Draft Day


Here's some advice for anyone entering the working world: always make friends with the security guard in your building first. He/she's the one who's gonna get your back when you do something stupid like stretch a 30 minute lunch-break into an hour-and-a-half. Or rush into your place of employment on a Saturday with 8 of your friends to trash a conference room during your annual rotisserie (that's the term, since I prefer my fantasies to involve something other than sports) league baseball draft.

As drafts go, this one was fairly uneventful. The meat flinging incident of '91 or '92 is still fresh in everyone's minds as an example of what not to do when you're locked in a room with a group of similarly cranky people. These days, we're just aging disgracefully and acting out in completely passive-aggressive ways -- and maybe not as invested in baseball as we should be. Still, Some of us, like Gobo, always take the time and effort to concoct a draft plan that takes statistics and permutations and general auction strategies into account. That's him above, either right before or right after one of his epic staredowns with the League Commissioner Marc, figuring out who to add to his team of creaky-kneed 1997 All-Stars.

My draft plan this year involved drafting breakout candidate Odalis Perez (despite his utter lack of run support last year) and making sure my partner Messiah -- who's been burning the candle at both ends in prep for a series of trials -- actually stayed awake during the draft. Also: not ending up the draft with either Joe Randa or Cristian Guzman in our infield. We now have Joe Randa and Cristian Guzman in our infield. Oh well. Guzman's his usual terrible can't-get-on-first-base-if-his-life-depended-on-it self and Randa's leading the NL in home runs. WTF? I guess that's how these things shake out. In fifteen years (!) of drafting, I've certainly seen stranger things happen. Brady Clark, we kiss you.