The Closet Sexist
I hate fantasy baseball. While I really enjoy playing fantasy basketball and football and usually do pretty well in those leagues, I generally struggle in baseball leagues. I do have one championship, but that victory is tainted since I got a lot of advice from my friend and even let him run my team for a couple of weeks while I was traveling in Europe.
There are a few reasons I dislike fantasy baseball compared to other fantasy sports. The season is too long, there are too many players that come out of nowhere, and there is a lot inconsistent performance. To this day I’m haunted by memories of drafting Jose Lima the season that the Houston Astros moved into Enron Field in 2000. Needless to say, when I took him in the middle of the draft, I wasn’t expecting a 42+ ERA after two starts.
Despite my aversion to fantasy baseball I decided to join a league one of my college roommates, Cappuccino, was setting up. One of the best parts about playing fantasy sports is that it helps me keep in touch with friends from college and grad school and I figured at the very least the league would let me do that over the summer.
Another reason that I signed up was because we decided to change formats from a rotisserie league, where you get points based on how you do in different categories for the season, to a head-to-head league. I’ve played head-to-head in football for a few years and like a lot of other sports fans, really enjoy it. I had tried it with basketball but that didn’t work out too well because the number of games teams play in a given week can vary too much.
Cappey wanted to get as many teams as possible so he invited a few people that I hadn’t played with before. One of the new team owners was Mel, Cappey’s wife. At first I thought it was a little weird that a woman was going to join the league. I didn’t even know that she was interested in sports. But I thought having a husband and wife in a league might make things interesting.
The league was actually pretty quiet for most of the season. I secretly dreaded facing Mel and losing to her. We faced off against each other twice; we tied 5-5 the first time and I beat her 8-2 in our second meeting. I headed into the last week of the "regular season" in fourth place; the top six teams would make the playoffs. The final week was actually pretty exciting, at least in fantasy sports terms, as there were four teams in contention for the final playoff spot. To make things even a little more interesting, I had a friendly wager with Big Money, my grad school roommate, that he wouldn’t make it. He was in seventh place at the time.
To top it all off, Cappey was in sixth place and facing off against Mel, who was only a few games back. Well things couldn’t have worked out any better. Mel destroyed Cappey 8-2. Big Money won his match-up 6-4, but Mel’s dominating performance catapulted her into the final playoff spot and I won my friendly wager.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out so well for me the following week. As the fourth seed, I faced off against Heavy Hitter, a friend from college and grad school, who was the fifth seed. The first and second seeds got byes. I actually started playing fantasy sports with HH in grad school back in 1999. I don’t know why, but he got the idea to start a basketball league and invited me and four other guys. I won that first league and the following season. I think he was traumatized by those early losses since he’s admitted to me that he sees me as his fantasy nemesis and relishes every time he gets to beat me.
Well he got his opportunity when we met in the baseball quarterfinals this year. He trounced me 7-3. In the other quarterfinal meeting, Mel took out the third seed by the same score. While I wasn’t happy about the result, I really didn’t care that much and was more excited about my first week match-up in my fantasy football league, which I ended up winning thanks to Art Shell’s terrific coaching of Lamont Jordan, who was on my opponent’s team.
I was pretty sure that HH and Mel would lose to the top two seeds in the semi-finals, as those teams had been pretty strong after the all-star break. Of course, I was wrong and both HH and Mel advanced to the finals. So now I was in a bit of a dilemma. Who should I root for? HH took me out of the playoffs and has a better fantasy sports profile rating than I do, 69 to my 60 (there are unconfirmed reports that he pads his numbers by playing in other fantasy leagues with second graders). But Mel is a girl.
I don’t consider myself a sexist. In fact, I think of myself as a feminist in the strictest sense of the word in that I believe there should be equality between men and women. Sure I enjoy the occasional sexual objectification of women, but what red-blooded heterosexual male doesn’t.
I still believe that men and women should be given equal opportunities and the same pay for the same work. If a woman wants to take my place in the military, more power to her. I don’t care if Michelle Wie and Danica Patrick want to compete against men in their respective sports as long as they are able to qualify. But I just can’t stomach the thought of a woman winning a fantasy league that I'm competing in. Does that make me a sexist?
Sure it was funny when Mel beat Cappey. As long as I know him, I’ll never let Cappey live that down. He could win every fantasy league I’m in for the next 10 years and I would still mock him for losing to his wife. But I have to draw the line somewhere and that’s why I’m rooting for HH. So far I’m backing the right horse as he’s up 6-2-2. Hopefully he’ll be able to finish it off and I’ll just have to focus on beating HH in fantasy football, just like I did last year, to close in on his higher rating. I guess that makes me a closet sexist. Sorry Mel.
There are a few reasons I dislike fantasy baseball compared to other fantasy sports. The season is too long, there are too many players that come out of nowhere, and there is a lot inconsistent performance. To this day I’m haunted by memories of drafting Jose Lima the season that the Houston Astros moved into Enron Field in 2000. Needless to say, when I took him in the middle of the draft, I wasn’t expecting a 42+ ERA after two starts.
Despite my aversion to fantasy baseball I decided to join a league one of my college roommates, Cappuccino, was setting up. One of the best parts about playing fantasy sports is that it helps me keep in touch with friends from college and grad school and I figured at the very least the league would let me do that over the summer.
Another reason that I signed up was because we decided to change formats from a rotisserie league, where you get points based on how you do in different categories for the season, to a head-to-head league. I’ve played head-to-head in football for a few years and like a lot of other sports fans, really enjoy it. I had tried it with basketball but that didn’t work out too well because the number of games teams play in a given week can vary too much.
Cappey wanted to get as many teams as possible so he invited a few people that I hadn’t played with before. One of the new team owners was Mel, Cappey’s wife. At first I thought it was a little weird that a woman was going to join the league. I didn’t even know that she was interested in sports. But I thought having a husband and wife in a league might make things interesting.
The league was actually pretty quiet for most of the season. I secretly dreaded facing Mel and losing to her. We faced off against each other twice; we tied 5-5 the first time and I beat her 8-2 in our second meeting. I headed into the last week of the "regular season" in fourth place; the top six teams would make the playoffs. The final week was actually pretty exciting, at least in fantasy sports terms, as there were four teams in contention for the final playoff spot. To make things even a little more interesting, I had a friendly wager with Big Money, my grad school roommate, that he wouldn’t make it. He was in seventh place at the time.
To top it all off, Cappey was in sixth place and facing off against Mel, who was only a few games back. Well things couldn’t have worked out any better. Mel destroyed Cappey 8-2. Big Money won his match-up 6-4, but Mel’s dominating performance catapulted her into the final playoff spot and I won my friendly wager.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out so well for me the following week. As the fourth seed, I faced off against Heavy Hitter, a friend from college and grad school, who was the fifth seed. The first and second seeds got byes. I actually started playing fantasy sports with HH in grad school back in 1999. I don’t know why, but he got the idea to start a basketball league and invited me and four other guys. I won that first league and the following season. I think he was traumatized by those early losses since he’s admitted to me that he sees me as his fantasy nemesis and relishes every time he gets to beat me.
Well he got his opportunity when we met in the baseball quarterfinals this year. He trounced me 7-3. In the other quarterfinal meeting, Mel took out the third seed by the same score. While I wasn’t happy about the result, I really didn’t care that much and was more excited about my first week match-up in my fantasy football league, which I ended up winning thanks to Art Shell’s terrific coaching of Lamont Jordan, who was on my opponent’s team.
I was pretty sure that HH and Mel would lose to the top two seeds in the semi-finals, as those teams had been pretty strong after the all-star break. Of course, I was wrong and both HH and Mel advanced to the finals. So now I was in a bit of a dilemma. Who should I root for? HH took me out of the playoffs and has a better fantasy sports profile rating than I do, 69 to my 60 (there are unconfirmed reports that he pads his numbers by playing in other fantasy leagues with second graders). But Mel is a girl.
I don’t consider myself a sexist. In fact, I think of myself as a feminist in the strictest sense of the word in that I believe there should be equality between men and women. Sure I enjoy the occasional sexual objectification of women, but what red-blooded heterosexual male doesn’t.
I still believe that men and women should be given equal opportunities and the same pay for the same work. If a woman wants to take my place in the military, more power to her. I don’t care if Michelle Wie and Danica Patrick want to compete against men in their respective sports as long as they are able to qualify. But I just can’t stomach the thought of a woman winning a fantasy league that I'm competing in. Does that make me a sexist?
Sure it was funny when Mel beat Cappey. As long as I know him, I’ll never let Cappey live that down. He could win every fantasy league I’m in for the next 10 years and I would still mock him for losing to his wife. But I have to draw the line somewhere and that’s why I’m rooting for HH. So far I’m backing the right horse as he’s up 6-2-2. Hopefully he’ll be able to finish it off and I’ll just have to focus on beating HH in fantasy football, just like I did last year, to close in on his higher rating. I guess that makes me a closet sexist. Sorry Mel.
posted by The Pocho at 10:58 AM
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