It's Fantasy Time!

Do you know Jon Lester's FIP rating?  Or Joey Votto's OPS? If you do, you're probably getting ready for another season of Fantasy Baseball. I've been in a (mainly) family league called Evolution on Yahoo sports since 2004. This year will be our 12th year in existence and it promises to be a special year because, for the first time since 2005, I will be the reigning (co)champ of the league.

The past few years have been pretty dismal. I finished dead last in 2006 and 2013. A couple of early years, the only thing keeping me out of last place was that we didn't have enough teams in the league, so we gave one to the cat. We drafted the worst players in the league for Twilight, then never looked at it again. I beat her by two points.Two points, because she didn't have thumbs to make trades.

It got to be so bad that in 2011 my team name was "I'm Aiming For Third." I finished fifth.

Luckily, the draft is mainly a social event. We love getting together at my sister-in-law Randi's house in Fort Wayne for the draft. Ann always makes frosted Christmas cookies, which irritated Mike when he had to join us by Skype from Portland. This year he is coming from Des Moines, I think just for the cookies. My dad is in the league. At 93, he is the senior member of the league and tends to grab up all the Reds players he can.

The last three years, we have let the reigning champ pick the rules for team names. In 2012, your name had to be someone famous in history (my team was the Where's Waldo Emersons). 2013's name had to have something to do with the movies (I see Dead Cubs), and last year, it had to be a beverage (Starling Latte). For next year, my co-champ Mike and I have agreed on games - your team name should have something to do with a board game, video game, or a game you played outdoors when you were a kid, like Kick the Can, which would become a team name of Kick the Cano to tie it in to baseball, you know, because Robinson Cano is a baseball player. Well, they can't all be gems. My dad's team is going to be Grand Theft Votto. That's better.

Anyway the draft is this weekend, followed by several more days in Ohio cleaning up the Glass homestead to get it ready to sell. Closing could be as early as in three weeks, so we have a lot to get moved out. But it will be good to see both boys, Dad, Randi, and Steve on Saturday and do some good old trash talking about fantasy baseball. Let the games begin!