It's My Rock and Roll (Baseball) Fantasy

I've got a confession to make.

As of Tuesday night at 10:30 p.m., I was not looking forward to the baseball season.

I know, I know, "That's not right," you're thinking to yourself. You think I've been singing Patsy Cline or Gnarls Barkley songs. But it was true, oh so true.

Perhaps it was a hangover from Game 7 of the NLCS. Maybe it's because I was pissed about MLB yanking the Extra Innings package away from cable and selling it to DirecTV. (Today there was more bullshit on this topic, which I will discuss once it's all settled.) It could be that I thought my fantasy league draft was going to last over four hours because our mostly office league has expanded to 18 teams. Or it could it be that I'm dreading the task of coming up with a topic for Zisk (print edition). Perhaps I've just remembered how hard it is to write something for Zisk (the blog) that I (and hopefully readers) find interesting almost every day for the six months that the Mets play the national past time. I look at what blogs like Fair and Fear in Flushing and Metstradamus come up with almost every day and I want to erase everything I posted from our blog archives.

Or maybe it's just that March has always sucked and that early fucking time change has fucked up my sleep schedule so I've got myself a nice dose of insomnia, which is perfect timing since I have tons of shows to see and work to do over the next two weeks.

Whew. I need a nap.

Then, two small things saved my season. One, I listened to my Tuesday interview with Hoodoo Gurus singer-guitarist Dave Faulkner. I needed to transcribe a couple of minutes of it to pass along to my pal Jason at FAFIF to complete his entry about how his fantasy draft and the Hoodoo Gurus tie together. And something Faulkner told me made me smile as I sat at my desk typing away:

"We’re talking about coming back again hopefully in October, and the World Series will be on and hopefully the Mets will be in it, but I think it’ll be too late for me to get a ticket."

If this guy who flew halfway around the world to play some rock is that excited about seeing the Mets in the playoffs, I can't approach my fandom this lackadaisically. I need to step it up. And quite simply, his enthusiasm rubbed off on me. Hope does spring eternal. The Mets were thisclose to going to the World Series last season; I have every reason to be confident they can go even further in 2007. We're finally going to see Mike Pelfrey for a full season; David Wright and Jose Reyes still have room to improve; and there's a sidearming rookie reliever named Joe Smith (a former Brooklyn Cyclone who drank a few times at the bar I work at before being called up to Binghamton last summer) who is going to play a big part in making the Mets bullpen again the best in the majors. A summer of fun (mixed with heartbreak 37 percent of the time) is the best reason to get up in the morning.

Secondly, my fantasy team (Graham Parker Posey this year) once again is led by David Ortiz. I had him for the first three years I was in this league and did pretty well. Last year I had a low draft position and couldn't snag him, and I landed in dead last. Of course, because Bud Selig and Bob DuPuy are cocks I won't be able to see Big Papi on the Red Sox telecasts, but he knows I'll be there in spirit.

Ah, baseball, welcome back. Now I'm ready for you.