it's only fantasy if you aren't winning


my pointing out that i've now won five fantasy football titles in ten years isn't really bragging. it's just stating the fact of the matter.

however trivial you may think the world of fantasy sports is, let's face it. that just means you haven't played them. for years now, i have championed fantasy football as my true gateway into my love for the nfl. it really is kind of astounding to me that more of my friends won't follow along. everyone and their mother roots for a college football team, most of the folks i know being either alabama or auburn fans. and don't get me wrong. if you are going to have a rooting interest, you might as well pick one that has a legitimate shot at winning their championship, which both of those schools do. unless your rooting interest is, in fact, your alma mater, why one would torture themselves by rooting for a little sister of the poor is beyond me, but that probably only further indicts me as a fairweather fan, which i totally am. that being said, if you are going to pay attention to college football played at high levels, i don't understand neglecting the natural next step of watching professional football on sundays. every nfl team has 20-30 equivalents of your favorite college player. the game is faster, more efficient, more athletic and more powerful. and if you ever get a taste of it and like the flavor, there is nothing that would solidify your nfl fandom more than owning a fantasy team. on an average roster, you have 14-16 players representing almost as many teams, which means you'll be invested in more than 75 percent of every game that's played on a given nfl sunday. rooting for your players. rooting against the players on your opponent's teams. reconciling which you'd rather happen first. your fantasy team winning? or your real team (sorry falcons)?

fantasy football has given me a greater appreciation of the just-less-than gods that entertain me every nfl sunday. fantasy football has also given me a greater appreciation of how good i am at fantasy football.

two years ago, i did this.

this year, i won again.

while i ended up with two marks in the loss column in 2010, i don't know that i enjoyed a nfl season any more than i did this year, the main reason being one of my favorite football players of all time, mike vick, not only lead his real team to a division title, but he anchored the alabama asianmen all year, too. there is no sweeter feeling for this fan than when real life rooting interest also pays dividends on your fantasy roster. for having played as long as i have, it's really kind of a surprise it hasn't happened more often. i had rowdy roddy white for a couple years. i traded for michael turner last year. that's really the list. maybe subconsciously, during the draft, i avoid falcons because i know my heart would want to start them every week even if it wasn't the most sapient fantasy move (god help me when julio is on an nfl roster next year). probably an enlightened strategy. like most of my strategies.

let's break down the season. for the first time in the history of our league, we used the auction draft format, which means, in theory, every nfl player is available to each team in the league. the only factor is how much you want to pay for him. each team starts with a $200 budget with 16 players to draft. my first and most expensive pick ended up being the fourth best player on my team. not great, but not the worst money i could have spent. ray rice only single-handedly led me to one victory all year. it just so happened to be my playoff semifinal. i'll take it. my next three picks also ended up as major contributors to my cause and top four players at their respective positions (tom brady, greg jennings, jason witten). it may be just a coincidence that not one of the other nine teams in my league could make that claim. it's probably not. with the 84th (EIGHTY-FOUR) pick in the draft and my 8th selection, i stole the number one running back in fantasy and my mvp, arian foster. don't try to remember anything substantial he did at tennessee. he was a bust. don't worry about what round he was drafted in the real nfl draft. he wasn't. i paid $16 for him. including my own ray rice, 20 running backs were more expensive in our draft. it may be just a coincidence that i ended up with him. it's probably not. those five picks (out of 16) were the only five that started more than 8 games for my team. the other starters in my championship game came via our waiver wire, which means they had either been cast aside by one of the other nine teams after their draft or they were not taken among the 160 picks in our auction. of those types of players that ended up on my team (coincidence? probably not.), dwayne bowe ended the year as the 3rd best fantasy wide receiver. darren mcfadden was the sixth best running back. another player ended up as the 6th best player at his position, too.

mike vick.

mike vick was my first true waiver claim of the year. i claimed him before week 2 after kevin kolb went down with a head injury in week 1. vick led the alabama asianmen to the first of his 8 (out of 14 team total) victories that week. asianmen went 8-1 in vick's 9 (brady went 6-0. brett favre went 0-1) starts this year, the only loss (one of only two during the entire campaign, remember) coming in week four when the redskins knocked him out during the first quarter. thanksgiving weekend, mike vick enacted his revenge on the redskins on a monday night when he turned in the third best performance in the history of fantasy football. after scoring 74 points for me that night, i blindly and unconditionally started and rode to victory vick the next four weeks even while tom brady outscored him sitting on my bench in the last three of those four. i benched vick in my playoff semifinal, going against my gut, and almost lost as he outscored brady by 30 points while sitting. i scraped by, started vick in the title game and ended up not needing him as my opponent's players were either hurt or didn't show up for the most important game of the fantasy season.

the most interesting part of the vick story, relative to my league, is this. vick got hurt week four and was out for a few games. brady had his bye week five. i needed a quarterback for week five, and i had three options. drop vick, pick up replacement. drop brady, pick up replacement. concede the loss and keep both. well, i don't really do "concede the loss", so i hedged my bet by dropping vick, knowing that if i did so with brady, some team in the league would swallow him up and away from me. i lost week five anyway (stupid favre!), but still sat at 3-2, nowhere near the bottom of the standings and nowhere near the top of the waiver wire. i dropped favre immediately and claimed vick. i opened up my league wednesday morning melancholy at the thought that someone would have gotten him ahead of me. but they didn't. i got him back. it may be just a coincidence that i didn't lose another game the rest of the way. it's probably not.

as cocky as this post sounds (and is), fantasy football is a fickle game. barring injury, you're likely (not promised) to get good production from your top three picks. everyone is. and so, a fantasy draft and season has nothing to do with the first three rounds. it's the middle 4-11. what rookies are going to get playing time? who will be the dark horses (foster, vick) in the age of fantasy sports where all the dark horses have already been identified by some fantasy "expert". how closely can you man the waiver wire in the first couple of months (mcfadden, then bowe) to find a producer on a bad team that might be turning into a good team where he'll produce even more? it's fickle. and it's trivial. but 50 million(-ish) people can't be totally wrong. and if i am going to do it, i might as well do it right, right?

so, i do.

war asianmen.

again.

34 is just a little older than 33
(hannah and caroline and me)
((part forty))


this time last year, i was certain i still had cancer in my body.

this time this year, i am still pretty certain that there is something bad lurking in there somewhere.

i don't have a real reason to think these thoughts. my neck is still jacked up, but i've been told not to worry about that. occasionally..., okay pretty much every day i'll feel some sort of twinge on the left-hand side of my back and think, "fuck me. there is a tumor in the other kidney now". i've been told this line of logic is irrational, too.

we lost it yesterday morning with hannah. i mean...lost. our. minds. she's been on-again, off-again congested for a couple weeks now and was pretty gunked up yesterday morning. naturally, we were out of liquid everything, so sarah suggested she take a pill. hannah freaks out. starts crying. backs herself into whatever corner that she can find. sarah starts negotiating in a very nice and concerned mommy voice. "you can do this, hannah. you put the pill on the back of your tongue. you put some kool-aid in your mouth. you lean your head back. you swallow." game over, right? hannah tries the first time and somehow performs an unintentional magic trick. the pill ends up in the kool-aid. sarah fishes the pill out of the kool-aid. hannah retreats, saying "it's nasty" and doesn't want to try again. sarah tells her that's not an option. she's already made the mistake of telling hannah that, now that the pill is wet, it really is going to be nasty. hannah will not try again with the first pill. sarah throws it away. she opens another pill for hannah to try again. this time, hannah gags and kool-aid ends up on the kitchen floor. it's now time for all of us to leave the house. we were running early. not anymore. all the while, the negotiating tactic has gone from cool and collected to "kick the door in, shoot...ask questions later" to sniper-level "we gotta take this fucker out. NOW! NOW! NOW!" i have been invoked as a weapon. "hannah, if you don't swallow this, i am bringing daddy over here and, well, you don't want daddy over here." another fail.

i come over and it's my turn. i ask hannah for her undivided attention and make sure that she hears me when i tell her "you are ruining the morning." excellent, right? i try and encourage her as best i can that she can do this. it's not scary. "here, why don't we try this. daddy puts liquid in his mouth, then puts the pill in to swallow it. try that." she takes the kool-aid in her mouth and then proceeds to toss the tiny pill under her tongue. god. dammit. she swallows the drink. catches the taste of the nasty-ass whatever kind of pill is in her mouth and spits it back out. she's crying. sarah's crying. caroline has no idea what the fuck is going on, but she is still pretty fucking stoked about her new boots that she got sunday, so she's super-cool.

negotiations have now moved from "we gotta take this fucker out. NOW! NOW! NOW!" level to "fuck it. let's just blow the city up. atomic bomb, please." i am ready to rip my lovely, sweet, smart, gentle, playful, wonderful first daughter into a million little pieces. i will rip her into a million pieces and i'll do it in front of her mother. her mother and i will laugh, laugh, laugh at each other the maniacal laugh that only parents at their wit's end with no discernible answers know and we'll take caroline to school and pretend like none of this ever happened.

hannah tearfully looks at caroline and mouths, "help. me."

caroline looks back and says, "zip my boots, mommy", making no sense at all.

sarah was finally like, "dude. we probably need to back the fuck off for a second." it's just a pill.

so, we backed off. we talked. i crushed the pill up (instead of my daughter) in hannah's kool-aid and she took her medicine. i walked out after making up with hannah. it took me a good hour to come down from never wanting to see her again. i picked her up from daycare after school and gave her a big hug. she was past the morning. i was thankful for that being the case.

this time last year, i was certain that i still had cancer in my body.

this time this year, i still wonder, but i move on with my day in the hopes that i don't.

episodes like yesterday morning and the fury with which i momentarily think unhealthy thoughts about my daughter(s), family or friends are telling. they tell me that i care again, which is different from twelve months ago. twelve months ago, i just stared into space a lot and worried about when i was going to die.

i am happy to care again, but i ashamed of how easily i can and have stepped into occasionally being a dickhead to the people that i care about the most. i suppose it's easy to do that. rather, i hear that i am not the only one guilty of it.

maybe, if i am lucky, another good report in january will free me from even more demons. maybe some of the fear and anxiety and anger and spite that boils over and into situations like yesterday morning will no longer be a part of me.

more than likely, they will be a part of me, though.

i'll just have to handle it better.

...a penny for your trash bag.


it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to us. far from it. after all, we had "enjoyed" eight and 1/3 innings of a live and in-person braves game from ridiculously good seats before the rains came. that, in and of itself, was reason enough to be happy and one with the world, irregardless of the fact that the braves only hit through six innings had come from their pitcher. yes, just being back at turner field for the first time in over a year should have been plenty to quench my soul given all that we, as a family, had been through over the last couple of months, and that doesn't even take into account the brick-headed move it was for bobby cox to leave javy vazquez in to face hanley ramirez after he was clearly gassed and give up what would be the game-deciding home run. just being there, with good food and good family, should've been enough for me to get over and past the things that didn't, exactly, go our way and drive home in a good mood.

but, of course, it wasn't.

oh, how i wished our "new normal" didn't feel, on friday night, so much like the old and selfish normal.

caroline had been sick the night before and into friday morning, putting the trip into jeopardy to begin with. around noon, we decided that she was in good enough health and spirits to make the trip. we hit atlanta, well, we hit atlanta traffic still in no rush or hurry, and caroline was holding up quite nicely. we made it to rebecca and emma's pad, and, aside from the traffic-related headache i had acquired, we were still rocking along. made it to turner field easily thanks to daniel (the british man's voice on the garmin), found our seats, and then things started to sour. caroline enjoyed running around the concourse of the stadium very much. being contained in mommy's lap or the ground directly in front of mommy or in a seat with emma? not so much. the braves, predictably, were terrible. the bobby cox thing happened. laroche cheered me up for half a second. and then the rain came. a lot of freaking rain. i began texting back and forth with katie to see if we had any chance of the rain breaking before we made the half-mile trek out to the car. we didn't. rebecca, following the lead of many others, pays a trash guy two bucks for four trash bags that we'll wear as ponchos. the plan is for me to carry caroline the half-mile in the rain with her blanket over her head. she'll have none of the blanket. two kind gentlemen notice this and offer their now priceless extra trash bag to us for caroline. i rip a head hole in the bag for her and put it on. and we march. and march. and march. caroline begins silly, sinks to sad and pathetic, and ends the journey to the car in misery. i am convinced that i have ripped my insides back open and decide to join her misery with my company. i get in the car, caroline on my lap, and we save sarah, rebecca and emma about 50 yards by driving to them. we all get in the car, laugh off the experience as something we'd never want to do again and head home. we get back to rebecca's place and drop them off, thank rebecca for the tickets and do not get out of the apartment complex before caroline vomits all over herself.

i.

shit.

you.

not.

it wasn't as much a straw that proverbially broke my back and spirit as it was the stench of cheese fries and ice cream (admittedly, probably poor choices for a two year-old trying to shake off a stomach virus. we were at a ballgame, though. whatareyougonnado???) mixed with stomach bile. i whirled the car back around, at this point fuming. i knocked on rebecca's door and asked for vomit towels at first, going back a second time to ask for a blanket for caroline to hold onto on the way home since hers had been soaked with the cheese-fry puke. we said our good-byes again, and headed back to birmingham.

on the road home, it rained. and rained. and rained harder. and then it rained some more. i would grow somewhat comfortable with our conditions and then, of course, would hydro-plane. is hydro-planing the worst effing feeling or what? in that brief millisecond, you are sure you are going to die. you have zero control. it is complete chance that your tires either will or will not regain traction before the car spins righteously out of control.

speaking of chance, i felt like job. satan, up in the heavens playing his own personal game of roulette with my and our stakes. land on red? ruin his silly baseball game. land on yellow? make someone in family feel as though it makes rational sense to pay a trash dude for trash bags. they will then wear the trash bags. land on white? oh, god, not white. cue the toddler vomit. and if i didn't mention it earlier, it was cheese-fry vomit.

and god would be like, "christ, satan! give the brother a break. he just wants to get home."

cue satan spinning the wheel of misfortune again. bwahahahahaha!

and so, sarah asks the inevitable question. "did you have fun?"

and i, like the dick that i am, gave the inevitable answer. "not really."

i would like to think that my "new normal" would prevent me from having these lapses in sanity (because, four days removed, i can see that i did have a good time), but i guess it doesn't. i said "not really" and then listed all the reasons above to her. she said hearing that made her sad, leaned back in her seat in silence and, immediately, i regained my positive perspective.

but it was too late. sarah had experienced everything above with me, and yet, she looked through it all and asked me if i had a good time, wanting to reassure me that she was glad that we shared the miserable experience together. i, on the other hand, wanted everyone to be as unhappy as i was. and that's too bad.

i suppose i could come up with any number of excuses as to why i reacted like such a boar. misplaced and mismanaged expectations, things of that nature. but they all would be just that. excuses.

post-cancer, i had a good week at work and spent the past two days telling everyone i could how great i was feeling. then, this morning, i backslid. i saw a mole in the shower that i had never noticed before, came downstairs, got on the internet, and began trying to convince myself that "the other shoe", the one that would actually "get" me, was going to be skin cancer.

for several days last week, i wasn't a dick. then friday night, with some of those i hold most dear around me, i backslid and was a dick to them.

i am going to be a better man eventually. i still have a lot of work to do.

dear lord, let me help you...

...help me.