My Baseball Fantasy: Like Christmas in February

It's a strange time in Vermont. After getting absolutely hammered with snow this year, we had a major thaw yesterday - temperatures suddenly in the 50s. Now back to freezing. All that water turns to ice. Just lovely. It looks like we'll get a bit more snow but not huge amounts, maybe enough to help the traction on our dirt road. We're likely to be stuck in this vicious cycle for at least a month.

February does have its bright sides. In the literal sense, it is the sunniest month in Vermont. We also get a much needed week-and-a-half break from school, beginning today. Particularly nice for me is the opening of fantasy baseball on Yahoo!

I've relaunched last year's league with one highly significant change: by request, we're a head-to-head league now. Yahoo! does a nice job facilitating a relaunch. Invites go automatically to all of the previous year's members. So far, eight of last year's twelve members are back. We're still missing one Mock cousin but I'm pretty sure the other three missing members aren't interested. A smaller league would be fine by me but we do need an even number to draft so hopefully we can find at least one more over the next few weeks.

I am disappointed to find that our bowl pick group is no longer accessible. To me, one of the long-term advantages of such a group is expanding the recruiting pool for fantasy baseball and football. It would be nice to access the e-mail list, at least. I guess Yahoo! doesn't see it that way. Or perhaps they just don't want someone like me to be able to keep bugging people once the bowls are over - maybe not such a bad idea. I could always maintain an e-mail list offline - crazy but it just might work!

Not surprisingly, My Wife is less excited than I about the return of fantasy baseball. Perhaps I will wait to tell her about my (ahem) second league. Encouraged by last year's league win, I've decided to test the waters of Yahoo!'s public leagues. I've signed up for a league that will draft exactly a week before ours. I figure that way, I have the added advantage of a practice run, but with a bit more at stake than in a mock draft. The public league is a rotisserie league. I'm the only one in the league so far. There was one other guy for about a day but then he bailed. Was it something I said? I suppose I could always switch to an auto-draft league if this one doesn't pan out but I'd rather not.