This is the opposite of a Bromance.  Randy Wolf, I hereby declare you Damien.  You know.  The little dude riding the tricycle around and bumping into the ladder.  Killing your mother.  Look.  I tried to like you.  You strung me along for a little while, Wolf .  Are you Nicholson from the Mike Nichols movie?  Nah.  You fit the Spader mold.   You suck up to me with your low WHIP and ERA and then you blow leads in the 7th inning against the Bravos.  That’s all a pitcher and fantasist asks for.  Get through the 6th with a lead and then hold the lead through 7.  Have you no shame?  Bert Blyleven did that a million times.  Speaking of Bert, he carries the mantle of wolf man better than you, with your friggin’ poser namesake and goatee.

Have you even seen Teen Wolf?  When Boof when in the closet with Scott.  That was classic dude.  You are not so classic.  You are a modern day pitcher that I loathe.  I’m starting to believe Nolan Ryan when he gets up on the soap box and starts proselytizing about the word of the holy extended pitch count.

Look.  I don’t care if you are Michael J. Fox, Michael Landon or friggin’ James Spader.  Can you at least give me one quality start?  I don’t want to hear about lack of run support.  Or some error in left field.  Look, Randy.  I can deal with the low k/bb average and the lack of wins.  I want you to extend me some courtesy.  I want you to stand there in your faggoty white Dodger uniform and extend me some respect.  Are we clear?

“Stats don’t mean a lot, mate.”

This was a response to my post on Yahoo! UK’s Fantasy EPL site about choosing goalkeepers. Keep in mind, I’d written, that Fulham had only given up 2 goals at home in 6 games. Sure enough, Fulham kept a clean sheet that weekend. Stats do mean a lot, mate. In fact, Fantasy Sports are comprised of nothing but stats. So dismissing their importance is a bit daft, innit.

But herein lies the learning curve of Fantasy Sports for people outside the United States. Fantasy Sports are a very American creation. Sports like football, basketball, and baseball cater to the stat-crunching nature of Fantasy. Soccer has never been a stat driven sport. Many Americans decry the lack of goals when talking about soccer. But that doesn’t bother the rest of the world. In lieu of ‘Touchdown!’ and ‘Home Run!’ international soccer fans derive a more cerebral joy from their game. While we have convoluted stats like OPS and WHIP, soccer stats are pretty basic, like Goal and Save. In fact, when a player passes to a goal scorer, they don’t use the term ‘assist’. They might mention who ‘played provider’ but there is no official tally of “providers.”

Yahoo!’s Fantasy EPL game is a mixed success. The game does have it right when it comes to the stats. They have literally created all these categories that no real soccer fan would dare contemplate. Successful Cross, Corner Won, Blocked Shot, Pass Intercepted, etc. This is the best game out there because most others rely on your standard Goal, Assist or Clean Sheet (Shutout in Yank parlance). The EPL game is a bit arbitrary in that you don’t know who determines a Successful Cross or Shot On Target. But in that sense, I guess, it is very European.

For all of its fancy stats, though, it’s obvious that the game hasn’t been accepted by the majority of international soccer fans. North Americans are a large portion of people who play the game. And, although the game has its own ‘expert’ columnists, they’re both American. That makes sense because we’ve been doing fantasy for longer. Europeans are experts at real soccer. Just not the fake one.

An obstacle to the acceptance of Fantasy in the soccer world is the sense of ownership. As a fantasy owner, you own the players on your team, until you decide to trade them for someone else. Real-life free agency has helped soften Americans loyalty for athletes. A Red Sox fan wouldn’t have a problem drafting A-Rod for his fantasy baseball team as long as he helps him win. But Europeans are saddled with another rooting muddle – Club vs Country. After the 2006 World Cup, Manchester United fans had the tricky task of welcoming back their Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, after he had helped convince the ref to send off England forward(and Manchester United teammate) Wayne Rooney in a quarterfinal game. Ronaldo beat their English national team and rubbed it in with a wink, which earned him the sobriquet of Facking Winker.

The effects of this were felt in the Fantasy Soccer world. In Yahoo!’s game, some people form Ronaldo-free leagues because they can’t stand the thought of rooting for him. That’s like creating a Kobe-free NBA league. Of course, Ronaldo had the last laugh as he averaged more fantasy points than anyone else by a wide margin. Here in the States, a good fantasy player uses Gordon Gekko’s words as his mantra: ‘First lesson in business – Don’t get emotional about a stock.’ If a player has value, you want him on your team. Europeans are still struggling with that. They are so passionate and emotional about their teams, that the ‘pure’ fantasy paradigm might take a little while to take hold. When that time comes, they’ll understand the reality of fantasy sports: it’s all about the numbers.

editor’s note: This post originally appeared on www.modernspectator.com

Everyone that plays fantasy has certain guys in their league that fit very specific profiles.  With the start of the fantasy football season just a few months away, here’s a breakdown of some of the characters that make up my league.  Please note all names have been changed to protect their identities:

“Aaron” (The Shady Commish):  Everyone has played in a league with a commish that no one quite trusts.  Well, Aaron is that guy in my league. Though he is a close personal friend of mine, his past fantasy shenanigans will always cast a suspicious look in his direction.  Let me take you back a few years to the first time he was commish of our football league.  We were a player short going into the season.  At the last moment, Aaron informed us that a buddy of his from law school (we’ll call him “Chuckie”) wanted in. Naturally, we were thrilled to have a full league ready to go. However, as the weeks and months passed by during the NFL season, there seemed to be a lot of tandem moves made by Aaron and Chuckie. First a trade or two, then some curious free agent drops and pick-ups.  By midseason, several members of the league had demanded to meet or talk to Chuckie.  Aaron kept making excuses until one of our league members took matters into his own hands.  We’ll call this cat Isaac (more on him in a bit).  Isaac called the law school that Aaron and Chuckie both attended and through some sly investigative work determined that Chuckie was not enrolled at said school.  This led to the great blowup of ‘04, where Aaron eventually came clean and revealed that he in fact made up Chuckie and that he was indeed running both teams all season long.  How is this guy still our commish years later?  Great question.  He was banned from running leagues for a few years, but eventually we let him take over again…

The “Isaac/Dylan” duo (The two-headed trash-talking monsters):  You know these guys.  They are the ones that can’t run a team on their own, so they have to join forces and wreak havoc on the entire league.  For years, Isaac and Dylan have played fantasy football together.  You know the saying “two minds are better than one?”  Well, that doesn’t necessarily apply to them, as they rarely finish at the top of the standings. However, don’t underestimate them though because they win the league trash-talking title every year. These are the guys that somehow find something to say after you take Tom Brady with your first round selection.  No move is safe from these guys.  Once they smell fear, they pounce on you until you end up questioning your own tactics.  They don’t field the most competitive teams, but their presence is always felt every year.

“Micah” (The Quiet Assassin):  Every league has one of these guys.  During the draft, you barely notice this dude.  He rarely partakes in the trash-talk.  He goes about his business in a rather quiet manner.  It’s not until the draft room closes and you scan your opponents rosters that you finally take notice of Micah.  This is the guy that somehow ends up with a roster of Peyton Manning, Randy Moss, Larry Fitzgerald, Brandon Marshall, Adrian Peterson, Michael Turner, Jason Witten and the Steelers D. I call it the “How the fuck did you get all those guys” roster?  There’s always one of those every year and in our league, Micah is that guy.

“Edgar” (The I must make 5 zillion roster moves guy):  Edgar never leaves his computer.  If he’s home, he’s online scouring for a free agent to pick up.  If he’s at work, he’s making his 7th move of the day.  This guy is easy money in Vegas to finish the league with the most team transactions.  You all know him.  He is the trigger happy type.  Picks up and drops players left and right based on one good or bad game.  When you log on to your league’s site in the morning, you can always expect the last 5-6 moves to have been made by Edgar overnight.  Half the guys he picks up never crack his starting lineup and his teams are no better off than anyone else’s.

“The TBD Guy” (The “my team sucks so I will stop managing my lineup” guy).  Every once in a while a new spot will open up in our league.  Inevitably this spot will be filled with a friend of a friend of a friend.  And inevitably halfway thru the season, this guy will fall out of contention and stop running his team Coincidentally, people always seem to notice this guy’s lack of participation when he is faced off against the league leader in a pivotal matchup. This is when you start hearing things like “forfeit” and “this league is bullshit” and “I’m not paying” and blah blah blah.  The reason this guy has no name is because he is never invited back into the league. But don’t fear, there’s always another TBD guy around the corner.