A better kind of fantasy baseball

I’ve been playing fantasy baseball for many years now. Baseball is my favorite sport and I follow it more closely than any other sport, yet I have yet to win a fantasy baseball title—EVER. It’s beyond frustrating. It seems like no matter how hard I prepare for a draft, or how closely I monitor free agents during the season, something always goes wrong. This season is already shaping up to be another shitty one.  When it comes to fantasy baseball, I subscribe to Murphy’s Law—the belief that anything that can go wrong, WILL go wrong.

Here is my “Fantasy Baseball Murphy’s Law” list

The perennial all-star you draft in the first round will have the worst year of his career the year you draft him

The following year, when you pass him over, he will dominate the league

The ace pitcher you draft will announce he is having Tommy John surgery two days after your draft ended

Your best closer will lose the job one month into the season

The guy in your league with five closers will pick up his replacement minutes before you do (more…)

Spring Training is here! Major League Baseball players are reporting to camp and getting ready for the upcoming baseball season.

Meanwhile, sports writers follow the players down South in order to provide news to baseball fans across the country that are hungry to read about baseball after a long winter.

Yet we are still over a month away from any meaningful games so there really isn’t a lot to talk about.  There’s not much going on at Spring Training other than light jogging, pitchers fielding practice and soft tossing.  However, beat writers have to write about something while they are down in Florida and Arizona, so they find ways to turn just about anything into a 1,500-word press release.

I did this last year and found a number of ridiculous articles. So I dug deep into the MLB.com news archive again and found five more absurd articles that could hardly be called newsworthy.

John Axford Accurately Predicts Some of the Oscar Winners (more…)

Albert Pujols shocked the baseball world recently when he shunned the St. Louis Cardinals to take a 10-year, $254 million offer with the Los Angeles Angels.

Many have wondered why Pujols decided to leave St. Louis, a city where he was adored by baseball-crazy fans.

Well, Pujols’ wife, Diedre Pujols, gave a little insight into Albert’s decision during a recent interview with a St. Louis-area Christian radio station. (more…)

Hey, remember Anna Benson? She’s the wife of former major league baseball player Kris Benson. She now stars on another awful reality show on VH1 called Baseball Wives, which features the wives, ex wives, and girlfriends of largely irrelevant major league baseball players doing whatever it is rich women with little responsibility do.

A few years ago, Benson was insanely hot (see picture to the left). So when I heard she was going to be on this show, it peaked my interest, albeit momentarily. Unfortunately, I was stunned to see the way she looks now… (more…)

It seems like anytime an all-star game approaches, no matter what the sport, there are always people talking about how to make the game more interesting or how to make the game as exciting as it once was.

The truth is, there is nothing anyone can do to makes these games more exciting. All-Star games in any sport are nothing but a glorified, overly drawn out exhibition game.

All-Star games used to be exciting many years ago because sports coverage was very regionalized. Fans could usually only watch games of their local team. To follow the other teams in the league, you either had to read the newspaper or wait till the end of the news broadcast for a sports anchor to scroll scores across the screen.

The All-star game used to be one of the few opportunities a fan would have to see some of the game’s best players. Let’s say you were a fan of a National League team in the 80s. Your only chance to see American League stars such as Don Mattingly or Roger Clemens play was during the All-Star Game. This isn’t the case anymore. (more…)

The recent interleague baseball match-up between my hometown New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs gave me an excuse to make my first trip to Chicago this past weekend.

As I took in a pair of games at historic Wrigley Field, I started to learn why the Cubs haven’t won a series since 1908. Losing has become part of their appeal and their fans have embraced the concept of the “Loveable Losers.” I even saw some kid being interviewed on ESPN saying he’d rather be a Cubs fan than a Yankees fan because “it would be boring to always win.” I’ve been a Yankees fan my whole life. Trust me kid. There is nothing boring about winning.

Cubs fans and their relationship with Wrigley Field is like being in a bad relationship with a beautiful woman. They are blinded by its exterior beauty and can’t see the flaws on the inside.

On the exterior, everything about Wrigley Field looks amazing. The field has a quaint atmosphere of a minor-league park with its ivory-covered brick walls and auxiliary scoreboard. But what you’ll find in the interior are cramped seats, no video board and a trough in a disgusting men’s room where 50 men are pissing simultaneously. Oh yeah…and the team playing inside stinks.

But Cubs fans are blinded by Wrigley Field, just like a man would be blinded by dating a beautiful woman who brings nothing else to the table.

Every game is like a party for Cubs fans, where the outcome isn’t as important as having fun. Remember the crap your parents told you after losing a game in Little League, that it’s not important if you won or lost, as long as you had fun? It seems like Cubs fans live by that notion. The result is a side note to getting drunk and tossing beach balls around. I can see why Wrigley Field is called “The Friendly Confines”: Because the park is too small and their fans are wimps (except for the teenage girl that called my 63-year old father a “faggot Yankees fan”). Obnoxious Yankees fans were scattered all over that park, talking shit at every opportunity and most Cubs fans just sat there and took it. Even when the Cubs won on Friday, they failed to seize a rare opportunity to talk trash. Maybe that’s the difference between New Yorkers and Chicagoans. Perhaps they are just too polite to say anything.

As the team with 27 World Series Championships took two-out-of three from a team who hasn’t won a title in over 100 years, it became clear which city had the better baseball team. But when it comes to other important aspects, Chicago holds its own against New York City. Though I was only there a few days, I took in a good amount of the city and have drawn some key comparisons between Chicago and New York. (more…)

In what might possibly be the most awkward moment of all-time, high profile attorney Gloria Allred decided to demonstrate anal sex with a baseball bat in front of small children at a press conference on Thursday.

Yes you read that sentence correctly.

Allred was reenacting a recent incident involving Atlanta Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell, where McDowell made homophobic slurs and gestures toward some fans.

Take a look at the video…

There is so much to love about this video but here are a few of my favorite parts… (more…)

Spring Training is here! Major League Baseball players are reporting to camp and getting ready for the upcoming baseball season.

Meanwhile, sports writers follow the players down South in order to provide news to baseball fans across the country that are hungry to read about baseball after a long winter.

Yet we are still over a month away from any meaningful games so there really isn’t a lot to talk about.  There’s not much going on at Spring Training other than light jogging, pitchers fielding practice and soft tossing.  However, beat writers have to write about something while they are down in Florida and Arizona, so they find ways to turn just about anything into a 1,500-word press release.

I’ve found a number of articles—mostly on MLB.com— where the reporters are desperately reaching for any kind of story. Here are five of the best releases I’ve seen thus far that can barely be called newsworthy.

1. Some Fat Yankee Pitchers Aren’t Quite as Fat; Others are as Fat as Ever

The BIG news around Yankee camp this spring has been about the weight of their pitchers.

Ace hurler C.C. Sabathia claims to have lost 25 pounds because he stopped eating Cap’n Crunch.

“I stopped eating Cap’n Crunch every day,” Sabathia told news reporters Monday morning. “I used to eat that stuff by the box.”

Meanwhile, pudgy relief pitcher Joba Chamberlain has dropped some of that baby fat and put on some muscle during the off-season.

“Obviously, I added muscle,” Chamberlain said. “That just comes from being a man, too. I’m 25 now, not 21.”

Yankee skipper Joe Girardi then really spiced up the Chamberlain story with this quote…

“I think his hairstyle being different is the one thing I noticed first.” (more…)