This past week in fantasy baseball was a special one for my team. Now up to this point of the season, there haven't really been any highlights for my team, Suck It Bono (that's right, you heard me Bono). But this last week was awesome. But first, a sentence or two of background for you. Since my fantasy baseball team has been nothing but mediocre from week one, I've adopted a survivor-mentality goal, and that is: Try your very, very best not to get your ass handed to you on any one week; and hit more home runs than the other guy. (I understand that HR's are only one measly category, but they are sexy dammit!)
I thought that if I could manage to do this on a weekly basis all year long, that I would have a better-than-average shot of making the 6th and final playoff spot. Add the fact that there are only 8 teams in the league, and accomplishing the feat of finishing better than at least two other teams is relatively high. Hey, I didn't say finishing 6th was going to be that hard.
This past week I played The G2 Life. The G2 Life is ranked 3rd in the league and is actually one of the only decent and consistent teams in the league. He's actually got pitching and pretty good pitching at that, which is something that Suck It Bono most definitely does not have. (Yeah, I'm talking about you Dan Haren, you dirty hippie.) So, I thought, to avoid getting my ass kindly handed to me was going to be more difficult than usual.
Didn't really pay much attention to what was happening for the first part of the week. By Wednesday, I was down 11-4. Not really a good start, by any standards. On Thursday, it was worse...12-3. I would have taken losing 11-4 at this point. I didn't really care at this point. So I thought I would shake things up a little bit. I did some shifting on the roster. I went on a cyber-tirade in front of my team, and cyber-cussed out my team like Jim Leyland would do. I dropped some cyber-clubhouse distractions and picked up some cyber-character guys. Then checked the score on Friday. It was now 11-5. Hmm, maybe my cyber-tirade was working. I mean, some might think that I am a cyber-player's manager, but that's way off. I'm a cyber-hardass on my guys.
Saturday was when it all came together. Saturday's score was 6-6. I have no idea how this happened. I talked to the owner of The G2 Life and he was pissed. But I was pretty happy. My team had accomplished my weekly goal, I think. It looked like we weren't going to get blown out after all. Mission accomplished, so to speak. The chances of the score getting back to something like 12-4 weren't that good now, with only one day left in the week.
So I woke up this morning, and since I don't have anything resembling a job or any other way to contribute to society in a positive way, I checked my fantasy baseball team to see how I fared. I was speechless for the next minute after seeing this: Suck It Bono 8, The G2 Life 5.
I still don't know how it happened, but I think it had a lot to do with Chase Utley. After we won, I cyber-gathered my players for a cyber-clubhouse cyber-meeting and gave the cyber-game ball to Utley. Here's what he did this week: scored 9 runs, 3 singles, 2 doubles, 5 HRs, 14 RBI, 2 steals, batted .391, and had an OPS of 1.587. He was the number one ranked fantasy player in the league for the week, based on those numbers. So yeah, I am pretty sure he helped.
Maybe my cyber-tirade is going to get my team going in the right direction, who knows.
