My Fantasy Life

I didn’t follow the NFL lockout too closely. It was hard for me to take sides with anyone. Both sides make too much money for me to feel too sorry for them. It is after all a GAME that the players PLAY. Most of us wish that we could get up each day and PLAY and get paid gazillions.

I was going to be ticked if they didn’t work it out though. The Hail Marys have been sidelined since January and they are ready to avenge their Superbowl loss to the Waterboys in the Union County Fantasy Football League. When people ask me who my favorite team is, the answer is the Hail Marys. Likewise in baseball my favorite team is the Brady PeeWees, my fantasy baseball team. I’ll even pull for the Yankees on a night I have one of their starting pitchers throwing for me.

I know that I am an adult, but these fantasy sports are a great way to keep interest in the sports and have a lot of fun trash talking with the guys at work. And trash talk I do. I can be a gracious loser, but I am a horrible winner. It’s all in good fun. And I promise that it’s the only area in which I lead a fantasy life. Currently, my baseball record is 29-11 and football is 42-18-2 for an overall fantasy sports record of 71-29-2. I’ve been to the football playoffs every year; the Superbowl twice and won it once. Last year my baseball record was 18-6, which is awesome, but unfortunately I was in the same division as Raymond. Raymonster also had an 18-6 record but he had a better division record than me and advanced to the playoffs while the 18-6 PeeWees cleaned up their cleats and went home. If you are a numbers guy(or gal), 71-29-2 is a winning percentage of 70% which is stinking good. The best teams in baseball this season as of this writing (the Yankees and Red Sox) have a 62% winning record. To give this some perspective, only 14 MLB teams since 1886 have had better overall records than me. There isn’t an NFL football team in the history of the NFL with an overall winning percentage as high as mine. The Dolphins are the closest at 59%. If I could do this in real life, I would be getting paid to play.                                                                                                  

Anyway, you are starting to get the picture of why no one likes to be around me when I win. Before you gag, I do have a point in all this self-promoting. People say to me a lot that they don’t have time for fantasy sports and that’s fine. I’m not trying to convert the world, but I have achieved a 70% winning record on 5-10 minutes a day…every day during the season. That’s not much time, but it is consistent. I don’t miss a single day checking in on my team for injuries, benchings, performance, etc. It’s about the most consistent thing I do outside of breathing, sleeping and eating. Typically my most consistent character trait is my inconsistency. And all of this makes me wonder, what could I accomplish if I devoted this same amount of time every single day to some positive, worthwhile, potentially life-changing activity?