The Text That Made My Pants Vibrate...Twice

With the Carolina Panthers locking up the first pick in the NFL draft and the Phoenix Suns doing their best to stay under .500, there haven't been many sporting events that I could enjoy this winter. Couple that with Kevin Towers deciding to trade away all of my favorite Diamondbacks, made me crawl into a sporting world hermit mode for most of December. After battling the plague/bird flu for the first part of January, I just realized yesterday that we are less than 2 months from spring training. . .which means one thing. . .

FANTASY BASEBALL.

While I'm still not proud of the irrational choice of Omar Vizquel in the third round last year (note: I did get him for $1 and he provided priceless veteran leadership for the Bed of Love), I did manage to secure Ian Kennedy as my #1 pick in the NL league for $1 as he went along and provided a 2.7 WAR (roughly worth $14 using a $5 per win estimate). I'm a bargain shopper when it comes to fantasy sports. A lot of times it produces an average team of sleepers that never wake up.

But who cares? For 7 months of out of the year I become friends with and a devote follower of my fantasy baseball team. Without fantasy baseball, I never would have gotten text updates on my phone when Drew Stubbs hit a home run and I never would have googled Neil Walker and followed his games on my MLB.TV account. Fantasy baseball allows me kill multiple hours at work during the summer while also looking extremely productive. When people come in and see multiple spreadsheets and numbers they have no clue that I'm really just checking the home/away splits for Ian Desmond.

That's why this is going to be the year that I crack the top. I'm tired of Cooly almost winning both leagues every year, tired of Brew Crew and his terrible trades, and tired of my trades with Mr. Anonymous never paying off. No more Mr. Nice Guy, I'm going for blood this year. So as a fair warning, this is where it starts. Don't bother signing up, you won't win anyways. I'll leave this ego pumping article with a couple of suggestions for the league this year followed by my predictions for year's end.

Suggestion #1: Keeper League

For the love of (religion will not be discussed on this site) make this happen. We have a core group of people who have joined or played almost every year. I need this connection with my player(s) in the off-season as well. I need to get pissed off or cry when Carlos Gonzalez crashes his scooter and breaks his arm.

Suggestion #2:

There are no other suggestions. I just needed a platform to get my keeper league idea out into the open. I will not rest until this happens.

Predictions:

Cooly - Has a strong year for most of the season. Leads by almost 20 points until September rolls along and his team starts to tank. In the end it won't matter and he will win by 10.

Zach - Sits in the middle of the pack for most of the year. Makes a late inning surge just to fizzle out and place 4th.

Mr. Anonymous & Tristan - We end up having much of the same fate. Battle with each other for the right to 7th place only for Dave Matthews to pass us by. I trade him Ronny Cedeno for Louis Castillo and Ronny Cedeno goes on to hit 14 home runs. We end up neck and neck for 9th with both of us tying for last.