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The sands of timing: missing the culmination of the season won't be a day at the beach for this fantasy player

Sporting News, The, Oct 7, 2005 by Rob Hurtt

I can picture it now: white-sand beaches next to a calm turquoise sea. Paradise? No, hell.

When my sister decided months ago to get married in Jamaica the first weekend of October, my first thought was that I would miss a week of the football season. My second thought was what actually (and luckily) came out of my mouth: "Congratulations! That should be great."

It wasn't until much later that I grasped the true gravity of the situation: I'll be on a Caribbean island at the worst possible time of the season--the baseball season, that is.

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All three of my fantasy baseball teams have realistic title chances. And all of it will be decided while I am supposed to be relaxing on the beach. Six months of checking box score making trades, cheering for my players--and and I won't be around to see how it ends.

Relaxing? Yeah, right. Forget about the money, the trophies and the bragging rights. The perks of winning mean little compared with the exhilaration of riding the emotional roller coaster over those final days. Every stolen base or save becomes precious. Every lost opportunity is magnified. A bad outing from Roger Clemens in the final week hurts as much as a Rocket fastball in the back, or so I would imagine.

I'm reminded of that Red Sox fan who was in a coma while Boston won the World Series. Even if my teams win, the satisfaction of seeing it all come together won't he there.

Friends have relayed stories of vacations abroad spent sneaking off to Internet cafes to track fantasy teams. That sounds desperate. I would like to believe I'm not that big a fantasy geek. I can cope with not checking my teams for one weekend.

Just not this weekend.

The sands of timing: missing the culmination of the season won't be a day at the beach for this fantasy player

Sporting News, The, Oct 7, 2005 by Rob Hurtt

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