What EXACTLY Makes Us One????
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 9:37 am
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
We want to be a Hall of Famer. We want to be one of the best. We want our teams to show utter domination in every league.
We rise up through the ranks of fantasy baseball. We play home leagues. We play Yahoo, or CBS, or ESPN, then after destroying competition there, we go for the NFBC.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
Some are 'grandfathered' in. Some go to college and become scribes. Some come up with new theories and revelations that others follow. Some speak a new language. The table of elements is replaced in our fantasy community with the table of relevance. Gold (AU) and iron (FE) are replaced by K/9 and BABIP.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
And at the same time, when those achieve the status of being called this name, they shun it. It becomes an albatross.
Others call them by this name and a sneer forms under the nose. They never call themselves by this name. Even though they've worked hard to have the status of the name.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
Every industry has one. Every damned one of them. But what sets fantasy baseball apart from other industries is that ours are wrong a lot more than theirs. It is not because ours are stupider. It is because we don't have a cut and dried hobby.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
And that name is 'expert'.
Its become too easy to ridicule experts in our field. For those that go to college and become scribes in writing about fantasy baseball, some feel the same way as my signature, that just because they write, doesn't make them smarter than us. At the same time, these same writers aren't calling themselves experts, their publishers or site heads, or somebody above them is doing that for them. It galls all of us. A little like writers voting for the Hall of Fame, when we know folks that can do a better job.
For some reason, the back of Shandlers book has always made me grit my teeth. 'Written by REAL experts'. In a way, they are putting down every other publication and every fantasy player who has achieved 'expert status'. Last year, I sat next to Ray Murphy, the editor of the Forecaster, who was kind enough to autograph the book directly over that comment. I bought the book for that express purpose. I couldn't pass on the chance at historic irony.
Another irony is that to be an 'expert' in our field, we can be wrong more than right. Even experts have a hard time winning more than 50% of their leagues. Gardening, stamp, science, or war experts are almost always right. They have it easier. What they have is what they have. They know that an upside airplane stamp is going to be worth a lot of money this year and next. We don't know what Mike Trout will be worth next year. We THINK we know, and put him at the top of our lists.
But Trout can have a year long injury and be worthless. That stamp never loses 'value'. Trout can.
Ours is an industry where everybody is an expert and nobody is an expert.
There is even one among us, who can be called a 'Double Expert'. Shawn Childs is in the NFBC Hall of Fame. He earned that by winning several leagues. Now, he writes online, and yes, you guessed it, they call him the expert.
What does all this mean?
Nothing.
The word 'expert' is like the word 'value'. It is so overused and so misused, that they tend to rub us the wrong way.
And yet, we covet being and having both.
A true conundrum.
We want to be a Hall of Famer. We want to be one of the best. We want our teams to show utter domination in every league.
We rise up through the ranks of fantasy baseball. We play home leagues. We play Yahoo, or CBS, or ESPN, then after destroying competition there, we go for the NFBC.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
Some are 'grandfathered' in. Some go to college and become scribes. Some come up with new theories and revelations that others follow. Some speak a new language. The table of elements is replaced in our fantasy community with the table of relevance. Gold (AU) and iron (FE) are replaced by K/9 and BABIP.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
And at the same time, when those achieve the status of being called this name, they shun it. It becomes an albatross.
Others call them by this name and a sneer forms under the nose. They never call themselves by this name. Even though they've worked hard to have the status of the name.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
Every industry has one. Every damned one of them. But what sets fantasy baseball apart from other industries is that ours are wrong a lot more than theirs. It is not because ours are stupider. It is because we don't have a cut and dried hobby.
There is a name in fantasy baseball that everybody strives to become.
And that name is 'expert'.
Its become too easy to ridicule experts in our field. For those that go to college and become scribes in writing about fantasy baseball, some feel the same way as my signature, that just because they write, doesn't make them smarter than us. At the same time, these same writers aren't calling themselves experts, their publishers or site heads, or somebody above them is doing that for them. It galls all of us. A little like writers voting for the Hall of Fame, when we know folks that can do a better job.
For some reason, the back of Shandlers book has always made me grit my teeth. 'Written by REAL experts'. In a way, they are putting down every other publication and every fantasy player who has achieved 'expert status'. Last year, I sat next to Ray Murphy, the editor of the Forecaster, who was kind enough to autograph the book directly over that comment. I bought the book for that express purpose. I couldn't pass on the chance at historic irony.
Another irony is that to be an 'expert' in our field, we can be wrong more than right. Even experts have a hard time winning more than 50% of their leagues. Gardening, stamp, science, or war experts are almost always right. They have it easier. What they have is what they have. They know that an upside airplane stamp is going to be worth a lot of money this year and next. We don't know what Mike Trout will be worth next year. We THINK we know, and put him at the top of our lists.
But Trout can have a year long injury and be worthless. That stamp never loses 'value'. Trout can.
Ours is an industry where everybody is an expert and nobody is an expert.
There is even one among us, who can be called a 'Double Expert'. Shawn Childs is in the NFBC Hall of Fame. He earned that by winning several leagues. Now, he writes online, and yes, you guessed it, they call him the expert.
What does all this mean?
Nothing.
The word 'expert' is like the word 'value'. It is so overused and so misused, that they tend to rub us the wrong way.
And yet, we covet being and having both.
A true conundrum.