Baseball has been called America’s Past time, an American tradition, a gentleman’s sport and an elegant display of sports finesse. It has also been called boring, silly, unimportant, a bunch of stocky brutes with clubs, and a variety of other unflattering names…mostly by the TFN staff. In fact, if you’ve been doing your reading, you already know that we are to baseball what Dick Cheney is to philanthropy…it’s just really not in our vocabulary. When CocoaButter proposed that we stop shunning, mocking, degrading and generally disrespecting one of the four most popular sports in the Milky Way, the exchange went something like this:
LukeNukem: “I have never played fantasy or real baseball, and know absolutely nothing about it. So, yes, of course I’ll play.”
CocoaButter: “Well, put me on the short-bus as well. I only want to do fantasy baseball so I can maybe, try, to appreciate the real thing.”
Chairman Mao: “I’ll play but I only know the names of players from the early 90s. Is it acceptable to draft Random ‘Roidy Fathlete with every draft pick?”
Me: “I played baseball once in sixth-grade gym class. I think I ran towards third base after I hit the ball. I’m in. This will be the Special Olympics of fantasy baseball.”
Nancy Duke: “I’ll do it too although the only baseball I follow is the Cincinnasty Reds and I barely follow them. I don’t even pay attention to the Cubs, and I live 100 yards from Wrigley Field. I do, however, like to watch the drunk Cubs “fans” (i.e. frat boys from the burbs who don’t know half the lineup) struggle to stay upright on gameday. I once saw an old man just fall down in the middle of the street, and then his drunken son fell on top of him.”
Fred Manrique's moustache scared me away from baseball for years.
So, armed with outdated player knowledge and with visions of drunk, balance-challenged fans dancing in our heads, and because we don’t really have “pride,” we’ve decided to start a Fantasy Baseball experiment to prove just how dumb we are broaden our fantasy sports expertise and finally learn just what a “short stop” is for (I always figured it was a stop sign sized for little people).
Here’s the setup: We (the TFN staff) started a fantasy baseball league with a couple of “ringers,” which, to us, is anybody that has watched a full baseball game in the last two years. We also recruited a couple of warm bodies people who, we hope, are even more baseball-illiterate than we are (ie, the wives of a couple of TFN staffers), but who are willing to give it a try so they can talk shit if they beat us. We’ll be attempting to answer the following questions:
1. Can baseball retards be competitive in a fantasy baseball league against bona-fide baseball fans?
2. Does being a fantasy-sports guru provide any advantage in a fantasy league if you know about as much about that sport as my dog knows calculus? (For the record, my dog is just barely smarter than cabbage and knows zero calculus).
3. What the hell is “stickball,” and if you don’t have access to a real bat where did you get the stick?
4. If our wives outplay us, do we still have to go see our in-laws for Memorial Day or can we stay home and have that bitchin’ cookout/cornhole tournament we talked about? LukeNukem has already agreed to spring for the keg. C’mon, honey, we just saw them two months ago! We’ll talk about this later.
5. What IS it with Cubs fans?
We’ll be updating this blog regularly with our league’s standings and player transactions, and we’ll see where the dust settles at the end of the season (if we don’t give up in favor of Fantasy Football). We welcome any and all feedback you may have for us, especially if you know anything at all about baseball or fantasy baseball. We’ll even invite our wives to publicly mock and ridicule us when if they beat the tar out of us.
We recently conducted our league draft (oddly coinciding with the start of baseball season). Coincidentally, none of us knew when baseball season actually started until, like, a week ago. Most of us opted to let our teams auto-draft since we can’t really name any actual baseball players (Albert Poo Holes? Right?). Here’s how the teams shaped up:
Now go forth and light up the comments section! Who are you adding this week? Who’s dead weight? Why does baseball play so many damn games, and should I be worried that Pablo Escobar’s nephew is on my team?
So disappointed that I just found out about this now.
Also sad to see members of my own South Side Shrinkage on The Red Menace…
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Fantasy Ninjas. The Fantasy Ninjas said: Baseball. Whatever: The Fantasy A-Holes: An Experiment in Fantasy Baseball by Ninja Pandamonium http://www.thefantasyninjas.com/?p=490 [...]
Finally, our season beginneth! You’re going down, bitches!
Since I was the only one who drafted live, I’d like to say that one of my strategies was picking players like, Ben Zobrist because he (according to yahoo) plays 2nd base, shortstop, and outfield. I don’t know if he’s anygood, but he’s versatile.
So, yeah, i definitely did not follow through and sign up for the draft. Instead, I’ll just correspond throughout the season on the shenanigans going about outside of my apartment. Let’s start with this. Over/ under on number of puke puddles I will dodge walking to the bus on Tuesday morning (day after Cubs opener) at 6.5?
I’ll take the over. I’m pretty sure I’ve puked in Wrigleyville and I don’t even watch baseball. There’s just so many overpriced bars to choose from, it’s almost impossible to not go into one of them, spend $50 dollars in 20 minutes and come out and yack on the sidewalk. I mean, everyone was doing it.
I don’t think you’re being fair to the cabbages. You should be, we’re probably going to feel about that intelligent when this is over (or if it interferes with any fantasy football time).
Just in case y’all don’t believe us that we know dookie about baseball, here’s a few comments ripped from our league page:
Chairman Mao says: “I like to start each fantasy season with some shit talk but really have no idea who any of these people are. I considered not talking any smack but that just didn’t seem reasonable so I’m going to get my fill by talking shit with question marks. You guys are all fucked? My squad of heroines (heroes don’t play baseball) will be on top when (insert month that baseball season ends) comes around? Bow down, suckers?”
KC CocoaButter says: “1) What’s baseball?
B) What the fuck is “WHIP”
&) Do all of our pitchers count, or what?”
Pandamonium says: “How the hell does this work?”
I say: “In basketball I could safely fake my way through because generally, there were either just enough guys, or not enough guys, on my roster to fill out my daily lineup. So I didn’t have to make any decisions, I just made sure every roster spot was filled, if possible, and if not, I just hoped the guy I was playing didn’t update his lineup. But in this crazy “sport” there are a full slate of games like every damn day! Seriously, there’s four days this week where EVERY ONE of my players is playing. Do people actually pay to see all of these games? It would take a full-time job just to be a baseball fan! Is everyone who attends baseball games an independently-wealthy millionaire?
So the question is, what the fuck? Or more specifically, what the fuck am I supposed to do with all of these guys who are sitting on my bench and might actually be better than the guys I have starting? Is there research involved? If so, where do I begin?”
Seriously, I would have been in for fantasy soccer, hockey, curling, or bowling before i signed up for baseball.
You know where all those out of work leiman brothers mathmeticians ended up right? Developing new stats for fantasy baseball websites.