Buy Me Some Penis And Crack: A Winter Ode To Fantasy Baseball

By the time the confetti falls on Super Bowl XLIII, one of the most desperate months in American History will have already begun for the men of this nation.

With everything going on in the world, America is about to enter a very dangerous time.

We need change, but change won't happen over night.

So until it does, more than anything, we need distraction.

Millions of American men winter their hardships suckling the opiate of the masses. Watching. Betting. Fantasy. Sporting.

Getting mindlessly lost at the bottom of a beer--and the top of the division.

That makes February the cruelest month: Our sweet nepenthe frozen within the creeping tick-tock of these long winter shadows.

A barren wasteland for sports junkies... nothing but bad college and worse NBA basketball.

Sustaining us alone, is the knowledge that eventually the shadows will creep no more. And the madness will come again...


And when it does, marched along by the ritual bracket dance and a week-long festival of green beer, the growing inner madness will chisel into a single clandestine midnight gathering known ominously as, 'The Draft'.

In dimly-lit caverns across the land, a mass Frankensteinian-experiment will unfold, as entire fantastic imaginary baseball teams, leagues, and seasons are created out of thin air.

We hold our creations dear. We name them. Rearrange them. Power-rank them.

The bottled-in ecstasy of now-forgotten winter culminates with the long-denied major league 'home opener'.

And thus, we are renewed.

With the 'home opener', according to tradition, we will not speak to our mates for the next 6 months.

Instead we devote our will to a single purpose. Worship of our hand-selected heroes. Our very own Mt. Olympus.

And with these Heroes we prepare for battle, starting one for each field position, three utilities, seven pitchers and six bench.

A week-long imaginary gladiatorial contest erupts wherein we match strength, speed, batting average and ERA with a worthy challenger.

Most of all, we match eachother's ability to transcend time--to read the strings of unseen dimensions. To read the future.

In the seventh inning of every game, we remind ourselves of this pledge to future and current synchronization with the ritualistic mantra, "I don't care if I ever go back."

And so--during the 26-week season--if we prove to have superior clairvoyance and be blessed with luck, we will be granted access to a special or 'post season' where we battle wits with increasingly fierce competitors.

In the end only two will remain.

This is where eternal glory is forged, a champion crowned, and myths written.

If the fantasy gods favour us, we will be crowned the victor and bask in Zeus' glory for six moons...


And yet... by the time the confetti falls on our Baseball Championship, the warrior in us is battle ready and already fixed on the next tournament-- Fantasy Football.

For we know thereafter, the shadows of winter are long and dark.