Fantasy baseball has the ability to divide fans of the sport simply because it makes you look at the game in a completely different way. Injuries are a good case in point.<\/p>\n
Many times I have read articles or posts about players who have suffered injuries and felt that the emphasis was misplaced. I realise some people take their fantasy teams extremely seriously, but I’m often left with an uneasy feeling when possibly season-ending injuries are discussed solely in relation to the effect it will have on fantasy teams. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What about the supporters of that player’s club?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, I say to myself. That might be their play-off hopes dashed. And what about the poor player? Suffering pain, months of tough rehab and inactivity. Surely it’s wrong to overlook these factors?<\/p>\n
But, like everyone else, I’m a bit of a hypocrite. Certainly not a shameless hypocrite, as this confession post will testify, but a hypocrite nonetheless. When I woke up this morning and read that King Felix had left his start early due to tightness in his elbow, I didn’t consider the possible long-term ramifications for this wonderful young pitcher at first. My initial thought was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153damn, not many points from that start then\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. And when I logged on to MLB.com this evening and saw that Ryan Howard was missing the ongoing Phillies game through injury, I didn’t think about the effect this may have on Charlie Manuel and his slumping side. No, I was bemoaning my luck. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153More points dropped\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, I said to myself. <\/p>\n
What hits me most about this feeling is that I’m not a die hard fantasy fan (and this isn’t a case of extreme denial!). I enjoy playing the Fantasy Baseball UK game and like anyone I would gladly accept a bit of success if it came my way, but I don’t fret over my selections too much and I’ve even been known to forget I had an injured player in my side for a week or two (I should explain for the uninitiated that there is no draft in this competition and you can replace as many players as you like every Sunday \u00e2\u20ac\u201c i.e. you can replace an injured player rather than leave him scoring zeros day after day). Yet that competitive bug is hard to shift and I can see why some baseball fans steer clear of the fantasy side to the game. <\/p>\n
Thankfully, my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153despair\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about the hobbled Felix and Howard passed quickly. After the initial \u00e2\u20ac\u0153d’oh!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moment, the possible points I may have won were soon forgotten. The day I can’t laugh when virtually half my fantasy team is out injured is the day I quit. <\/p>\n
For the record: I’m not about to quit and I’ve been laughing all day long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fantasy baseball has the ability to divide fans of the sport simply because it makes you look at the game in a completely different way. Injuries are a good case in point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[555,553],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy-baseball","tag-fantasy-baseball","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4283,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/4283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}