Idiots Write About Sports

Jason and I co-own a fantasy baseball team. We finished second in our league last year, but managed to score an improbable Sox-in-‘04-esque win in the league playoffs, netting us winnings of 150 American dollars.

Yes, it took two grown men to pull that off.

Anyhow, our draft was about a month ago, and Jason left me in charge of things. About midway through the draft, we were reasonably well stocked with starters at most every position, except for one — second base. We had no one manning the keystone position, with all the top-flight players already spoken for. This was partly by design — as good a season as he had last year, do you really want to spend a top 10 pick on Mark Loretta? — and partly by gross negligence.

So midway through the draft, I had to grab a second baseman, or else be stuck sifting through the likes of Alex Cora or Keith Ginter. Because I tend to favor power-hitting sluggards who can’t run 90 feet without tripping over their own shoes, I decided that second base would be the area where I made a nominal attempt to rack up some points in the oft-neglected stolen base category.

“The hell with it,” I said. “I’ll take Brian Roberts.”

Yes, that’s the same Brian Roberts who, on Saturday night, hit his fifth home run of the year. That matches his career high home-run total for a season. Twelve games into 2005.

I’d like to tell you this was by design. I’d like to pretend that I had some inside knowledge, like that I knew Roberts spent the off-season at the Athletes Performance Institute before I read it in Gammons’ column last week. I’d like to pretend I’m some sort of baseball savant, if for no other reason than Brian Sabean will hire me to fetch coffee for him.

But I didn’t, I can’t, and I’m not.

Let history record that I drafted Brian Roberts solely for his stolen bases and that I was so confident that he would shoulder our second-base duties, I immediately added Mark Bellhorn as his backup. But sometimes, in fantasy baseball as in life, dumb luck trumps design.

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