A fantasy baseball rant

Part of my obsession with baseball is aided by fantasy baseball - when you live in the UK, the fantasy game is a true aid to getting to know the details of more than the 'hometown 9' - and also makes games on Channel 5 (for US readers, baseball in the UK is carried live on one free to air channel - Channel 5, showing ESPN's game of the day on Sunday - and one premium cable channel) that don't involve that hometown team much more interesting - it is amazing the number of online conversations I have, that involve cheering for some guy that is having a hot night for someone's fantasy team.

I participate in quite a few leagues, though significantly down from the 16 that I participated in one year, you can imagine that I spent more of my life managing my teams than I did working that year. The most frustrating thing about fantasy baseball is that which you don't control - what do the following players have in common?

Ben Sheets
David Wells

Jeff Bagwell
Craig Wilson
Nomar Garciaparra
Juan Gonzalez (hey, he was a 25th round pick)
Sammy Sosa
Ben Sheets... again
Joe Borowski

Jose Vidro
Jim Thome
Armando Benitez
David Wells... again

I own them all, across three fantay leagues, and they are all on the DL - and that list doesn't include the players in that last league that I have had to drop, because I couldn't put out a full team if I held onto all the guys that are now on the DL. These type of injuries really do hurt your chances in a league, particularly in scarce positions - when the loss of Vidro hurts your team more than the loss of Thome...