July 27, 2006
Fantasy Football is upon us
I've been in a Fantasy Football league for over a decade now. The members of the league have changed slightly, but about half the league has stayed constant the entire time. It's always something to look forward to when Summer is coming to a close. We look forward to it not because it's football season, but because the league is made up of a bunch of us who grew up together and the draft is an excuse for us all to get together again.
The street I grew up on was what I imagine a typical suburban development looks like. I've seen it recently with new developments that friends and relatives have moved to as soon as they had kids. Inevitably, just outside the current suburbs, a developer will buy a bunch of undeveloped land and build a couple of "phases" of new affordable homes ("affordable" is a relative term, especially in the Bay Area). These new affordable homes attract young families with kids, so the neighborhood becomes a childhood utopia of bike riding, sports playing and swimming pool parties. Or maybe a distopia of cliques, rock fights and ostracism. Probably a mix of the two, and in my experience leaning heavily toward utopia.
One of the utopian ideals of the small army of kids on the street I lived on involved whatever professional sport was in season. There were enough kids to field a full team in any sport, so we were never hurting for a game. We grew up playing a lot of football, baseball and basketball. We watched at least as much as we played, except for basketball which was a handy time-killer, since most of us had hoops hanging over our garage doors.
The Game of the Week. This Week in Baseball. Lon Simmons. Monday Night Football. NFL Films. Howard Cosell.
Our street got cable much later than most of the country, but we were still able to get our professional sports fix readily. When we couldn't, we got a game together and played. During the 1978 seasons, the whole lot of us decided to collect baseball cards. A good number of us actually collected the entire set of 726 cards by buying them pack by pack at 7Eleven and trading the "doubles" for cards we needed. I believe Vince was the first one with a set, acquiring Bruce Boisclair from Kyle through trade. We all could picture a player's baseball card pose just by hearing their name. We were huge fans.
The last card in the first complete set (found on the Baseball Almanac website)
For me, basketball was the first to go. The Warriors were a decent team through the 70s, but started their decline in the 80s. The fact that youth basketball leagues took a backseat to Little League Baseball made the game less constantly in my face. Baseball was next starting in 1981 with the strike, and 1994 sealed the deal. Football followed the same course in 1987. I don't know if it was the naïveté of youth or if I'm looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but the story of major professional sports has seemed to turn from a group of games that emphasized teamwork and healthy pursuits into a constant stream of stories of greed, crime, drug use and violence. Obviously sports have had their problems in the past, but the stories seem to have become more frequent.
I may watch the NCAA basketball tournament in March. I'll catch a Giants game or two during the season. I'm still a football fan mostly because of the lingering affects of the Niners' years of dominance and my decade of fantasy football. I wish I had a better excuse.
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