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Dec
2007
Quixotica Fantasy Baseball
By David K. Gignilliat
As the smoke slowly clears from the explosive Mitchell Report and baseball detoxes its game during a turbulent offseason, it will soon be time for preparation for the 2008 fantasy baseball season. After all, everything begins anew each year in baseball. New players will join new teams. New rookies and sleepers will rise into the consciousness of fantasy owners. New trash will be talked and new crow will be eaten. New leagues will be joined and new draft sheets will be reviewed. New fantasy titles will be won and defended. In the spirit of novelty and rebirth, I propose some new words and phrases to be introduced into the fantasy baseball lexicon in 2008.
• Subcultural Literacy: The uncanny ability for grown men to initiate intelligent insightful conversations with complete strangers in random places (in a bar, gym, toilet stall, in line at the bank, … or basically anywhere in front of television) about fantasy baseball
• WHIP-ping boy: A perpetual fantasy league bottom-dweller
• Stathead: The token “fantasy expert” concession the major networks now make on their pre-game and highlight telecasts. He’s usually WHIP-smart, but sitting in the corner, nearly off-studio
• Simultracking: Watching a televised game and “tracking” the same game online
• Pitch-22: When you opposing starting pitchers in the same game are both on your team
• Fantasy flake: An inconsistent, erratic team owner
• Scarcasm: Witty, childish banter on league message boards that often devolves into an unprovoked war of words. Not to be confused with smartassery, which is done in good taste and does not involve ad hominem personal attacks.
• The X(BH) Factor: The entertainment value that fantasy implications add to an otherwise uninteresting game (televised or as a spectator)
• The Great Debates: Obsessive, vehement discussions (usually labeled formally and dorkily as “winter meetings” or “constitutional conventions”) about league rules and by laws
• Rotocrat: A dictatorial, heavy-handed league commissioner
• Rotisserie Chicken: A player that is afraid to make trades, even ones that would appear to be in his favor
• Analyst: The player in your league that makes it a habit to pick up each player that merits a mention by Peter Gammons and/or Tim Kurkjian on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight
• Transactionist: The excessive, habitual (and mostly ineffective) adding and dropping of fantasy players
• Just darn good ownership: Thinking about potential trades, up-and-coming rookies and must have free agent pickups during socially inappropriate times (church, office meetings, funerals, conversations with your wife, sex)
• Glove-oil salesman: The one owner in your league that continually makes ridiculous, lopsided trade offers, … and then seriously defends them
• Squeezing lemons: The practice of picking up and dropping pitchers from free agency between their starts in fantasy baseball so as to have the maximum pitchers start for one’s team in a given week (Thank you, UrbanDictionary.Com)
• Telestat-ting: Using your cell phone/PDA/I-Phone to track fantasy scores
• Homer-roto-cism: Making unobjective, emotional acquisitions of your favorite hometown players (usually resulting in an avalanche of ridicule and hazing by your league mates). Not that there’s anything wrong with it … (see also homer-rationality)
• (Jack) Cust’s Last Stand: The inopportune claim of a free agent at the end of his “hot streak”
• Rotokill: Drafting an injured or (in some cases, retired) player due to inadequate fantasy research
• Cobra Kai: The ultimate fantasy team name. I guess I am just partial to this dojo. Sweep the leg. Do you have a problem with that Mr. Lawrence? No, sensei
• The Mitchell Report: The worst fantasy team name going into 2008. C’mon, some clever guy in every single league is going to try to come up with a performance-enhanced name next season. You can do better.
Feel free to e-mail me any of your own “fantasy baseball” invented slang. Or if you have better words or phrases to describe the ones I listed above, send ‘em in.
David can be reached by e-mail at uvadavidg@gmail.com, that is, when he is not tele-statting or simultracking.
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