The Morning After

Was it good for you?

First let me say on the cusp of our blog becoming public what a great league we have and what a great group of guys. It is very easy to forget how much fun we have together and how special this almost randomly assembled group of smart, funny, irreverent individuals is.

It almost kills me to take time off from the busiest week of the year to attend the draft, but it's worth it. At one of our mid-draft breaks I said to Mark Brittain, "man, you look like crap." He responded, "you have no idea." I said, "Oh yes I do." And he laughed and said, "OK, I guess you do." Mark and I make our living THIS WEEK, but we wouldn't miss this event for the world. There isn't a guy in the room that can't crack me up to the core.

So it is with great humility that I apologize for my stress-induced ranting about using a computer. In the next week I'll post something here about the pros and cons of using it. But being at the event, with your graciousness about it and being reminded of how much fun being part of BABI is, I am sorry I was so divisive about it.

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think we would have really done anything different without it, though Jeff thinks we did better. He gave me one of his backhanded complements when he said "You've had a solid if unremarkable draft." When there is about $450 of sewn up profits to start, that's a pretty good result. The computer helped me stay focused, but we did so much preliminary work, demonstrated by all of the writing on this site, that we were really prepared, much better prepared than ever before. Particularly me, who in the past leaves a lot of this up to my partner because I'm so busy. At any rate, I swear that I will never be divisive again, at least until the next thing that pisses me off.

High point of the night -- Lou's $3 bid on Baker, shutting out Jeff. I will laugh about that forever.

Low point of the night -- Picking up broken glass.

Shock of the night -- No one saying $4 on Hampton. Really, we had no intention of buying him. How we ended up with 6 starters and not 4 is a mystery to me.

Annoying moment of the night -- Doyle saying $4 on Bruney. Bastard. I'm still not sure why we didn't say $5.

In addition to the Lickers, who just tormented everyone all night with all that money they had to spend, we're proud to have been a Busch Leaguer tormenter, bidding up players he was bidding on throughout the draft. But no one did that more than the guy on the other side of Jeff, the Coolest guy in the room. At one point I asked Jeff if they were working off the same sheet. Kevin was just killing Jeff all night long. Even so, Jeff ended up with a hell of a team. He's going to be tough to beat.

I'll do some real post-draft analysis tonight and tomorrow, but for now, cheers to BABI. It's hard to have more fun than I did yesterday. Pass me a cigarette.