insomnia haiku

Fantasyland

Studying for my fantasy baseball draft, which is next Saturday. This is just like being back in school, yet nominally more interesting. But just nominally. I've written about this before, but I wanted to explain what I mean by "studying."

Unlike some of the other people in my league, I don't really follow baseball in the off-season, so I don't have the quick and easy knowledge they do. So when the draft approaches, I have to study. I'm in an NL-only league, which limits the number of players available, which means you have to know everybody. You have to know who's going to do well this year, who's going to suck, who's going to help you out in which categories, who's overrated, who's underrated. Who might get traded, who's injured, who could win Rookie of the Year but isn't even out of the minors yet.

It's a lot. And I haven't even thought about baseball in five months. So I've been reading websites, hoping that the more I read these names over and over again, the more they'll start to sink in. So far it isn't working yet -- and I haven't even gotten to outfielders and pitchers -- but, maybe if I sleep with a fantasy baseball magazine under my pillow? Or fall asleep with ESPN's fantasy podcast playing on my iPod? Then, after I've read it all, I'm going back and making a spreadsheet of all the players, with stats and notes, highlighting which players I should try to get. Well, that's what I always mean to do, anyway. I never really have time. I end up with a spreadsheet that has, like three first basemen and a pitcher on it.

I know you're thinking, Jesus, who cares? Way to go, geek! But it's a competitive league, and I CANNOT show up to my draft unprepared. There is this one guy in the league who always shows up unprepared (perhaps not coincidentally, he comes in last every year). For some reason he always ends up sitting next to me, and "borrows" all the magazines and cheat sheets that I've brought. This pisses me off. Those things cost $7 each! Not cool! Reminds me of my friend Megan in high school who used to call me up and say, "So what'd you get for number 6? How about number 10? What about number 11?" This year, I have resolved: no magazines, no paper whatsoever. Sink or swim on your own, bub.

I always get super nervous about draft day, and afterward I always feel slightly ill. Pretty much exactly the way I used to feel taking tests in school. We do it auction-style, which means someone calls out the name of a player, and everyone bids until somebody "wins" that player. You get $260 to start with, and you draft until everyone has all the spots on their roster filled. You know the scene in Knocked Up, where Leslie Mann catches Paul Rudd in the middle of his draft? It's like that, except we don't have a big white board.

But here's where it gets interesting and psychological-experiment-ish. The marquis players always go for a lot of money, like $40 or more. And you have to spend money to get the good players, obviously ... except I can never bring myself to do it. I always freak out when the bidding gets too high, and I drop out, thinking that I need to save my money for other things. I am careful, only buying bargains -- picking up players who go for less than they're probably worth. And then, when it gets to the end, I have no stars and a ton of money left over, and I end up paying $14 for some scrub who isn't even going to play this season, because I have one spot to fill and all that money. This happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR. And I think, god, what an idiot I am. Why didn't I spend the money on players I really wanted, the ones who were worth it?

And the thing is, this pretty much mirrors my spending habits in real life. I have had the same crappy, breaking-down IKEA furniture for over a decade. I don't buy clothes, and when I do, I buy them at H&M and feel like I shouldn't spend more than $10 on a shirt. I rarely go on vacation. I still rent my apartment. Buying expensive stuff makes me nervous, and I don't do it, even when I have the money.

But that's all going to change, you hear me? This year, I am going outside my comfort zone and spending like I'm white trash and I just won the lottery. I will get Albert Pujols no matter what it costs me. For those of you who don't follow baseball, let me put it in terms you might understand: In the world of first basemen, Pujols is a Lamborghini, and James Loney is a Honda Civic. Last year, I had a Civic. In 2009 -- recession be damned! -- I'm going for the Lamborghini.

Well, it's a nice theory, anyway. We'll see how it goes.

Dear Shea: I never thought you were ugly. Love, me

My last game at Shea! And I got to watch Johan Santana pitch a complete game, so that was pretty awesome. On SportsCenter right now, Mets manager Jerry Manuel is describing the game as "gangsta." It was so gangsta, in fact, that some stranger yelling "Let's go Mets!" as I was leaving the stadium held out his fist to me for a fist-bump (which I provided, of course).

Oh, Shea. Yankee Stadium gets all the glory, and everyone ridicules Shea, but really I think it's a fine little park. And apparently pilots flying in to La Guardia use Shea as a landmark in landing their planes, so I hope that the new Citi-Whatever doesn't cause a rash of accidents when pilots wonder where the big blue thing with the lights and the yelling went.

Gate E off the 7 train:

The new park. It looks nice, but the name makes me cringe.

 

A packed house (rain notwithstanding) was there to root on the Mets during their down-to-the wire pennant race. SUCK IT, YANKEES.

That white blur is Johan Santana. Johan! Johan! Johan! I love that guy. How do you suppose it feels to know you're that badass -- and to be the recipient of such open adulation? And to his enormous credit, he's not one-tenth the dick that A-Rod is. Well, that we know of, anyway.

Aww, this made me sad. No you won't! You won't see me soon! Sniffle.

p.s. Dodgers clinch the NL West! Whoo! Thank you, Joe Torre ... and suck it, Yankees, some more.

If Bills fans get this excited when they beat the Raiders, it'll be Armageddon if they ever win the Super Bowl

Man, I thought I could get excited over sports, but I've got nothing on Bills fans. Check out this video my co-worker -- a rabid Bills fan -- sent me to show me what it was like last Sunday at the bar where he watches games. (Scroll halfway down the page to "Sports Video of the Day." Do not be distracted by the Playmate.) Craaazy. And I love the synchronized napkin-throwing. New Olympic sport!

Watching the damn Yankees and the damn Red Sox

I went to the Yankees-Red Sox game tonight -- my last game at Yankee Stadium! Well, Yankee Stadium version 1, anyway. And it was the last Yankees-Sox night game at the House That Ruth Built; I almost felt like there should be more fanfare.

Random thoughts that occurred to me during the game (which the Yankees lost, 11-3):

Did you know that every Yankees uniform number from 1 to 10 has been retired except for 2 and 6? (Thank you, Blackberry.) And 2 is Derek Jeter, so presumably that one will be retired before long. No one on the Yankees currently wears number 6. If I were a new player for the Yankees, I'd snap that sucker up immediately. Fun fact: number 8 has been worn by two Yankees, Yogi Berra and Bill Dickey -- and it was retired for both of them in 1972.

The groundskeepers doing YMCA is possibly my favorite part of any Yankees game. What a fun job that'd be. I wonder how much money they make.

How many baseballs do you suppose get used during a game? Consider how many foul balls are hit, and then how many balls get replaced because they're scuffed or whatever. I'll go with 30-40, total. Next time I go to a baseball game, I'm going to keep track.

I sort of love Big Papi. There, I said it.

Every time a coach (not the manager, mind you) came out for a conference on the mound, one police officer would come out from the first base side, and one from the third base side, and they would just stand there, facing the crowd. And then when the coach went back into the dugout, the cops would leave the field. I'm really not sure what that was all about. What, did they think someone would rush ... the pitching coach? I don't get it.

It is criminal to charge $9.50 for a beer.

Take a look at these two pictures I took, five seconds apart -- one of the Red Sox dugout, the other of the Yankees dugout. Note how the Red Sox are all leaning against the railing, whereas the vast majority of the Yankees are nowhere in sight, because they're sitting back on the bench. (Except Jeter! He's pacing! Awesome.) Keep in mind that not only was this the situation throughout the game, but also that these pictures were taken when the Yankees were batting. I'm not saying this necessarily has anything to do with the standings, but ... I'm just sayin'.

These days, I find SportsCenter commercials more entertaining than SportsCenter itself

For some reason I spent part of my morning looking up old SportsCenter commercials on YouTube. Well, actually, at first I was looking up the largely unaired "Manny Being Manny" commercial someone told me about last night. Pretty funny.

Anyway, these ended up being two of my favorites -- and I don't even know who Gheorghe Muresan is! (OK, I do now: He played for the Nets, is the tallest man ever to play in the NBA, and was the giant in My Giant. And he sure can dance. Badly.)

Jorge Posada and David Ortiz, "Betrayal"

Gheorghe Muresan Dancing

Olympics Drinking Game

Now that there's no Michael Phelps, you've got to entertain yourself somehow during those long hours of rhythmic gymnastics and endless beach volleyball, right?

Drink whenever ...

* An athlete cries

* An athlete talks to the camera and says hi to his/her friends and family back home

* A commentator thinks an American athlete should've gotten a higher score

* A commentator thinks a non-American athlete should've gotten a lower score

* A commentator guesses wrong about which athlete will score higher
** Drink twice if s/he guesses it's the American who will score higher

* A commentator says "opens the door"

* A commentator says "wow"

* Mary Carillo does a segment
** Drink twice if it has nothing to do with the Olympics
*** Drink three times if it involves making her look ridiculous

* Bob Costas makes you want to change the channel (this is sort of vague, so feel free to suggest others)

My favorite quote of the Olympics so far

"All love to Jamaica."

-Shelly-Ann Fraser, Jamaica's first-ever female winner of the 100-meter dash, to an NBC reporter

Oh, Yankees fans, making my points for me

Follow-up to yesterday's post:

Me, to dejected Yankees fan, today: Sorry about the Yankees.

Dejected Yankees fan: Yeah, the pitching and the blah blah blah something.

Me: So are you rooting for the Indians to win it all now?

Dejected Yankees fan: No. I don't care. It doesn't matter. The Yankees lost.

Me: What, so now that the Yankees aren't playing anymore, baseball doesn't exist?

Dejected Yankees fan: That's right.

Me: You do realize this is why people hate the Yankees, right?

Dejected Yankees fan: Yup.

The devil doesn't wear pinstripes

Sometimes, you say things online because you can't say them out loud, because saying those things out loud might get you lynched. Therefore, I'm sayin' it here:

I like it when the Yankees lose. I enjoy seeing Yankees fans suffer.

[Exhale]

I grew up hating the Yankees. My first memories of baseball are of watching my Dodgers play the Yankees in the 1981 World Series. I'll admit, though, that after having lived in New York for 14 years, I've grown to respect the franchise and the players -- heck, I even root for the Yankees when I go to games. I believe in being polite when you're at someone else's house. I also believe in not getting beaten up.

But while my feelings toward the team may have mellowed through the years, what has always irritated me is the way it's assumed that, just because you live in New York, you must be a Yankees fan. Colleagues and friends will share game details with me, conveniently forgetting that I've told them several times how much I don't like the Yankees. Don't ask me if I saw A-Rod's home run last night! I don't care! After September 11, a waiter told me I was the devil because I wanted the Diamondbacks to win the World Series. (Everyone and Their Mother: "But it would make everyone feel so much better if the Yankees won." Me: "But it would make ME feel so much better if they didn't.")

I once patiently spent half an hour trying to explain to a lifelong Yankees fan why I wasn't similarly inclined. "But why wouldn't you root for the Yankees?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. "You live in New York!"

"But I moved here from somewhere else."

[blank look] "... So?"

"So if you moved to Boston, would you root for the Red Sox?"

"NO!"

Poor guy. I think he almost got it.

To be fair, I didn't truly understand how success breeds resentment until I left California. I grew up a Lakers fan in the 80s, and back then I experienced that very same astonishment that people could hate my team so much. Then I moved away, and I saw my team through other people's eyes .. and I got it. Maybe Yankees fans should all try living in Chicago for a while.

Anyway, the Yankees lost, and now life can go on. I do feel bad for Joe Torre, though. He's a class act, he's not to blame for the Yankees' troubles, and he can come manage the Dodgers anytime he wants.

Whew, that's better. Come tomorrow, I think I can even muster up some sympathy for the sad, sad Yankees fans. I'll only be smiling on the inside.

p.s. To Yankees fans reading this blog: I'm sorry. Really. Now come root for the Rockies with me! C'mon, it'll be fun.

A whole day off, and I spend it thinking about football

I spent most of my weekend running errands (bought a nightstand for a mere $200, solid rosewood, very exciting) and cleaning the hell out of my apartment in anticipation of some friends coming into town. Now, with my friends at the U.S. Open, I have an entire day free, absolutely free, and I'm stunned not only at how luxurious that feels, but also at how long it's been since I didn't have a million "must do" things hanging over my head. And what to do with this glorious free day? I thought about shopping (too stressful) or working out (ha) or going to see a movie, but ultimately have ended up at my favorite cafe, eating lunch and dithering around with my laptop as the staff plays one of my favorite albums, the Violent Femmes' Violent Femmes. Sometimes it's the simple things that make you the happiest.

Saturday night I watched the Cal-Tennessee football game, and though I was, technically, alone on my couch, I kept up a steady text exchange with Abby and my brother Brian, which was practically like watching it with them. (I shudder to think what my wireless bill is going to be next month. That's another one for my "to do" list: Get unlimited texting.) I've missed college football so much. The tradition, the intense loyalty, the unpredictability, the joy -- professional sports just can't compare to college sports, not by a long shot. I was in agony and ecstasy watching the Bears get revenge after being humiliated by Tennessee in the opener a year ago, and I didn't care that I was home alone instead of out; it was still one heck of a way to spend my Saturday night. If you're even remotely interested in football, check out DeSean Jackson's 77-yard punt return for a touchdown, which, as ridiculous as it sounds in retrospect, had me simultaneously laughing and nearly crying:

After the game, I trolled around on the Interweb looking for comments and analysis on the game, because I'm a nerd, and that's how I do. And almost without warning, I found myself in terrifyingly unfamiliar territory: the world of the SEC fan. For the uninitiated, in the world of college sports, SEC stands for Southeastern Conference, not the Securities and Exchange Commission. (This is surely the only realm in which a 250-pound lineman might be confused with a pointed-headed Bush appointee.) And in the SEC, which includes Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, Georgia and Florida, football is HUGE. It's a religion. It's the Pat Robertson faithful speaking in tongues, except instead of "Praise our Lord Jesus Christ" they say things like "It's GREAT! to BE! a FLORIDA GATOR!" It's scary. And for the devoted SEC fan, it's not enough to believe -- nay, to KNOW -- that your conference is better than all the rest; you also have to make sure everyone else knows how much their conference sucks. It's kind of like the way the ugliest Americans think no place could ever be as great as the U.S. of A. (See also: Duke basketball, Yankees.)

In July, coach Les Miles of LSU both embarrassed and invigorated the SEC faithful when he slammed number one-ranked USC, claiming they play in a weak conference (that is, the Pac-10) and that they'd never last in the almighty SEC. Among other things, he called out my alma mater, Cal (aka UC Berkeley, known as "California" when it comes to sports), sarcastically referring to us as a "juggernaut" and implying that we're a pansy in comparison to any SEC team, as are all the rest of the teams in the Pac-10. Miles' bit of verbal diarrhea spread like wildfire across the Internet -- I particularly enjoyed this spoof -- and hence Saturday's Cal-Tennessee game became, for many Pac-10 fans in particular, a grudge match meant to prove Les Miles wrong. Oh, it was ON.

Well, we did prove him wrong. Cal (i.e., the Pac-10) didn't cower and crumple at Tennessee's (i.e., the SEC's) supposedly superior size, speed, toughness and heart. We won on national TV, and we didn't look like wimps doing it. And we got some respect in the media and from Tennessee fans, which, for perennial also-ran Cal (just a few years ago, we finished 1-10 -- that's one win and 10 losses, folks, and we barely got the one win), means a lot. No one's claiming that the Pac-10's the strongest conference; we just wanted to show that some of the rest of us could hang with the big bad boys of the SEC. And we did. And I was feeling all happy and redeemed until I read comment after comment by SEC fans saying "Who cares, it was the Pac-10's second-best team against the SEC-'s fifth-best team, when will the media stop licking the Pac-10's ass" and "Throw out the fumble and the punt return and the game was a tie" and "The refs were biased" and "The Pac-10 is a bunch of liberal elitist pansy-assed fags, Les Miles spoke the truth, SEC BABY ALL THE WAY," and I was like, damn, who ARE you people? What are you missing in your lives that you can't just say, hey, your conference may not be half bad, sorry about our idiot coach, we will now take him out back and shut his idiot mouth with duct tape, chicken wire and an old boot our dog Bo tore off some homeless guy?

I had a point I was trying to work out here, and that's the fact that while I can be pretty passionate about sports, I will never entirely understand the egotistic chest-thumping that seems to dominate so much of fandom -- and I can't figure out whether being female puts me on the other side of some kind of divide, or not... but I've already gone on too long. If you're very unlucky, I'll subject you to that diatribe some other time. Meanwhile, hope you all had a beautiful weekend, possibly with some Violent Femmes in it.