I like to think of myself as a sports General Manager in waiting. I’m in a couple fantasy sports leagues, just to prove how ready I am in case something ever happened to Terry Ryan (Twins GM). I care about my fantasy baseball league (and I’m the commissioner), and I’m in a fantasy basketball league more or less to try to spark my ever waning interest in the NBA. Becky calls all such leagues the "League of Dorks" after given to the ESPN columnist, the Sports Guy, by his wife.
* Note – all names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the participants
Controversy erupted yesterday in the basketball league. There are three days left in the basketball regular season and the league championship is down to two players. If the current person in the lead holds his lead of 14 rebounds over the commissioner, he’ll win the league and beat the 2nd place player who always wins all the leagues. The current leader has been watching the stats closely and when he went to bed after all the games were done Saturday night, he had a 35 rebound lead. When he woke up the next morning, he had a 14 rebound lead. He got upset and called the commissioner to find out what was going on. The commissioner, we’ll call him Lieman, said he was gone all morning and couldn’t have changed anything. After it was pointed out that the website allows anyone to see any lineup changes made and who made them, the commissioner was told he changed his lineup that morning for a week in November when Shaquille O’Neal was hurt. He was caught in a lie, so he made up the lame excuse that he wanted to see what would’ve happened if he had started someone else that week, and that he forgot to change it back.
As the call was going on, the leader decided to conference in two buddies, so they could hear the sordid details. For the next two hours, they went through all of the times during the year the commissioner had cheated by changing his lineup after games had started. There were 12 times during the year he cheated, including one time where he took a player out of his lineup on a Monday night (lineups are cemented each Monday afternoon before the first game of the week) who blew out his knee that night. During the phone call, one of the participants, we’ll call him Sweaty, fell asleep and started snoring. If you’ve ever met Sweaty, you would know that he breathes loud, so I could just imagine how loud he snores. Apparently he started talking in his sleep too.
For his crime, Lieman had to change back all of his illegal lineup changes for the year. The fantasy sports committee (no such thing exists – I just wanted to pretend like there is one) is considering a 1 year ban from the basketball League of Dorks. He probably won’t get to be the commissioner again, but in a few years we’ll probably all forget and let him run it again.
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