Just
14 DAYS left 'til the NFBC Main Event. I cannot wait. But my fun that day doesn't end when the last pick is made in my Main Event draft, because later on that same day, I'll be taking part in the Platinum. It'll be a long day of NFBC drafts. That's more than OK though. It should be a beautiful day in Vegas. So in
14 DAYS....
Let's Play Two.
Playing in the NFBC is an opportunity to challenge ourselves against the very best in Fantasy Baseball. It's an opportunity to win large grand prizes. It's an opportunity to attain a small measure of fame and fortune. However, it's much more than just that for most of it. I'm not sure we'd all be here if not for the biggest opportunity that the NFBC affords us. The opportunity to play a game we're passionate about, to play a game we truly love at its highest level.
I've always loved competing in sports. As a child growing up in Brooklyn and then Long Island, my brothers, friends, and I would play some sport it seemed every single day. Even when there was not some organized league scheduled for that day, we'd come home from school, finish our homework (my parents knew it was then or never as we'd be out the rest of the day), and then head out to play some pickup game of baseball, football, hockey, hoops, whatever we could against whomever we could in the neighborhood until dark.
Even as an adult, I continued to play. The year I was married while in my latter 20's, I was in a baseball league, a softball league, on 2 deck hockey teams, a flag football team, and my friend's church basketball league. Unlike professional athletes, I of course didn't get paid to play. Instead, I paid to play. I played for one reason. I loved it. Over the past decade or so however, due to the growing time restraints of marriage, family, home, and business, as well as the physical restraints of aging
, one by one I left these leagues, until finally four years back when I walked away from my last organized softball league upon the birth of my twin baby girls. Now my participation in organized sports is limited to coaching my son's teams.
The passion to compete remains however, replaced now by the NFBC.
Ernie Banks put up numbers and achieved accolades for his achievements that puts him in the conversation among the very best who've ever played baseball. 512 lifetime home runs, a 14 time All-Star, a 2 time MVP, a gold glove winner, elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, a member of baseball's All Century Team. He was one of the greatest players in baseball history.
Ernie Banks true legacy however is more than the statistics he put up. More than just the awards he won. That is a great part of it of course, but I believe he is mostly remembered for something even greater. His love for the game itself. His passion just to play. He brought that childhood like love for the game that I felt during my youth to every game he played throughout his life.
When going through pictures of Banks to choose for today's post, I was struck by something I hadn't seen while choosing for prior posts in this Countdown. His smile. In almost every picture of him playing, it was there, and it was genuine. And in it, I saw that genuine love for what he was doing, just being able to play ball.
Ernie Banks was a professional. He was paid to play. However, unlike many of today's athletes make us feel, I believe Banks would have played for free. Like me, he would have even paid to play. He would have played TWO.
Few athletes in sports history have made it so clear how much they loved to play....
....and few athletes have been so loved because of it.
We lost Ernie Banks this year. We lost more than just a great ballplayer. We lost someone who represented a true love for the game, that childlike passion we all felt at one time while we played.
A true ambassador of the game that will be truly missed. Baseball is forever diminished for the loss.
