I don’t normally blog about my fantasy baseball league, because I figure such things are usually of no interest whatsoever to anyone but the team owner. But since something funny happened in relation to it, I figured the story was worth sharing.
So at 6:00 this afternoon I get an e-mail alerting us that a member of my eight-team fantasy league had decided to withdraw his team, and that every player would immediately be put on waivers for anyone else to grab. Remember when the Twins almost got contracted, and they were going to have a dispersal draft? Kinda like that, except this time everyone was a free agent.
I guess I was the only one in the league still at work when the e-mail went out, so I made my move, immediately grabbing Mike Sweeney, Ken Harvey, and Jeremy Affeldt (the guy abandoning the team is apparently from Kansas City, which explains why he had so many Royals; too bad that, in a week or two, the exact same thing is going to happen to the real-life Royals).
I was having fun with this until I realized something: in greedily grabbing every available player to the disregard of everyone else in the league and patting myself on the back for it, I had become what I hate most in baseball: the Yankees. The realization was enough to make me feel sufficiently guilty, so I decided not to go ahead and sign Rodrigo Lopez. Sort of like when Steinbrenner chose not to go after Vlad Guerrero.
So if you’re in my league and reading this, a heads-up: Coco Crisp is still available.
Posted by Stephen Silver at June 10, 2004 06:59 PM8 teams and the pool is so thin that he has Affeldt??
Posted by: Andrew at June 10, 2004 08:14 PMyeah the Yanks sign everyone. It's not like they didnt develop Bernie, Jeter, Posada, Mariano, or trade a stud in Sori to get A-Rod. Go fuck yourself, i'm done with this blog.
Posted by: GR at June 10, 2004 09:22 PMYes, it's truly the Yankees' deep, deep farm system that allowed them to win. Signing more free agents than God had nothing to do with it.
Posted by: Jeremy Wahlman at June 10, 2004 11:15 PMWow, that's a lot of unhealthy anger from GR. Unlike other teams (such as, say, the Royals, with Johnny Damon skipping town and Beltran about to) the Yankees can AFFORD to keep the players they've developed.
Posted by: Dave at June 10, 2004 11:36 PMFine, you can mention Bernie, Jorge, and Derek, but please don't mention Mr. Soriano as a Yankee farm system guy. He was a free agent, not a prospect.
Posted by: Wes at June 10, 2004 11:36 PMThere are a fair number of Yankee Fans at my Univ. in Minnesota, and I have to admit, they have no FUCKING clue. Thanks GR for making that point VERY CLEAR.
They don't know what it's like to suffer through a decade of crappy teams and then have a few years of pennant races.
They don't know what it's like to lose a Cy Young Ace, a future hall of fame home run hitter, and the greatest shortstop in all of history all in a matter of three years.
They don't even know what it's like to cheer for a sub-.500 team.