Why I Lost My Fantasy Baseball Matchup – Week 1

April 8, 2013April 9, 2013 Austin

My fantasy baseball league proposed a new rule this season, to help make things more interesting. Whenever your team loses a weekly matchup, you must write a letter to the owner of the team that beat you, explaining why you lost.

Well, I lost in the first week, so here is my letter to the guy who beat me:

To Rich’s Baseball Guys-

I lost this week because of… well… this is a little embarrassing for me to admit, but… I lost because of Justin Timberlake.

If you recall, Justin Timberlake released his first album in over 7 years on March 20th. Now, I am no die hard Justin Timberlake fan by any means. In fact, Joey Fatone was my favorite *NSYNC member. However, the amount of hype (read: Target commercials) I saw surrounding this release got me curious. And just like how curiosity killed the cat, curiosity killed my fantasy baseball team’s chances of winning week 1.

Allow me to explain further.

The anticipation for this album inexplicably made me miss our Fantasy Draft on March 19th, but that isn’t my excuse. Anyone knows you can make lineup changes and roster moves after the fact to make up for a poor draft, and still, even most times, the computer does a better job drafting for you than you ever could. So that is definitely not why. However, I logged onto Spotify right at midnight to begin listening to this album that everyone (read: Target’s promotional team) has been raving about. The clock struck midnight. The new “20/20 Experience” album by Justin Timberlake (or J.T. as he’s known in the celeb magazines) began playing in my ears. I was immediately whisked away into a state of musical nirvana, which ironically is completely different than the music of Nirvana. I was numb from the sounds I was hearing. The only words I could muster out of my mouth while listening were, “Cool.” and “Yeah, girl.” It was unlike anything I had ever felt. I spent the next hour and forty-five minutes like this. Finally, I was able to snap out of it. I had been put into a trance by this music, and was finally released from it. I looked down at my computer screen to see what time it was, and I realized, I wasn’t even a third of the way into THE FIRST SONG ON THE ALBUM! What the? It was 1:45am. I went from being tranced by the soothing sounds of Justin’s voice to being a little frustrated with the length of his songs. But I put that aside and decided, I’ve made it this far… kinda… I might as well listen to the rest of the album. I pulled an all nighter that night. I listened and I listened and I listened some more. Finally, an ad came up, urging me to buy an account with Spotify so I wouldn’t have to hear ads. This meant a song had actually finished! I was elated. I could not believe it. I had made it all the way through the first song on Justin Timberlake’s new album. I looked down at my watch to mark the time. Dead battery. Damn. I looked at the time on my VCR. It was blank, power must be out. Damn. I checked my computer screen just as it’s battery died. My heart skipped a beat…

It was 11:15am…

…on SUNDAY, APRIL 7th, 2013!

It took me nearly three weeks to listen to the first track on J.T.’s new album. WHAT. THE. HECK?!

I took a look around my apartment. There I was, sitting alone, in a puddle of my own piss and feces, with my water and electricity cut off, my wife left “to stay at her parents house for a while”, my answering machine full of messages about how I had been fired from my job, how I missed three funerals of family members, three attempted April Fools’ Day jokes, and a message about how I forgot to return my DVD copy of “Wreck-It Ralph” to the last video rental store I know of.

What have I done? It was a completely surreal feeling. One I had never felt. One probably no man (not named Rip Van Winkle) has ever felt.

I immediately jumped my car and drove out of my driveway. I drove to the nearest library. My library card had expired. (To be fair, my library card had expired in 2001, so this wasn’t a factor of the 20/20 Experience.) I told the librarian I just needed to use the computer really quick. Since she was a librarian she couldn’t do much outside of loudly whisper that I needed to leave.

The entire World Wide Web was at my fingertips. Where should I go with it? How does one bounce back from a traumatic event such as this?

You go to MLB.com, that’s how.

I checked my fantasy team, only to be crushed by the sight of the Week 1 Scoreboard: Kershawshank’s Redemption falls short of Rich’s Baseball Guys, 182-167.

I looked to the heavens, raised my arms, and shouted, “DAMN YOU, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE!”

::fade to black::

-Austin, Kershawshank’s Redemption