Bossy Betty, that's what my younger kids call the automobile route finder that my older kids have just given me for my (ugh) birthday. I love this gadget. It comes pre-programmed with many maps and GPS technology. It can guide me wherever I wish to go, supposedly in Betty's "soothing" voice.
The one we used in Portland, which the kids had gotten for their mother, had a voice that we thought might better be described as stern as opposed to soothing. We'll hook it up tomorrow, and I'll report back about Betty's current speaking style, and whether she can alleviate my pronounced tendency to lose my way.
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Remember the Mud Lake Mafia? The lake in my fantasy baseball team's name is the source of many of my best life memories from my youth in Michigan. It is also where some of my father's ashes reside. So, the name of this team, which may sound modest or comical without this background, has a kind of sacred ring to me.
One thing my father instilled in me is a competitive spirit. Although I've moderated much of my competitiveness over the years, I still play to win, not to just have fun. Winning is more fun than the alternative.
Fantasy baseball depends on conducting a fairly vast amount of research about the hundreds of players in Major League Baseball, including each crop of young hopefuls who break into the big leagues every season.
As a manager, you have a 24-man roster and you have to field nine hitters and a staff of pitchers every day of the baseball season. There are 162 games in the regular season, and whatever happens on the field in Milwaukee, Boston, San Diego or Pittsburg and the rest, determines what happens in different ways to the sixteen teams in our fantasy league, including my beloved MLM.
Here we will get a bit technical. At the moment, we hold down 11th place, which is quite good, actually, because our hitters have not gotten hot yet. (It's too cold for hitting, actually.) My batters cumulatively are hitting .252, which is about 30 points lower than I need them to hit. Their power numbers are way down, but if the past is a guide, we should put up lots of power numbers.
That's because I have more certifiable power hitters (Jason Bay, Andruw Jones, Adam LaRouche, Chipper Jones, Moises Alou, and Sammy Sosa) than ever before. Still, in the first ten days or so of this season, it is a rather obscure second-baseman, Orlando Hudson of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who is carrying my team offensively.
I picked this guy out of the mist last season, as he emerged as a strong hitter. He has started out this year hot as jalapeño sauce. He is personally responsible for 33.5 of my team’s 93.5 hitting points, more than twice as many as my #2 guy, Chipper Jones (16).
The reason the Mafia is 56.5 points ahead of the last place team and only 62.5 points out of second place so far is our pitching staff is blisteringly hot. Cold weather can be good for pitchers. Mine are 6-3 and have ten saves in ten chances. Their combined ERA is only 3.11.
The pitching staff has generated 138.5 pitching points; with five starters led by Dontrelle Willis (24 points in two starts). Two of my three relief pitchers have generated at least 17 points in ~5 innings each with 8 saves. I do have one questionable starter and one questionable reliever, but they can be exchanged for others if they don't come around.
Among the hitters on my bench are some young guys who seem capable of slamming the ball. They could be our future. Meanwhile, we've amassed 232 points so far and by my calculations, we haven't even approached our potential. My goal for this season is 8th place or higher.
My top draft choices the past two seasons (Willis and Bay) are superstars in the making, still young. If I can add another one next season, and hold the core of this pitching staff together, I may creep up to 6th or even 4th place.
I apologize if all this inside-baseball talk is boring for those who don't follow the sport and probably think those of us who play the fantasy version hopeless nerds. Well, you may well be right, but if so, I am happy to be a certified MLB nerd blogger!
***
Today is the 19th month anniversary to the day I have held my current position at an online content aggregator. Saturday is my birthday. Next Monday, our no-longer fresh startup will transform itself into a new entity, with a new name, a new design, a new user interface, and the potential for many new features (called functionalities in the web world.)
My small team of editors, and I, will finally have a platform on which to demonstrate what kind of value human editors can bring to what is at heart an automated system. To say we are excited, as a group, would be understatement.
Over the next few months, the gamble we are taking is that by creating some cool new types of content packages we can help make our company successful. We've worked and waited a long time for this opportunity.
***
Every day that passes is at least partially a lost opportunity now. There's so much to say and do, so many things to write, not to mention so many more to try and just remember. Feelings left unspoken evaporate into nothingness. Feelings expressed, when unwanted, trigger negative reactions.
Numbers captures none of this, which is why I retreat to my fantasy baseball league. There, my drive to win against the odds is rewarded gradually and punished severely, whenever I make an unwise choice. I develop a kind of instinct about "my" players, aided by studying their history against certain opponents on various fields in multiple situations.
It's always a gamble, but once I've absorbed as much information as I can handle, I let something else take over: My intuition.
Finally, this post is about one question and one only. And that is this: Why can't I trust my intuition in love? If I can guess right in something as remote and complex as fantasy baseball, where no warm human being is in the room, why is it that I can have amassed a bad record of making the right intuitive choices in love?
Anyone who can explain that one to me gets the MLB team baseball hat of his or her choice. It's the least I can do...
-30-
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