Sweet, Sweet Fantasy, Baby: Where one contest ends, another begins

We've finally reached the conclusion of the Beyond the Blue Line 2 league tournament, and luckily for me, I will not have to honor Steve-O's demands to publish a full screencap with an accompanying essay lavishing praise upon his squad had his second-ranked team defeated my third-ranked team. Thankfully that did not happen, as Steve-O's goalies essentially got outplayed across the board by my pair of netminders and we're left, appropriately enough, with my Ovie-led team meeting Ms. Bette's squad that boasts Sidney Crosby.

And if I'm looking at the upcoming week's games correctly, then Ovechkin should have an extra game in comparison to Sid the Kid, so advantage me—for now.

Because I'm gracious and humble in my victorious ways, I've opted to include this final glance at last week's game below the fold (You're welcome, Steve-O). And while this is the final week for the second Beyond the Blue Line league, I remain in first place for the points version of the Fantasy Hockey, so as it currently stands, I could win two of these fantasy leagues. Unfortunately, I've dropped into fourth over in the Fantasy Basketball, so a trophy over there is going to take some work.

I thought I might have a little more time on my hands for exploring such turnarounds, seeing as now my NCAA brackets are officially busted. That's semi-remarkable considering that as recently as Saturday morning before the Elite Eight games began, I still had three of my Final Four alive—not to mention both my National Championship teams. Of course, by weekend's end, all my remaining picks became officially eliminated.


I toyed a little bit with the scenario generator, but overall it doesn't appear that I'll end up finishing higher than 285th out of 500 at best or any lower than 288th at worst. Still, considering my past performances in Tournament Pick'em, that's an improvement—especially since, like I said, I really couldn't care less about college sports.


But while it sounds like all these fantasy endeavors are meeting their ends—well lo and behold, along came an invitation to Fantasy Baseball. This is the league the bro-in-law runs, so I'm back in that Fantasy Football group where I'd finished dead last. It's going to be hard not to improve on that—especially since today marked my very first time actually participating in the live draft. Oh, I was a minute or two late arriving online for it, but my oh my, what a pleasant surprise I had waiting for me when I logged in. For those of you keeping track of this at home, yes, this is now the third time in five fantasy leagues that I've gotten the first overall pick, so that Rod Stewart track couldn't seem more appropriate.


Alas, while I'm guessing I'll have a lackluster, half-assed final report on the NCAA results next week and hopefully some joyous news to report as it relates to how that Beyond the Blue Line 2 grand finale plays out, the remaining point leagues should also wrap up in a couple weeks and leave me entirely devoted to figuring out the intricacies involved in the rotisserie scoring system used for Fantasy Baseball (I think this is the last type of scoring system I have yet to test out, but who knows—another surprise version will probably be sprung on me before I know it).


Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the baseball roster I put together (I took Heyward way earlier than he needed to be taken, but I am enormously confident that I won't regret the honest mistake and, if anything, I can still end up looking like the smartest guy in the room), mostly just because I can recognize everybody on my roster. That probably means that I'm missing important details in the sabermetrics as to what my guys are actually going to produce, I'm sure, but at least I'll have the rest of the summer to figure it out without any other competing fantasy interests.


Or, at least until football season kicks off.