Wednesday, February 29, 2012

I Felt a Draft

Hours after the completion of my first fantasy baseball draft, I analyzed my team and realized the group of players I chose could win — in a South Dakota softball beer league.

My outfield possesses less power than a utility company after an ice storm. My pitching staff underwent plenty of surgeries and saw more knives than a visitor to a Boy Scout Jamboree. I think I drafted a stadium vender to play third base for my team.

After spending time poring over baseball preview magazines and checking websites that projected players statistics for the upcoming year, I felt I was ready last week’s draft. I had my notes scattered across the desk; I knew who I favored for my first several choices, and I knew who I should pick for each position.

It looked good on paper.

But then the draft happened.

My team, the Arkansas Paperboys, was randomly selected to have the first pick in the draft. While that seemed an honor, I found that it was actually a curse. Miguel Cabrera, the Detroit Tigers’ first baseman was projected to be the best player in the draft. So I chose him with my first selection.

And then I waited. The next 11 teams chose and then, in a quirky way that draft worked, the draft order was reversed. So, the number 12 team — the last team to pick in the first round — was given the first pick in the second round. I, on the other hand, received the last pick in the second round. By the time it came my turn again, several of the players I wanted were already chosen.

I played catch-up for the duration of the draft, trying quickly to go to Plan B, or Plan C, or even Plan D, for my choices. I cursed more than Billy Beane in “Moneyball.” (I refer to the book; I’ve never seen the movie).

The season begins March 28 with a game in Japan. Then it really kicks off on April 4 and the fantasy season is underway.

We’ll see how my choices fare.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

It's Just a Fantasy

It’s seven hours before I embark on my first attempt at drafting a fantasy baseball team and I’m obsessing over the fear of making the late-round picks.

As much as I enjoy baseball, I’ve only played fantasy baseball one time and I finished sixth in a 12-team division. It was the baseball season after my wife passed away and I was just looking for anything to take my mind off my situation. I let the host, Yahoo!, choose my picks that time.

This time, I’m doing it for real.

A newspaper reporter friend of mine called me the other day about a story he was working on and, as reporters do, we quickly drifted to talking about sports. He said he had drafted his team on Yahoo! and was pleased. I then decided I would give it a try.

I am at a disadvantage. As much as I love baseball, I know the history of the game and its oldtimers, rather than the current players and their propensities for playing well. I’ve played APBA baseball for years; I know past seasons. Give me a draft for 1932 and I’m on it. I understand the statistical probabilities for third-string catchers for 1964 and I’m all over 1987.

But this season? I don’t know the difference between a Milkyway and a Melky Cabrera. Do I fish the 21st round for Mike Carp or Mike Trout, both American League outfielders? Do I forego my hatred for the Boston Red Sox and chose Adrian Gonzalez if I have the chance? The early picks seem easy — take who is available. But the late rounds become more of a mystery. Who do I chose for my shortstop when all the good ones are gone? Who is a good bench player? Who should be on my bullpen staff?

All questions I must have answered within 7 hours. Oops, 6 hours and nine minutes now.

Since last night, I’ve done four mock drafts, pretend drafts to give the players a feel of how the selection process goes. I felt I did okay in two. The others, I think I stunk.

I was razzed for my picks in one draft by another player who felt an obligation to criticize my choices. He made fun of my selection of Atlanta Braves' reliever Craig Kimbrell as my reliever and then hammered me for choosing St. Louis Cardinals’ outfielder Lance Berkman. “I wish you were in my money-league,” he wrote in the chat section of the draft. I wanted to write back something about his mom, but instead, I weakly wrote some inane reply that I lived near St. Louis and was just showing favoritism.

So, there’s 6 hours left before my first draft. My notes are scattered across the desk, my baseball preview magazine is opened to the team pages. I need to run to the store to stock up on Pepsi and chips. I am trying to cram baseball knowledge quickly and I'm nervous.

Let the draft begin.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Love on an Overpass

INTERSTATE 55, EXIT 109 — Tony proclaimed his love in two-foot tall letters painted across the northbound I-55 overpass about 10 miles south of Cape Giradeau, Mo.

And what better way to state his declaration of devotion than by dangling 25 feet over the interstate, clutching the railing with one hand and a paint brush in the other.

His affection was amplified by the chance that he could have toppled off the overpass. The initial splat on the asphalt below could end the love. Or if that didn’t get him, the bearing-down Peterbilt hauling a 53-foot conventional van laden with 59,000 pounds of produce headed for Chicago might staunch the relationship as well.

But, despite the effort, Tony wasn’t thinking this all the way through. After placing his love in indelible ink on a freeway seen daily by thousands, the inevitable happened. Tony and his girlfriend broke up.

I know this only because the name of Tony’s girlfriend was blotted out in a huge white blob, much like the old liquid paper we used when correcting typing errors in days of yore. Then, that ol’ rascal Tony found a new girlfriend and, since there was more amore, Tony painted the new girl’s name over the whited-out space. This time Tony used bright yellow paint. At night, I’m sure “Laurie” glowed like an iridescent highway sign when caught in the high beams of a car.

Now, “Tony loves Laurie” greets motorists.

As I continued north on the interstate, I thought of Tony and his love life. He had to be so smitten with the first girl that he was possessed to post that love where everyone could see. That was his mindset: Fall in love. Paint an overpass.

But he did what everyone does in relationships. He broke up. It happens. I don’t know what the percentages are, but most relationships are doomed from the start. Maybe it happens more to those who paint overpasses. Maybe the same characteristic that drives someone to defy danger and hang precariously over a bridge is also a characteristic that eventually forces a loved one away.

I thought of Tony’s reaction to the breakup. He returned to the bridge, risking injury or arrest, and painted over the girl’s name. Maybe that was what made it final for him. He had already gathered his compact discs, books and some clothes from her home. All he had left to do to totally severe the relationship was to paint over her name.

When he found a new love, he returned to the bridge with new paint. Now it was Laurie.

What happens when Laurie dumps him? Does Tony paint over her name and then, while the latest correction dries, hunt for yet another sweetie?

It could be an endless cycle with Tony, but at least it amuses me and give me thought while it breaks up a long trip.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

George Kell's 1950 APBA Card

George Kell, the Hall of Fame third baseman for the Detroit Tigers, looked at his APBA baseball game card for the 1950 season and noticed one number that appeared frequently.

As I mentioned before, APBA is the company that creates a game that allows its players to replay actual baseball and other sports seasons. The cards are not photographs of the players, but rather a series of numbers that correspond with dice rolls. The player rolls two dice, matches the result with the same number on the card and then checks the number next to the dice roll to get a play result.

All that description to set up Kell’s question when I met him in a high school gym in his hometown of Swifton, Ark., several years ago.

“What are all those sixes?” he asked, pointing to the number that dominated dice roll results on the APBA card.

“Those are all the doubles you hit in 1950,” I replied. “The ‘six’ means the player hits a double.”

Kell led the league that year with 56 doubles. It was the eighth most doubles ever hit by a player in a season. (Earl Webb hit 67 doubles in 1931 for the Boston Red Sox — I looked it up.)

He smiled and, although I don’t think he understood the complexity of the game from the brief description I provided, I believe he was pleased someone remembered his season of that year.

It capped an amazing night for me; for three hours Kell sat in the gymnasium and we watched high school basketball and talked about baseball during the era he played.

I went to the games (a yearly tournament held in his honor) with a friend who served as Kell’s pastor. The friend introduced me to Kell and we began talking. He appreciated someone who had a love of the game and who knew players during his career in the 1940s and 1950s. He shared stories about Ted Williams and Brooks Robinson and Mickey Mantle. He said the most difficult pitcher he ever faced was Bob Feller. He talked of taking trains to the furthest western American League team in those days — the St. Louis Browns — and he recalled the animosity between the teams he played for and the New York Yankees, who at that time were collecting World Series rings like the rest of us collected baseball cards.

As we wrapped up our conversation, he said he had to go back to his home. He was taking his wife to Little Rock for tests; she had the beginnings of a serious medical situation and he was concerned. I was stunned that he took so much time to talk to me before checking on his ailing wife. His kindness was not forgotten.

When I left the gymnasium, I showed him the 1950 APBA card and asked him to autograph it. He chuckled at the numbers and made a quip about not being “pretty enough” to have his picture on the game card.

Kell passed away some years later, but the memory of the time he spent with me that night and his interest in one card of a game I’ve obsessed with for two-thirds of my life will live on.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Numbers

A friend of mine spent the past week in a local hospital with a serious heart condition and there was a brief time when it was questionable if he’d even live.

So, I found I did what I normally do when confronted with Fear. I turned to baseball.

And even though it was probably inappropriate at the time, it helped quell some of my worries and it gave me a focus and some sense of control that I felt was slipping away. I was looking for something familiar in a medical world that I was alienated with.

My friend fell ill last week and finally went to the doctor thinking he had the flu. The doctor instead told him his heart was beating too fast — perhaps from some viral infection — and he immediately admitted him to the hospital. Had he not gone that day, he may not have made it through the night, we later learned.

A monitor showed his heart was beating at 190 beats per minute. I, in turn, immediately thought that had he had one more beat per minute, he’d equal the 191 runs batted in that Hack Wilson had in 1930 with the Cubs.

It got worse.

On a monitor I saw the number ‘44’ and thought of the 1944 World Series that pitted the two St. Louis teams, the Browns and the Cardinals. His oxygen level was ‘98,’ which, of course, brought to mind the 1998 season of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and their epic home run race.  The number “1.12” on an IV bag was Bob Gibson’s earned run average in 1968.

I also found myself thinking about my APBA baseball season, which I’ve always done during stressful times. I brought the game with me when my wife was in the hospital years ago, replaying a game while she recovered from some procedure or while we waited for more doctors’ results.

It helped. It gave me something concrete to deal with, something I could easily understand and something that was predictable at a time when things were totally out of whack with the consistency of the norm.

I use the baseball numbers to remember phone numbers as well. I break the last four digits of a number into two halves; those halves represent years. For example, the last four digits of my home phone are 6757. 67 represents 1967, the year St. Louis beat the Boston Red Sox in the Series. 57 is, of course, Henry Aaron’s outstanding Series of 1957 as he led the Milwaukee Braves over the New York Yankees in seven games that year.

My friend, the same one who was in the hospital this week, once told an acquaintance about my way of recalling numbers.

“Is he a genius?” the acquaintance asked.

“No,” my friend replied. “He’s just weird.”

And maybe it is weird. But it is a way for me to filter something unknown and process it in my own way.

My friend recovered and is now recuperating at home. He still has a way to go before he is better; he’s now also battling pneumonia and he has to take it easy with his heart for a while.

I’ve not told him about how I dealt with the Fear at the hospital and my worry for his health and how I tried to convert the unknown into baseball statistics and APBA game replays.

He would have thought I was weird.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Street Scenes, Part 2

The Statue of Liberty stood on the sidewalk across from a funeral home and motioned at motorists on the five-laned road.

But rather than clutching a tablet of law or grasping a torch to light freedom’s path, this Liberty’s hand was encased in a large foam We’re Number One finger. On occasion, the statue would point at drivers in an accusatory fashion; other times, it would just wag the digit in a scolding manner.

Either way, it was an alarming, albeit effective way to remind us that it’s tax season and Liberty was shilling for a nearby accountant’s preparation business.

I’ve seen the person almost every day while driving to work. Liberty stands outside the business during the early hours and motions to the morning traffic. Liberty’s been there in rain and wind and snow. Last year, I saw it waving during a pelting sleet storm.

Some drivers honk at Liberty, others flash lights. Most ignore it.

I wave back.

I assume it’s a man, although I am not sure. The person wears a long flowing green robe to assimilate the aged copper of the actual New York statue. Wrapped around its head is a large plastic mask made of a type of  rubber akin to those kick boards we used in grade school swimming classes. Large eye holes accommodate the person inside the mask. It looks more like the psycho killer in the Scream movies than a symbol of tolerance and independence.

It’s a weird way to begin a workday morning, seeing the Liberty. But it has to be a weirder way to make a living.