Breaking the Rule

Fantasy sports add to the experience.

I’ve always maintained that through my eight-plus years of playing. Ever since I first picked up fantasy baseball with a few older folks from my church, I’ve sensed it added to my baseball life.

Why, you ask?

It’s story time.

I host a radio show with good friend Joey Nipper (listen on www.GCSUradio.com). We invited 10 listeners (yes, there ARE 10) of our show or podcasts into a fantasy baseball league with us, the winner receiving a small prize straight from our pockets.

Needless to say, as hardworking (and broke) college students, we wanted to win and keep the five bucks.

We keep referencing the league on our show, and playoffs began two weeks ago. I barely hung on to the final playoff spot, and Joey was just ahead of me as the 5-seed. After two upsets, both of us made the semi-finals, with a berth to the finals (and paying zilch to our friends!) on the line.

Now, I got lucky and easily won my match up this past week, securing my spot. But Joey wasn’t so lucky—his came down to the wire (Sunday night) against my suitemate and dominant fantasy player Brad.

In fact, it was so close, Brad and I were glued to the television Sunday night at midnight, watching as the Detroit Tigers found a way to take down the Chicago White Sox in extra innings.

We didn’t care about the game; we only cared whether ChiSox shortstop Alexei Ramirez got on-base in his final at-bat of the evening.

If he gets on, Joey advances to face me in the finals, clinching our financial freedom.

If Ramirez fails, Brad might salvage a tie and advance due to tiebreakers.

Here’s the discussion we had:

(Brad walks into the room from grabbing his computer)

Brad: “Oh snap, Ramirez has a 2-2 count.”

Me: “He gets on, it’s over.”

Brad: “C’mon Detroit! Just this one out!”

(Silence as the pitch is thrown…and Ramirez scorches a grounder through the left side for a single)

“Nooooooooooo!”

Have you ever had something relatively unimportant give you this much entertainment?

The truth is, fantasy baseball made us care about a game we normally wouldn’t give the time of day.

It causes sports fans to expand their interests to include the entire array of teams and players, not just our own rooting interests. (Plus ragging each other for something completely out of their control is funny.)

And hey, it’s free! As long as I win.

Check out Caleb and Joey Mondays at 4 p.m. or at http://milledgevillesportstalk.blogspot.com.

Posted by Caleb Rule on Sep 24 2010. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.