The Meaning of Fantasy Baseball/Life
Whenever someone mentions the meaning of life, I think of a
conversation in middle school one time when 2 guys talked about the meaning of life
being about reproduction, but then the other guy disagreeing and saying the
meaning of life was death. Then I think about fantasy baseball, and everything
becomes more clear, especially during…..wait for it…..September, fantasy baseball
playoff time.
I think fantasy baseball is a microcosm of life. Guys are
competitive about EVERYTHING…….it’s like they’re wired to compete. Guys compete
for who is the best at a sport, who wins the affection of a beautiful woman,
who wins a game of chance (that’s why casinos make so much money), board games,
who has the biggest (or smallest!) car and who has the shiniest rims, on
anything and everything, guys will compete to prove that they’re better than
another guy at it. Which makes sense why every year, millions of men sign up
for fantasy baseball and fantasy football, relatively meaningless exercises in
the grand scheme of life (predicting who will have a good game in a baseball
season that lasts half the year is really a fool’s errand). There are so many
more important things in he world that need attending to, like buying a house,
investing, social problems, retirement plans, family planning, taking care of
one’s parents, that we should all spend multiple times more time than fantasy
baseball……
Which is what I tell myself every time I want to quit the
game, but then I realize I am doomed to the fate of competing. It’s the same as
dodgeball: I can’t stand it when someone else can claim that they’re better
than me at something. It’s a disease, really, a curse: it’s human nature, or at
least it’s guy nature. Something about
being the best at something (whether it’s as significant as winning gold at the
Olympics, or something as insignificant as winning our law school 12-team
fantasy baseball league) arouses something deeply primeval inside a person, and
especially men. It’s the whole reason the idea of a championship is so
pervasive, why ESPN makes so much money on sports, people wanna see winning,
and if they can’t win they want their team to win, and to live vicariously through
the experience of winning, and selfishly, it’s that feeling of getting to the
top and then looking down upon all the people below, who doubted you, who
thought they were better than you, and proving them wrong, and having that
thing that everything else wants. It’s very greedy and a little evil, really,
but it’s human nature: we want to win. I want to win my fantasy baseball
league.
This year’s theory, had I been motivated to formulate a
fantasy baseball theory, would have been the Daniel Murphy Theory: The year 30
breakout. Spend many years in the league in mediocrity, have one huge
postseason, and then at the ripe old age of 30, what many believe to be a bit
over-the-hill, you’ve already done all you can, peak and become an MVP candidate.
I support Daniel Murphy in his endeavors even though I traded him for peanuts
before the season began and regret it every moment of the season, but when I
grow up and turn 30 I want to be like Daniel Murphy
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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