Thursday, March 23, 2006

Never Take Sides Against My Family

One of the aspects about fantasy sports that adds to its addictive nature is the sense of ownership that is developed by having the same group of players on a team for several consecutive years. For me, players like Bobby Abreu, Miguel Tejada, Brett Favre, and Tony Gonzalez have shaped the personalities of my fantasy baseball and football teams for several years. Much like a hometown bias towards one's favorite franchise, I seem to have developed an extreme sensitivity towards negative remarks made towards these players.

Case in point, the article written today by two RotoWire columnists in which one of the contributors tells us how much he has devalued Abreu and Tejada. They proceed to go back and forth via e-mail seemingly for days.

First of all, I think almost everyone in the Keene Fantasy Sports family is just as qualified as those tea bags to write for a fantasy sports rag like RotoWire or even Yahoo!, so I usually take what these guys say with a grain of salt. Just a few weeks ago another writer from another website wrote an article in which he valued Abreu higher than Jason Bay.

Still, for some players that I've owned for a long period of time, when amateur writers dig on them, I feel like I have to defend their honor as if I was their agent or publicist. Is this normal behavior around the league? In my opinion, the biggest conflict of interest in KFS leagues is in Woosta where Red Sox-friendly owner Colonel Rice relies heavily on Alex Rodriguez to continue his dominance of fantasy sports. Does the Colonel feel like he needs to defend A-Rod when he is repeatedly called a choke artist or Slappy McBlue-Lips? Or is ignorance bliss?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll admit it, a piece of my soul dies every time A-rod hits a home run. That and every time Becca sees me editing my team she says "I can't believe you have A-rod on your team." Like, a million times. The easiest way I can live with it is by reminding myself I got Ortiz in the same trade. Then again, it's not like I've been shopping Mr. Hamburger Helper Hands all that much. Also, I wouldn't say I necessarily "count" on him, but he doesn't hurt. Getting Todd Helton for Mike Piazza has had greater long term returns, for example.
To agree with your earlier point about family, cutting Ray Lewis from Compton earlier this year definitely sucked, and I had a dream last night that Eric Chavez will hit 60 home runs this year. So I guess it's another year of not switching out utility players for me.

Anonymous said...

This is just another example of the superb reporting found on the internet:

"Mar 22 The Miami Herald's Mike Phillips reports Florida Marlins SP Dontrelle Willis has locked down a spot in the pitching rotation. "