What's it all about?

So if you're reading this (all three of you), you're probably wondering what this blog is all about. Well, this blog is about me becoming the last person in the US to have a blog (or at least it seems like it). Truth be told, I'm sure a bunch of people I work with don't have blogs, but a lot of times Maine seems more like Canada (more hicks, more trees, more snow, more hicks, etc.).

Anyway, I've recently become fascinated with several sports themed websites and blogs, and I have decided to start my own. I won't list them right now, they'll trickle out over time. Basically, baseball has been a growing sickness on my mind. I guess that baseball was my first sports love, the only sports I ever really played as a kid (you can't call my endeavors on the basketball court "playing"). As I grew, baseball dropped down the priority list.

The biggest reason baseball took a backseat was my Darwinist approach to sports fandom. Don't get me wrong, I'm no bandwagon jumper, per se. I grew up in Eastern Connecticut (pre-casinos). This is traditionally Boston sports territory, but is far enough removed that you can fool yourself if you try. Also, in those days we had the Whale (Hartford Whalers), so it was an interesting sports dynamic. Anyway, I had no push to be a fan of one team or the other. I started watching baseball around the time I started playing little league. Cecil Fielder hit a bunch of HRs for the Detroit Tigers, and voila, I became a Tigers fan. Little did I know how much suffering this childhood attachment to a fat man hitting moon shots would cause. Anyway, I've been a Tigers fan since the late 80's. Back in those days they were in the AL East and were on TV quite a bit in CT, playing the Yanks and the Sawx.

The point of this digression is that baseball was my first love. Continued losing by the Tigers, as well as success by some of my other sports teams (Washington Redskins, New Jersey Devils) pushed baseball down the list. However, when I got to college, baseball started to stage a comeback.

My full blown baseball obsession began around 2000. By this time I was in college enjoying the fraternity life (better and different than you think it was). In that fraternity I made friends with a gang of guys you'll no doubt be hearing a lot about as time goes by. Every year we did all the fantasy sports, starting my freshman year, 1998, the dawn of fantasy sports (for me). I won the fantasy (roto) baseball league going away (nobody even bothered to check it the last month, I was so dominant) and that was it. My senior year, I got the notion of keeper league into my head, and founded a keeper league along with another 7 guys. My co-conspirators in founding the league were Chuck and Dan.

Anyway, this backstory is overblown, uninteresting, and will dribble out over time, the point is that for the past 5 years we've been running a very competitive fantasy baseball keeper league. The league is American League only, hence the blog name. I currently am the defending champ of this league (although, in the interest of full disclosure, I missed the playoff my first 4 years) and have a full blown obsession with this league.

This blog is an extension of that obsession. This keeper league never strays far from my sporting thoughts, and I wanted to launch a blog to chronicle the experience of obsessing over one half of a league of grown men attempting to hit a ball. What will the blog become? I don't know. For now, it will contain musing about baseball (as well as other sports occasionally), and specifically American League keeper league concerns. It is my hope that this will be an interesting blog, even for those who have no interest in baseball. I hope it's a glimpse into a little world, one where everyone cares far too much about the outcome of a fantasy game.

Coming soon... a picture of me holding the pimping league trophy!!!