Real and Fantasy Baseball

Unfortunately, I did not make the squad for our baseball game at Windsor. (I know I’ve been saying North Hampton the past few posts. I’m not sure where I got that. It’s Windsor though.)

As much as I’d love to go, I know it’s nothing personal. The team was only able to bring 12 guys. Part of it was how many guys the team we’re playing against said we were allowed to bring, part of it is that’s how many guys we could fit on a mini-bus.

I can say completely honestly, I know without doubt that there are at least 12 guys on the team who play better baseball than I do. I realized today I have been hoping and wishing that I’d get out there and play some amazing baseball and turn out to be this super stellar athlete, but as it is written in the genes of Robbins’ family males, such is not the case.

But I’m making friends, having a good time, and can say till the day I die that I played baseball in college. (Kind of like how I tell people I used to wrestle. No one ever asks “Yeah but did you suck at it and permanently ruin the cartilage in your left knee?”)

Practice, as usual, was a lot of fun. It was intense due to the game on Saturday. We went for a run, did infield and outfield drills, did base running drills (which would tire out a car), batting practice, the whole shebang. (We actually do almost all of that every time… there’s a set routine… it still seemed worth noting though.)

It is a lot of work. My legs are still tired. We are working for something, but everyone is there to have a good time.

There’s a lot of laughing. Robbie stands at shortstop, both playing and adding color commentary, making up statistics for everyone as they bat. During batting practice, where only a few balls made it out of the infield, the guy in right field decided to sit down in the grass and wave.

Surprise surprise to everyone blood related to me, I actually hit a ball! And got to first! Yeah, that’s right, I can run 90 feet sorta-kinda fast, but faster than it takes to throw the ball there. (Yeah. Eat it… every gym teacher I ever had!)

If you don’t follow Major League Baseball, don’t care about Major League Baseball, and won’t be entertained reading me WRITE about it, have a good evening. More posts to come soon.

I decided against doing a live draft for Fantasy Baseball this season. The time I had was when I’d be in Paris. It takes 7 hours to do. Both reasons alone eventually seemed good enough to not do it. So, I did an automated draft. Here’s who I got.

Batters:

· B. McCann

· M. Jacobs

· D. Uggla

· M. Lowell

· J. Peralta

· M. Ordonez

· H. Pence

· C. Crisp

· C. Blake

· B. Hall

Pitchers:

· C. Buchholz

· J. Peavy

· D. Willis

· J. Putz

· F. Rodriguez

· T. Saito

· J. Papelbon

· M. Mussina

· T. Hoffman

· M. Buerhle

· N. Lowry

Last night, putting Clay Buchholz anywhere on my list seemed like a strikingly good idea… but, I put him as like my 60^th player. (12 teams each picking one after another.) He was my 5^th round pick. NOW I’m thinking this was a wicked bad idea.

The Red Sox don’t even have him listed as a pitcher on the depth chart (either as a starter or a reliever), and his future is SOOO up in the air. There are 2 possible outcomes. Either I’m intuitively so baseball smart that this was just a bloody brilliant move, or at the end of the season I’m not going to make it to the playoffs because I wasted my 5^th round pick on some noob. (Judging by all 6 of my red sox jerseys, the fact that I follow it ferociously… and that I’m a baseball player (duh!), I’m kind of banking on it being the first one.)

You might have noticed in my pitching lineup that I have an uh-mazing bullpen. In the MLB’s top 10 releif pitchers list, I HAVE 5 OF THEM! HOLY CRAP! This is good for the time being, because I’m hoping to trade off at least 3 of them… but come the first game of the season this is going to be a huge problem.

Ups: I got Magglio Ordonez and Jake Peavy

Downs: My base stealing SUCKS, I have too many relief pitchers, and Coco Crisp might not even be a starter this season.