Adventures in Geekland...

...Most of my working life these days entails traveling to one place or another. In the last month, I have been to, among other places, Las Vegas, Boston, New York City, Memphis, and Atlanta. Tomorrow, however, I take my most ambitious trip to date. NYC's mean streets.....bah...Boston's maze of mystery streets....tish-tosh...the infamous Sin City....don't make me laugh....I'm going to Geektown.

Never heard of Geektown? Let me provide some background for you. A few months ago, a dear friend of mine informed me that the fantasy baseball league he plays in was short an owner or two, and wondered if I would be willing to fill in one of the slots. I already play fantasy football, and the idea of having a reason to look at the box-scores in the morning would be a fun diversion (mistake number 1....nothing about fantasy baseball is a fun diversion). I transferred my football team name to baseball, and the "Wayback Machine" was born.

Now I have participated in fantasy baseball before. Back in my college days, and for a few years after, a group of college friends and I ushered the fantasy baseball craze into existence with a game called Rotisserie Baseball (why it was called rotisserie we never discovered). One afternoon in the early spring, we gathered at someone's apartment, consumed a few adult beverages, and picked our favorite players to be on our team. The whole affair required about 20 minutes of preparation, a hour or so to properly lubricate our brains, 3 or 4 hours of actual player picking, and several hours of additional lubrication to seal the deal. No muss, no fuss. Fun to the end......

.....No more.

As I am to understand, many of the "owners" in this new league employ large staffs of underlings to process huge amounts of raw data, large university-sized computer servers to sort and file the information, teams of field scouts to confirm the findings, and ex jury selection consultants to advise them on the proper draft-day strategies.

All to find a reserve middle-infielder.

I haven't even bought a book yet.......And the draft is 2 days away.

It's not that I am not competitive. I have a long history of unreasonable competitive urges and practices. I guess it's just that I am more frugal with the limited energy I have with which to be competitive these days. Every day, in every meeting and consultation I have at work, the focus is how to outsmart and out-maneuver our competitors. Dog-eat-dog, if you will. That kind of activity, day after day, takes a large chunk out of your desire to compete in things that don't put food on your children's plates.

So, as I venture into the realm of the self-proclaimed "fantasy geeks", I proceed with my head held high, a stiff upper lip, determined to uphold the legacy of my original roto-friends. Don't take things so seriously, have fun, lubricate your thought-process, and most of all, under no circumstances, take any player from the Chicago Cubs.

After all, a man has to have his pride