baseball games (though the length of the season makes it hard for me to care about a generic game much before September). I used to be a basketball fan, growing up on Long Island and going to Knick games. Now I couldn’t watch a basketball game for money. Except the playoffs. I could watch just about anything if it means something. Like a championship. Or the setting of a record. Proof positive is that I actually watched the final World Cup game this year. And I’m American. It was the first soccer game I watched from start to finish. Ever. (I’m assuming my seven-year-old’s games don’t really qualify.) I watch the Olympics—Winter more than Summer—and can even plop down in front of televised darts (again, as long as there is a championship, or a costly round of drinks on the line).
But a fantasy league? It just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t get it. I think my fundamental problem with fantasy leagues is the statistics. I just can’t bring myself to care. I have so many more important things with which to fill my head. Hell, I have less important things with which to fill my head. Such as, “hmm, gas was $2.89 a gallon there last Tuesday, then it went up to $2.93 the next day. Is there a pattern at work? Should I buy gas on Tuesdays? Or should I keep driving, hoping to recapture the excitement I felt three Thursdays ago when I caught the attendant at the Shell changing the sign and he accidentally put the “9” on upside down for a second.”
You see? Much less important things.
I know several people who participate in fantasy leagues who scoff that I know so many lines from movies, TV shows, or stand-up routines by heart, but don’t know the batting average for Slugger A, or the number of games saved by Pitcher B, or the Plus/Minus of Defenseman C. A fantasy player once remarked to me that I know lots of useless stuff, like what happened in a particular Seinfeld episode. (Actually I know what happens in every episode, a fact I am neither proud of nor ashamed of, it is just a fact.) Yet he had memorized the pitching rotations of eight or nine baseball teams. I’m not suggesting either data sets are useful—they aren’t. It’s just you choose to know and remember what matters to you. It’s why in my 26 years or so as a newspaper reader I have cracked the Sports section about a dozen times—the general statistics and day-to-day are just not that important to me.
But perhaps I’m not understanding something about the mechanics of the fantasy league, so somebody correct me if I’m wrong. Here is how I understand it works: you “draft” a team for yourself where you pick players for “your team” and then you calculate whatevers based on the players’ individual performances? Okay, I guess I see.
No, wait, I’m confused.
Let’s say I’m playing fantasy baseball and I want to draft a good infielder. Let’s say I pick A-Rod. Great, right? Well, no, because I’m a citizen of Red Sox Nation. I couldn’t possibly pick a Yankee. Could I? And if I were to pick one, that would mean I would, at times, be rooting for a mortal enemy of my team. So what comes first, my actual team, or my fantasy team made up of favorites and villains from around the league. Is this making baseball more enjoyable?
You know what it is making me? It is making me more likely to actively participate in the Professional Sports Industrial Complex. If my real team doesn’t play on a given day I may be less likely to read the sports section or tune in to ESPN. But if I have players on my fantasy team scattered around the league, I will always have a reason to check in with the sports world. (And now we see why the garbage goes out 18% less in a fantasy sports league household than it does in my house. And why the marriage counseling business has been booming since fantasy sports leagues went mainstream.)
So let’s say I eschew all non-Red Sox players AND former players who are now labeled as “traitors,” (Oh, Pedro. Wherefore art thou, Pedro?). Now my fantasy team is starting to look a lot like…well, it looks like the actual team. So maybe I should just root for my team, and forget the fantasy team. Is that not the hallmark of a true fan? Would I be wrong to say a fantasy player is not an ultimate fan, but in fact, a bit of a fair weather fan? Taking the best from my team, but also, the best from other teams as well. Should not the motto of the real sports fan be what my youngest daughter used to tell me all the time, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” Relish your team’s victories, suffer their failures. That’s the way it should be. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go think about soup.
922 words.
I was recently invited to participate in a Fantasy Football League by a friend. While it was very nice to be asked, I have been trying ever since to think of something I would like to do less. I keep coming up blank.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sports fan. I love hockey and football. I’ve even been known to enjoy baseball games (though the length of the season makes it hard for me to care about a generic game much before September). I used to be a basketball fan, growing up on Long Island and going to Knick games. Now I couldn’t watch a basketball game for money. Except the playoffs. I could watch just about anything if it means something. Like a championship. Or the setting of a record. Proof positive is that I actually watched the final World Cup game this year. And I’m American. It was the first soccer game I watched from start to finish. Ever. (I’m assuming my seven-year-old’s games don’t really qualify.) I watch the Olympics—Winter more than Summer—and can even plop down in front of televised darts (again, as long as there is a championship, or a costly round of drinks on the line).
But a fantasy league? It just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t get it. I think my fundamental problem with fantasy leagues is the statistics. I just can’t bring myself to care. I have so many more important things with which to fill my head. Hell, I have less important things with which to fill my head. Such as, “hmm, gas was $2.89 a gallon there last Tuesday, then it went up to $2.93 the next day. Is there a pattern at work? Should I buy gas on Tuesdays? Or should I keep driving, hoping to recapture the excitement I felt three Thursdays ago when I caught the attendant at the Shell changing the sign and he accidentally put the “9” on upside down for a second.”
You see? Much less important things.
I know several people who participate in fantasy leagues who scoff that I know so many lines from movies, TV shows, or stand-up routines by heart, but don’t know the batting average for Slugger A, or the number of games saved by Pitcher B, or the Plus/Minus of Defenseman C. A fantasy player once remarked to me that I know lots of useless stuff, like what happened in a particular Seinfeld episode. (Actually I know what happens in every episode, a fact I am neither proud of nor ashamed of, it is just a fact.) Yet he had memorized the pitching rotations of eight or nine baseball teams. I’m not suggesting either data sets are useful—they aren’t. It’s just you choose to know and remember what matters to you. It’s why in my 26 years or so as a newspaper reader I have cracked the Sports section about a dozen times—the general statistics and day-to-day are just not that important to me.
But perhaps I’m not understanding something about the mechanics of the fantasy league, so somebody correct me if I’m wrong. Here is how I understand it works: you “draft” a team for yourself where you pick players for “your team” and then you calculate whatevers based on the players’ individual performances? Okay, I guess I see.
No, wait, I’m confused.
Let’s say I’m playing fantasy baseball and I want to draft a good infielder. Let’s say I pick A-Rod. Great, right? Well, no, because I’m a citizen of Red Sox Nation. I couldn’t possibly pick a Yankee. Could I? And if I were to pick one, that would mean I would, at times, be rooting for a mortal enemy of my team. So what comes first, my actual team, or my fantasy team made up of favorites and villains from around the league. Is this making baseball more enjoyable?
You know what it is making me? It is making me more likely to actively participate in the Professional Sports Industrial Complex. If my real team doesn’t play on a given day I may be less likely to read the sports section or tune in to ESPN. But if I have players on my fantasy team scattered around the league, I will always have a reason to check in with the sports world. (And now we see why the garbage goes out 18% less in a fantasy sports league household than it does in my house. And why the marriage counseling business has been booming since fantasy sports leagues went mainstream.)
So let’s say I eschew all non-Red Sox players AND former players who are now labeled as “traitors,” (Oh, Pedro. Wherefore art thou, Pedro?). Now my fantasy team is starting to look a lot like…well, it looks like the actual team. So maybe I should just root for my team, and forget the fantasy team. Is that not the hallmark of a true fan? Would I be wrong to say a fantasy player is not an ultimate fan, but in fact, a bit of a fair weather fan? Taking the best from my team, but also, the best from other teams as well. Should not the motto of the real sports fan be what my youngest daughter used to tell me all the time, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” Relish your team’s victories, suffer their failures. That’s the way it should be. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go think about soup.
922 words.
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