Boris From DownUnder's Final Fantasy Baseball Stand

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Great Debate Standings

Writers Name	Win	Lose	GB
Anthony Catanzaro	9	3
Boris From DownUnder	8	4	1
Greg Marta	5	5	3
Eric Gehman	4	7	6
Richard Carter	2	10	7

Joey has dropped out of the competition. We'd like to wish him nothing but the best of luck.

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Sep

2009

Boris From DownUnder's Final Fantasy Baseball Stand

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Written by Boris From DownUnder

There can be no doubt that the Fantasy Pros 911 writing experience has helped in analyzing my fantasy team(s) over the past season. Not only that, it has rekindled my passion for writing, helped me improve my grammar (thanks to Mr. “its Tulowitzki not Tulowitski” Di Caprio), opened my eyes to more sabermetric stats than I could have imagined, and even rekindled some old friendships.

I probably need to explain the last one. You see, my nemesis in the Great Fantasy Debate has been a fella by the name of Anthony Catanzaro. You may know him as “Ackshawn”, or simply, “the guy that gets craploads of votes every week”. In the early days of the debate, it became apparent that I needed to reach a wider audience to compete with Anthony. Luckily (for me), he mentioned that he was gaining much support through his “facebook groupies”. I followed his lead, joined facebook, and not only reached a wider audience, but relocated a great friend from the 80’s who hailed from Flemington New Jersey, visited Australia and became my Aussie baseball team mate. He went back to the states, then moved to the Czech Republic after marrying and was never heard from again. That was until a few weeks ago when he found me and my Hawaiian Cub shirt on facebook. (I could never find him as his surname is “Smith” – not so easy to locate) There are others – a great girl from Vancouver (80’s), a neighbour from when I was 12. A big thanks to Ackshawn and FP 911 for that.

So many lessons learnt.

When writing the AAA player profile, researching the various players to select from gave me insights into potential late season pickups that I may not have otherwise considered. I even gained 12 little known facts about Jake Fox – including the fact his glove has the letters F T W S I C (For Those Who Said I Couldn’t) written on it - while watching a Cub V Dodgers game one day. That Vin Scully is really quite the man.

I learnt to look more seriously at players I might normally dismiss. Being a die hard Cub fan means spending endless hours on the “Bleacher Bums” message board. This place has some great fans who I must admit to growing very fond of over many years of Cubbie hardship. It would be fair to say though when things aren’t going well (which of course is quite often), the high octane vitriol aimed at some favourite Cub whipping boys could peel the paint off the majestic old score board. Imagine my dilemma when I had to take the pro side of debating why Alfonso Soriano would have a bounce back second half! By researching the actual numbers rather than just listening to what my heart was programmed to think, my article “Unhappy days for the Fonz” made a strong argument for the pro stance. OK, things didn’t turn out as I had predicted, but I had learnt a valuable lesson. Next year when I have to take the pro stance of “Why Milton Bradley will win the National League MVP” maybe I will have something to cling to…

It wasn’t all beer and skittles of course. Mmmmmmmmmm…………..beer. There were days when the call from erstwhile rapper P-Grec had to be answered, when all I had was a blank canvas, two kids up all night with the flu seeing which one could out cough the other, a house extension being built with workmen seemingly turning up on site whenever it best suited them - and of course what my lovely wife likes to refer to as my “real job” to attend to. Surely she only uses this term because it pays actual money used to feed the flu infested kids, but fantasy sport fanatics world-wide know which one the real job is, don’t we? Of course, there was never any question whether the deadline would be met – if Tony Cincotta could do 47 podcasts a week while tending to his own family and “real” work and Lenny Melnick could drag his massive fantasy brain out of bed at 3 a.m every day to please his audience, who was I to complain? The motto in my head, “toughen up princess” always won out, the article got done and the other competitors in the Great Fantasy Debate would have some healthy competition once again.

Highlights for the season? Probably one day when my car was being serviced, I took the tram to work. (No, thats not the highlight, there is more, read on). As I was waiting for the very modern German built tram with the very uncomfortable German seats to commence its journey, a guy I know from my local baseball club takes the seat next to me. We start to talk about the upcoming baseball season when he clicks his fingers (kind of like Fonzie used to) and interjects - “hey, when is your new article coming out, haven’t seen one for a couple of weeks, they’re a good read”. Ah, my peeps! Knowing that somebody was actually reading the articles and not just clicking the voting button was a “Eureka!” moment for this Aussie. So thanks to you Clemo for the inspiration to keep putting my inane ramblings to print. Speaking of ramblings, its 2 a.m. and time for a Cincotta nap.

To wrap this puppy up, a big thanks to Paul, Lenny, Tony, Patrick and all of the writers at Fantasy Pros 911 for a great ride with the debate and for putting such a wonderful product out there in 2009. The passion you all show for your site and fantasy sports in general is truly an inspiration. To everyone who took the time to read and or vote, I very much appreciate your support. To all of the competitors in the debate, I have loved the fun of the competition and thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your contributions, it has been an absolute blast. Finally, to Ackshawn, I must warn you – in three weeks time I am travelling to Sydney with 17 other baseballers to compete in the 2009 World Masters games. There will be 28 sports, around 100 countries represented and approximately 25,000 competitors in all. If I can stay out of the bar long enough, that is a lot of potential facebook friends to hook up for any challenge in 2010 my friend! Booyah!

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