The draft

We start this morning a little ahead of the curve, it is not many mornings I can say that without it being a bald faced lie, but today isn't like most days, and I have my show prep already printed up and ready to go a full hour and change before show time, which means that I get to spend some time here, instead of elsewhere on the web.

I do have a lot of things on ye olde cranium, so if this comes off as a little disjointed, it is only because I lack a certain focus that other bloggers have, though I will do my best to keep you all up to date details wise to the best of my ability.

Last week saw me do doubles three straight days between the full and part time jobs, and worse they were consecutive days, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. What constitutes a double you may ask? Usually it is a radio shift that will run from 5am until 12:30 pm followed by a shift at Subway from 5pm until 12am. Mind you, one of the days I did get out 45 minutes early (Tuesday) of the part time job, but it is a small respite in the grand scheme of things. By the time Thursday rolled around, I was pretty much beat when I finally left work, and was more than content to retire to bed at a decent hour. Not until I signed up for a fantasy football draft on Yahoo however. I use the yahoo football as sort of a prep guide for my money draft, which came on Sunday afternoon. It is free and it gives me a general idea of how other people are thinking when it comes to the drafting process, though this only works if you choose the realtime drafting option and have the opportunity to pick the brains of the people you are drafting against. It doesnt work as well if you let yahoo pick the rosters for you based on rating the players, you never see how anyone else rated players until after the draft is done, so for research purposes I choose the real time option.

Not that I don't take the yahoo stuff seriously once I have started it, I did win last year's league, but it isn't the primary reason for joining a yahoo league. Anyway, I went online and when it came time for selecting the type of league I wanted to join, there are three levels of play, casual for the casual fan, competitive for the people who take it a little more seriously and winners, which is only available to those that in fact won a league last year.I tried for the winners option, but the earliest available draft that I could have signed up for wasn't until the following Wednesday, and given I didn't know if I would be working Wednesday evening, that option was out. I then opted for competitive instead and low and behold, there were slots open for Friday evening. Of course, as those of you who follow the blog religiously (feel free to worship at any time, no guarantee that prayers will be answered however) know that I was doing Doug's show Friday night, so I had to sign up for a league later in the evening to accommodate my 5am-6pm radio shift.

With that out of the way, I finally grabbed real sleep Thursday night, as opposed to the two and three hour naps that I am more accustomed to. Hey, I will get plenty of sleep when I am dead, so no need to sleep my life away completely. Friday I did the morning show, then knocked off some production work at the station I needed to complete, and sat in on Doug's show. I thought I sucked, save for a bit on the new Viagra commercial and a personal favorite Klee Irwin and Dual Action Cleanse, but at least one of the blog frequenters, Clair, had tuned in and said I did a good job, so who knows? I know I am my own worst critic when it comes to such things and I can't remember the last time I have left a radio show completely content with the effort that was put forth. I just try not to dwell on the doubts too much, because there is always another show just a day away and dwelling on such things for more than a moment or three can affect the next show, so I try to put it behind me as quickly as possible.

By the time I got home, I realized I had some time to kill before the draft started (it was slated for 9:30pm), so I figured I could pull out the PS2 and sneak in a game or two of baseball with my Joe Random character. Joe had been doing very well in his third season in the minors. Coming up on the minor league all star game, I was sitting comfortably with a .500 average, over 60 RBIs and 60 runs scored and even a couple of stolen bases. I was a virtual lock to be starting in said all star game. So I fired up the PS2 and hit the simulate to next appearance option and low and behold, I got called up to the majors. This is good and bad, good because I made the major league roster without asking to be called up, bad because this meant if I spent any significant time in the majors, there went my all star appearance. Still, I accepted the call up, rather than turn off the PS2 and hope for a different result with a restart. I checked the transaction log to see why I was called up, was I an injury replacement or something else and as it turned out, I had merited the call up, they went ahead and demoted someone to make room for me on the roster. So, I went ahead and did the simulate to ext appearance option and my first appearance was as a pinch hitter in the 9th inning of a 3-2 ballgame, my team trailing and runners on 1st and 2nd with two outs. No pressure there and even less as I flew out to center field to end the game. Since playing one at bat really didn't take too much time, I went ahead and simulated again to my next appearance and again it came in the 9th inning, this time no outs but trailing 5-1. I was a little more successful, hitting my first ever major league homerun, but the team lost 5-2. Again, since one at bat doesn't take much time, I went ahead and played another game, this time I got a start and went 1-5 with my second homerun in a 5-3 win, thus meaning I hit two homeruns in my first 7 at bats. Yeah for me!!!!! That should keep me in the majors for a little bit of time.

The draft came and went, I wasn't overly impressed, but it served its purpose. It got me ready for Sunday's money draft where I am not only a participant, but league commissioner as well. It is something that I take pride in, not because I think I am the best league commissioner fantasy football has to offer, but because those people that play in the league treat the draft day event much like I do, very seriously. Most of the teams have played in the league for a year on more, and we had teams not only from the locals that frequent the bar that we hold the draft in, but we had some people make an extended drive just to be there, someone else actually took a Greyhound across the state just to be there and still another team owner moved to California, and yet was able to participate again this year thanks to the technology of the internet and the league's chat option which allowed us to stay in communication throughout the draft. Yet as the comimissioner, it is my duty to put together the previous season's final rosters, because we have a keeper option for up to two players from your previous year's team, provided you sacrifice the draft pick that allowed you to get them from the previous year, so if you wanted to keep your first round pick, then it cost you this year's first round pick. It is a nice option to have, but it creates a lot of work for me trying to track down the value on every player from the previous year and what it would cost to keep them this year. (There are stipulations for acquiring free agents and players from trades, which slot those players either 5 picks higher from the person they replaced or 5 picks higher from the place they were drafted by the team you traded with.) I had none of this work done, and it made for a pressing weekend, knowing I had to work Saturday and Sunday and yet find time to look oever every transaction in the league last year to get the numbers right, and the draft was Sunday evening. All told, the roject probably took 3-4 hours of time, plus lots of copy paper from work, as photcopying is one of the advantages of working at the radio statio, though ownership doesn't realize this blessed thing and I have no intent of telling them. Plus I had to reprint the league rules, adding minor changes to them, but it was another project to get things squared away for Sunday night. As an added bonus, because I am a benevolent commissioner, I sprung for pizza for the draft, which meant I had to pick that up as well. Before we go saying I am a font of wealth, I bought cheapie large cheese pizzas for 4.90 each, so I spent less than 15 bucks for three of them, but 36 slices of pizza seemed to be a decent call as it was all gone by the end of the draft.

As for how the draft turned out, well we selected draft order and I got to select 2nd, but as it would turn out, the guy who was to pick first had used his first two picks as his keepers, so I, in essence, had the first pick of the draft (my keepers were my 2nd rd selection Willie Parker, and my 3rd Chad Johnson) and with the pick I snagged Joseph Addai from Indianapolis. Before everyone says good pick Matt, I suffer a first round curse the last couple of years, two years ago I had Kevin Jones who went on to break his foot and be useless for most of the season, last year it was Domanick Davis who ended up not even taking a snap last year due to injury, so anyone out there who has Addai in their draft, you have been warned. As for how I drafted, here is the roster for this year, we play 1 QB, 1 RB, 1 WR, 1 TE, 3 Flex players (any combination of RB,WR,TE), 1 K and 3 Defensive players;

Argonauts - Matt Pritt

Garrard, David JAC QB - 4 FA

Green, Trent MIA QB - 9 FA

Kitna, Jon DET QB - 6 FA

Smith, Alex SFO QB - 6 FA

Addai, Joseph IND RB - 6 FA

Buckhalter, Correll PHI RB - 5 FA

Norwood, Jerious ATL RB - 8 FA

Parker, Willie PIT RB - 6 FA

Williams, DeAngelo CAR RB - 7 FA

Engram, Bobby SEA WR - 8 FA

Jennings, Greg GBP WR - 7 FA

Johnson, Calvin DET WR (R) - 6 FA

Johnson, Chad CIN WR - 5 FA

Lloyd, Brandon WAS WR - 4 FA

Welker, Wes NEP WR - 10 FA

Daniels, Owen HOU TE - 10 FA

McMichael, Randy STL TE - 9 FA

Gostkowski, Stephen NEP PK - 10 FA

Longwell, Ryan MIN PK - 5 FA

Hayes, Gerald ARI LB - 8 FA

Wimbley, Kamerion CLE LB - 7 FA

Barber, Ronde TBB CB - 10 FA

Hope, Chris TEN S - 4 FA

Taylor, Sean WAS S - 4 FA

Wilson, Adrian ARI S - 8 FA

Okay, the show is starting here so I better get running. Before I go, new change meter total, we break the $28 dollar barrier as it now stands at $28.32. Gotta run, be back later.