My house is divided against itself

I faced Mrs. N-B in the Ahmedinejad Flyers fantasy football league this week, and our battle for first (we were both 7-1 coming into the game) will come down to Monday Night Football.

Her squad, the Bradydaddys, is nursing a 6.62 point lead with no players left to go. My team, Bollinger's Bombers, needs a TD from Hines Ward to seal the win. If he doesn't get it on the first drive, it looks like I'll be staying up past my bedtime tonight.

This is as good a place as any to say that this matchup comes on the week of our third anniversary and the week of this blog's fourth birthday.

That's right -- in 2005 I conceived a blog out of wedlock.

A dream denied

Somewhere, the 1972 Dolphins (2007 Patriots?) are rejoicing, for my dream of a perfect fantasy football season has come crashing down.

The Bollinger's Bombers fell to 6-1 on the season this week, though I retain first place over Mrs. N-B, also 6-1.

My loss this week rests squarely on the shoulders of the Washington Redskins, who committed approximately 77 turnovers and gave up a pick-six to the Philadelphia defense, enough to push my hated rival The DTs past me on Monday Night Football. Oh well. Perfection will have to wait until next season.

Now I know how Tom Brady felt

I've started off my fantasy football season hot, hot hot. I'm 4-0, atop the league standings with nearly 450 total points scored. (Mrs. N-B is also undefeated.)

But I'm starting to feel the pressure -- can Bollinger's Bombers go undefeated? The fake sports media is already frothing about it. I just have to stay focused, take it one game at a time, and hope I can make it through my bye weeks.

I have become what I beheld

I have an important confession to make, and it involves a staple of the NaturalBlog: Sad Peyton, my occasional chronicling of the struggles of Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

The trouble this season is that I'm rooting for Peyton. My change of heart is not altruistic, but completely selfish -- he's the quaterback of my fantasy football team, Bollinger's Bombers of the Ahmedinejad Flyers league.

What's a hater to do? I guess I'm hoping that he's involved in a lot of 42-38 losses this year. In the meantime, I'm well on my way to 3-0. Thanks, happy Peyton.

Fantasy baseball advice sought

I'm not really sure what to do about the Tim Wakefield situation. He's 2-1 on the season with a 1.86 ERA. I want to add him to my fantasy baseball team, but I know that as soon as I do, he'll tank. What's a fan to do?

Just writing about it now is probably enough to send him on a three-game losing streak.

As long as I'm on the topic, I'll point out that Wakefield has 180 career wins, which is bragable.

Thief!

I've seen a lot of fun things at Fenway -- giant comebacks, base-clearing brawls, Manny making two errors in an inning (on two separate occasions), a World Series win, even a no-hitter. But the one thing I'm missing is the most thrilling play in all of baseball: The steal of home.

With the bases loaded and two out last night at Fenway, outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury stole home off of the Yankees' unflappable lefty Andy Pettitte. It gave teh Sox a 3-1 lead on their way to a 4-1 win, their 10th in a row.

So what if it's only April -- a weekend sweep of the Yankees sure feels good.

Two sport athletes, like myself

I think of myself as a two sport athlete because of my important contributions to not only a coed intramural C-league softball team, but also my advanced beginner/low intermediate volleyball team, The Mini Ditkas.

And while it's rare for there to be two-sport pro athletes, The New York Times sheds some light on professional baseball players who also compete on the statistical gridiron in fantasy football.

There are some good details in there, including a story about how Johnny Damon traded LaDanian Tomlinson to Terry Francona one week in '04, so Francona could beat Curt Schilling.

"It was O.K.," Damon told the Times. "We all wanted to beat Schilling."

Unbelievable but true

I'm pretty sure I've hit my high-water mark of fantasy NASCAR, so I'm going to brag about it.

I'm in the 95th percentile nationwide, and I'm leading two of my three leagues. What's my secret? I call it the Fixodent Strategy -- "Set it and forget it."

If only the same plan would yield success in fantasy baseball.

Your long wait is over. NASCAR has returned

This has come up a couple of times, so it's not exactly breaking news, but I'm ready to publicly state that I am a fan of NASCAR.

Those who've known me for many years can probably remember a time when I'd make fun of NASCAR and its fans, but those days have passed me by faster than a Jeff Gordon qualifying run.

I started watching it last year, because a friend talked me into a fantasy league (naturally). This year, I'm up to three fantasy leagues, though I'm happy to report I have foregone a $100 entry fee in one of those leagues.

I'm pretty pumped for Sunday's Daytona 500, but not as pumped as this kid.

This is what I play for

Fire up the duck boats -- I have brought home a championship in just my third year of fantasy football. I squeaked by a fearsome opponent whose team was named after a pair of tiny dogs to lock up first place last weekend.

In past years, all of the decisions I made for my roster seemed to go the wrong way, but this year I had the Midas Touch down the stretch -- 11 straight victories, including a pair of playoff wins that avenged regular season losses.

I'd like to think I had something to do with it, but to be honest I owe most of my success to Clinton Portis, and the fact that Reggie Bush got hurt, thus allowing Aaron Stecker to go nuts the last three weeks of the season.

Everything's coming up Milhouse

It's rare when my fantasy sports, eliminator, and side-wagering worlds all line up, but last night was one of those wonderful times.

I needed Clinton Portis to have a good night against Chicago's defense so my fantasy football team Bollinger's Bombers (10-3) can advance in the fantasy playoffs. And I needed the Bears to lose so I could get closer to winning a $20 bet that Chicago will miss the actual football playoffs.

Portis had 122 all purpose yards for 12.2 fantasy points. The Bears fell to the Redskins 24-16.

If only the game had been on a network I got, I could've actually watched it.

No Sleep 'til Denver

A Red Sox pennant win feels pretty good. If we could throw in a Sad Peyton tonight aginst the Jaguars, I might be as close to sports Nirvana as ever.

What's that? I can't hear you from all the way up here in the standings.

You're probably expecting me to write about the Red Sox first division title since the late 20th century. Heck, I've even had the title I wanted to use ("Start spreading the news") in my head since 2005.

But I think I'll hold off the Yankees taunting for now, because I don't want it to come back and bite me in the ALCS.

So instead I'm going to talk about the Blue Jays. Sure they finished with a disappointing 83-79 record, but a 5-2 surge in the final week of the season was enough to push me into first in Bean Stringfellow's baseball eliminator pool that I do.

It capped a second-half rally that moved me from the middle of the pack to first place overall, and earned me more than enough money to cover the total disaster that was my fantasy baseball season.



If you're interested in Bean's "New Baseball Pool," let me know. He'd be happy to have you.

Um, yeah. That one was my bad.

After giving up a home run to the first batter he faced this season, Red Sox reliever Hideki Okajima was pretty much untouchable. He went 19 straight apperances without allowing a run, picking up two saves in the process.

So what did I do? I totally jinxed him by adding him to my fantasy baseball team. It took less than 24 hours for his scoreless inning streak to end.

To drive this point home, here's his line before I acquired him:

21.1 IP, 1 ER, 24 K, 4 BB, 0.42 ERA.

And after:

1 IP, 1 ER, 0 K, 2 BB, 9.00 ERA.

Sorry, Hideki.

Yahoo! asleep at the wheel

As regular readers know, one off the myriad reasons I look forward to baseball's opening day is the start of the fantasy baseball season. I'm pretty disappointed that Yahoo! has been unable to quench my winter-long fantasy baseball thirst. As of this writing, the site has yet to update with statistics from last night's game.

There is good news, though. The foul-up means I'm tied for first (and last) in each league. The joy of opening day -- I doubt I'll ever see this line-up again.

Fantasy baseball's name game

It's the time of year where I rack my brain for hours on end, seeking the right blend of brevity, wit, irreverence, class, geekiness and history.

I'm not talking about my blog entries (though I could be, mind you), but the name for my fantasy baseball team. Teams (plural), actually, since I'm doing three leagues this year.

In the No Crying in Baseball league, I'm leaning toward Marla Hooch, playing on the reference to A League of Their Own. Last year in this league, I chose Team To Be Named in the preseason and never changed it, save for the brief period when I was in first place and made myself Your Mom, as in "I'm No. 1, because nobody beats 'Your Mom.'"

In my East Coast Bias league, I'm Closer By Committee, a nod to my pitching strategy. In the Orange Couch league, I'll be Wade's Chicken OCD, due in large part to the naming requirements of the league. Also because "Dice-K's Impossibly High Expectations" goes beyond the 20-character maximum.

My second season of fantasy football, or 'How a Zebra Struggles to Change his Stripes'

I stuck with Bollinger's Bombers for the name of my fantasy football team this year (a shoutout to my favorite NFL backup), but a better name might have been Sophomore Slumpers.

I ran hot and cold all season, with 2- and 3- game winning then losing streaks. I'd like to blame Rex Grossman (who wouldn't?), but it's really my fault.

In the end I finished 7-7 and out of the playoffs, mainly because I outthought myself and sat my first-round pick (RB Steven Jackson) in the 14th week of the season. It was a classic Bombers misstep: Jackson was facing the tough Chicago defense, so I picked up some RB off the trash heap and started him instead. Had I stuck with Jackson, I would've turned a crushing 3-point loss into an easy 20-point win, moved to 8-6, made the playoffs, and maybe even gone on to a championship, given how my team came alive in weeks 15 and 16.

The season wasn't without highlight, of course. I had a respectable live draft (my first), pushed my all-time record above .500 (17-15), and most importantly beat my long-time nemesis Cap'n Crunch (nee Chad Painington) for the first time in five tries.

That last feat came while I was out of the country for two weeks, though, bringing me to my can't miss fantasy football strategy for next season: Hands off.

Every time I pick a matchup, I pick wrong. So I'm going to go by the numbers in 2007, and ride my laissez faire strategy to my first championship.

If not, I'll just blame Rex Grossman -- just like the whole city of Chicago will be doing after the Bears wash out of the playoffs in just one game.

Humming the Notre Dame fight song

This is the only weekend of the year I can wholeheartedly and unreservedly cheer for Notre Dame, because it is the weekend they play the University of Southern California.

I can only hope tomorrow's game will be as exciting as last year's, but without the goal-line cheating by Matt Leinart to rip the game from the Irish.

And while I'm on sports, a couple of thoughts...

I'll never complain about the Yankees payroll again. The Red Sox are inching toward a deal with World Baseball Classic MVP Daisuke Matsuzaka. They'd better, since they paid $51M simply for the right to talk to him. This was such big news, I heard about it in Italy.

The key was leaving the country. In my two weeks away, I went 2-0 in my fantasy football league, and moved into second place in my pool where we pick games against the spread. I think this shows I over-manage.

My worst season yet at fantasy baseball

I was hoping this would be the year I could finally bring the league championship trophy home to the NaturalBlog household, hoist it high above my head, and shout "I am the best fake baseball general manager among my friends!" But alas, with each passing day the chances of that happening seems to grow even less likely .

In addition to my usual August ennui (which came in July this year), there were two key moves that doomed me, one in each league.

And what if I told you that trading for Barry Bonds wasn't my biggest mistake of the year? Unbelievable, you say? Read on.

In East Coast Bias (a non-traditional 4x4 league with only players from the NL and AL easts), my crucial mistake came early -- in our January draft. For some reason (temporary insanity, foolish resolve, both?) I drafted Shea Hillenbrand in the 8th round -- ahead of such fantasy stalwarts as Manny Ramirez and Miguel Tejada.

I'll let that sink in for a second.


Let's take a look at their seasons (through yesterday, with the stats that count in our league) to help drive home the point:

Player Avg RBI SB Ks
Shea .301 39 1 40
Manny .306 68 0 76
Tejada .310 67 4 41

And now, I learn that Hillenbrand became such a distraction in Tornoto that he was cut. That just doesn't happen in baseball -- because the Blue Jays will still owe him the balance of his contract. He must have just been a cancer. Maybe I can rally out of fourth place (out of four, natch), now that he's gone.

Pedro's back

We spent a lot of time in Boston -- six years, maybe more -- talking about Pedro's shoulder, and they've spent about two years in New York talking about Pedro's toe. So it pleases me to say "Pedro's back," meaning of course the tempermental diva, the son of the Yankees, the under-the-mango-tree sitting headhunter is returning to Boston for the first time since signing with the Mets as a free agent.

He starts tonight at Fenway Park, unless he begs off the game between now and 7:05, an occurence that would surprise, especially given the standing ovation he recieved in the middle of the first inning last night.

You might look at Pedro's numbers with the Mets (22-11, an ERA under 3.00, and more strikeouts than innings pitched) and wish the Sox had offered him that fourth year guaranteed, but you have to remember he's in the junior league now, facing pitchers instead of DHs and getting seven innings out of those 100-pitch efforts that only give you 4.2 against the AL East.

I have no idea what to expect from Petey tonight. He could go 8 IP with 15 Ks, or the Sox could give him the Soler treatment and send him packing early.

I'll split the difference -- 7 IP, 3 ER, and a boatload of Ks. Billy Wagner blows the save.