ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BASEBALL?

2-12 as of 3:53 pm

<cough>

I hear there is talk of firing the manager...

1-13

I'm going to stop watching for a bit.

You can look again. It is now only 5-10 and your team is getting ominously close in ERA and WHIP. I have us hurling a combined total of 13 SP's into the fray through Friday.
Are you familiar with the work of German artist Michael Sowa? Many of his paintings start with a foggish gray/green background with cartoonish animals running, often with all four feet off the ground.
I can imagine one with the two of us coming around the last curve of a track. The Squirrels on the inside, legs churning furiously and little pink tongue hanging out. And this big fat Redneck on the outside, sweating profusely and holding a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon in each hand.
Their eyes bulge as they see the guy at the "finish line" waving them on for another lap.
Good luck to the Squirrels. This should be an interesting week.

Did you count our new one?

He's good so far...

Now there's a visual!

Yeah, I've been watching our ERAs and WHIPs meeting in the middle. Starting off with a 22 ERA kinda put me in a hole. It's a good thing this is a two week deal and, yep, I think it's gonna be fun.

Hi, Jaye. In this week's A2K NFL Pick-um game, things are looking like the tie-breaker could be a factor beyond total points. Do you recall, or can give me a link, to the rules you set up last year? Thanks. -john-

We did it a couple different ways. During the regular season we granted first place to the person with the lower seasonal record coming into that week (only had it come up once i believe). During the playoffs we changed it because there were so few games which increased the likelihood of a tie to posting a running list of the chosen tiebreaker scores (we used total score) and made it first come first serve.

You aren't using total score, right? They're picking actual points? Do you then calculate them into a total score for the first level tiebreaker? I haven't been paying much attention but if you have scores picked for both teams you could use closest pick to the winning team's score or some variation of that theme.

Holy flippin' ding dong!!!!

Looks like we've got a game, rjb.

Great final stretch for the campionship.
Dem Squirrels are hard to hunt.
Come on, rjb, dem rappers are startin' to look like the Mets.

Fear not, fbaezer. I have this totally under control. I let it seem to get close because, in my opinion, Rockhead needs some excitement in his life.
It all comes down to, on the hitting side, doubles (2B). If I hang onto that, the squirrels are dead meat. If that gets away from me, I need to win the pitching category of WHIP.
Thanks for your encouragement.

That is, indeed the simplest of the scenarios...

(i won't get into variations on the backups, but back into fighting with pitching works splendidly for me)

Nice move with Bush. (Dave, that is...)

Can you please remember to pick on the A2K NFL thingee, RH?

What's it worth to ya?

(we could negotiate an "arms" reduction...)

It's 4:00 pm and we are still technically alive, but it is looking bleak.

One unearned run, or this woulda been REAL close...

Kudos to you, rjb

It is now 6:00 PM, and all hope is lost...

The Redneck Rapsters are the champs, and JPB has but a 2nd place trophy for her case.

Well played by johnboy, who finished the regular season under .500, but learned a few good tricks on his way.

All hail the Champ.

RJB will reign till April, at which point, we will all laugh at his draft again...

Congrats, to the Rednecks!!!!

Well done and well played, rjb. Congratulations on a hard won championship.

You took on a team of two... well, not really -- we were more of a tag team -- the moose oversaw the draft and then had to move and lost his access (we knew this was coming) so I took over the play-by-play for a bit. Then, when I was overwhelmed with work and life the moose and squirrel had another passing of the baton.

It was a lot of fun and I've learned a lot.

RH -- it was great being Steinbrenner to your Billy Martin.

Thanks, JPB and Rockhead. Yall claim that I won. I will believe it when I see it.
The amusing thing is that I, like most of the other players here, know absolutely nothing about the the sport of baseball. I don't have a tv. I neither know nor care which teams will get through the playoffs and into the World Series.
Unless someone makes it a game for us here. I love games. For the last two exhausting weeks, I have been fighting Rockhead. I have pages of charts showing, with blue highlighter, the categories I was winning in. Red was bad, Yellow indicated ties.
I toss all of them out tonight. No longer needed. But damn it was fun to meet yall again and to share some laughs. On to football!

And, oh yes. My players. I didn't make a lot of changes in my roster. There was Josh, knocking out RBI's. He may or may not have led the league. And there was a batter who took off for a few days to be with his wife when their first kid was born. And injuries. Lots of injuries to young men in just their mid-20's. I really felt that I got to know some of the guys playing for the Rednecks.

We are deeply familiar with some of them as well...

You played an honourable game my friend.

(next year, all bets are off, as JP will undoubtedly change the format again...)