It's Just A Fantasy

Between playing Wii Baseball and Fantasy Baseball, my six year old is starting to show an interest in the sport. He doesn't quite grasp the scoring system in fantasy baseball but not a day goes by when he doesn't ask me to show him his team, tell him how they are doing, make a trade offer, pick up a player off of waivers, etc. Most recently, he decided to claim Cincinnati Reds 21 year old future superstar, Jay Bruce, off of waivers. That move is looking like pure genius as Bruce has put up hall of fame caliber numbers during his first week in the big leagues.

However, teaching baseball, and more specifically, fantasy baseball to a six year old can be a challenge. Emotions run high and everything is just great when he is in first place. But then his team started getting depleted by injuries. At one point, he had 5 players on the disabled list. As a result, his team briefly fell to 7th place in a 12 team league. He was really upset about it and asked me to check his scores about 30 times a day. I kept trying to explain to him that the baseball season is long, that his team is really good and they will be winning again as soon as the injured players get healthy, and most importantly, that the top 6 teams make the playoffs, so he doesn't have to be in first place right now, he needs to concentrate on building the best possible team come playoff time. He kind of gets it but he also just wants to be in first place. He wants the online trophy.

So his team is back up to 4th place after beating the first place team 6-4 last week. Needless to say, he left for school happy this morning. Me? I have to stop doing this. I get people involved in fantasy sports and then I feel obligated to make sure they win. I got my Dad involved in fantasy football last year and then I spent the whole season worrying just as much about his team as I did about mine. He made it to the league championship and ended up finishing 2nd in his first fantasy league ever, which was great and amazing and all, but I still felt like anything less than the league championship was letting him down. This year, he's on his own!