In these early days of retirement, my routine is still forming. As a matter of fact, I am only now just beginning to feel nearly “retired”. Up until now, it has been more like a working-age vacation. You know what I mean. When working, you take a week or ten days off, but you (or at least I) never fully tune out work. While on vacation, “relaxing”, it feels like something is always chasing you. You had to work twice as hard just to be able to leave, you know when you get back you will work twice as hard to get caught up, even though you may have kept up a bit on work emails or even attended a few conference calls. Work always chasing the fun and you always looking over your shoulder at what was coming at you.
I am now really just able to not look over my shoulder so much. Accepting that nothing is chasing me. Just trying to focus on the fun things (from the wife’s acceptable fun things list, of course).
The fun things (for me) are still out there and vying for time (as available as I manage the final work towards renovating our house) and effort. As of now, in no particular order):
1. Improving my health with walking and swimming (already covered and Sausage Man lives!)
2. Chasing ghosts. My family has been from the State of Georgia since before there was a State of Georgia. I am amazed, however, at how little we know about my antebellum ancestors, but I am putting my anal-retentive CPA skills to work documenting what we can prove and making lists of the many holes in my family’s narrative. The one factor I have noticed is how many were good looking, charming, witty, and urbane. Genetics huh!
3. Reading…mainly history. Deep and comprehensive histories (Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror – The Calamitous 14th Century” and William Manchester/Paul Reid’s “The Last Lion – Winston Spencer Churchill – Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965” being my most recent purchases)
4. Baseball – subset “Fantasy Baseball”
I have decided recently to take a break from my heavier bibliography and read a novel series (basic whodunnit). In the latest that I am reading (I like to start with the first book of an established series and read in order…damn CPA-tendencies), a passage referenced a Hagar the Horrible comic that I remember and it brought me back to fantasy baseball.
My team continues to drop like a rock. Not necessarily pitching, which had already hit rock bottom and started to dig, but my bats have gone cold too (only four HR last week). So as I reside comfortably in the third division (though it is nice to see a nice guy like Mark Bendar doing so well), I looked at what has been yet another installment of “Wayne’s Curse”. See, I have been doing this since 2004, Charter Member, and I have this unique ability to take solid to star players, and as soon as I draft them, it is almost a given that they will have their worst year. If you look at Chipper Jones career, you will notice his BA for 2001 - .330; 2002 - .327; 2003 - .305; 2004- .248; 2005 - .296; 2006 - .324; 2007 - .337. Can you guess which year in that string I drafted him? Yup…2004! As a matter of fact, Chipper never hit that low again.
This year it is more of the same. Nearly every player is underachieving. Hard contact, good barrel rates, but BA and results not coming. Jorge Polanco, Mr. Reliable, on the DL. Coming into this week, 17 AB from Kris Bryant. Heaney’s Cy Young, three start but two DL stint year. Pitchers going 4 2/3, leaving with a three-run lead. Pitchers making it through six or seven, but going out for one more inning, giving up some hits, relieved but all base runners come around to score. Seven innings of one run ball, losing 1-0. Yup, the same old crapola!
So I wonder if someone has something against me or at least a warped sense of humor. Back to Hagar (boy, that took a long time):
It is just baseball, right, so to fall back on one of my all time favorites:
So, we keep moving on. Getting Bryant back (or getting Bryant’s back back) will help. Scheduling this week is weird with some teams with eight games and some with only five. In batting going for quantity (only 253 AB last week and still haven’t cracked 300 in any week). The Twinkies did not activate Polanco for the Monday game, so I am still sitting him though the odds are he will be activated during the Cleveland series. Losing Mookie hurts and especially this week with three games in Colorado. I bid and won on Rockies prospect Elehuris Montero, a lefty killer who Colorado called up. With the Dodgers throwing three left-handers in a row, I thought he would play. Just drinking the Koolaide I guess and he was riding the pine on Monday. $3 down the tubes.
On pitching, I am so far in the tank on K’s I am chasing saves more. Bid and won on Trivino. Also have Giles in. Small help maybe in ERA/WHIP with maybe some saves. Waiting to hear more on Heaney before cutting bait there. Would like to get Whitlock back too, but the Bosox over the next couple of weeks going into the ASB have inter-division games coming up and none of them are fun ones like against Baltimore.
Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.
Charles Krauthammer
