Expert Status

The commissioner of our main fantasy baseball league (seen above with "special pal") is currently riding a late-'90s Yankees period of success. His team--cleverly named "Three Timed Defending Champs," because, you know, in case one of the guys in our league fell from a motorcycle as a child, he might not have gotten the message by now--is in the process of defeating mine in an unfortunately lopsided matchup.

Normally, I take my medicine like a man and keep quiet. Even when my first-place squad suffered a terrible setback the previous week to the worst team in our league, the worst team in any league, a team so thoroughly awful its manager had to leave it alone to fend for itself, hope the world would throw it a stale bun and a blanket, I kept quiet.

But this time...no. Any loss to the 3TDC--Christ, just typing that makes my side hurt like I took poison--is a loss times three. And then! Then, HoGNation, he posts smack-talk about it on the House itself. I feel like my garage got tagged by a pack of retards.

And our nascent rivalry doesn't compare to the one he and Ol No. 7 have going. Nominally pals, fantasy baseball finds them making like each was a bear and the other wearing beehive underpants. The fact that No. 7, despite some epic struggles at each season's end, has never been able to climb this hill of bespectacled, loose-boweled Arizonan--why, it's a stain on HoG integrity. That's what.

But cease your fingernail mastication, o legions of loyal readers. With a (really) good night from three guys--Jorge Posada, Carlos Beltran and Bobby Abreu--I could eke out the sweetest victory of this young fantasy season. Excelsior, you Motherfunction.

(Editorial Update: It ain't happening.)