That time of the year is rapidly approaching. The snow has melted. Warm, spring-like days intermittently break up the bone-chilling winter weather. The pop of a baseball smacking against the leather webbing of a glove fills the quietness outside like chirping birds in the morning. 

An email from an old college roommate signals that it will soon be time to shake the cobwebs from the part of your brain that retains stats, splits, stadiums, ages, matchups and a multitude of other details that ensure that, come October, you will win the ultimate prize of a few hundred dollars and an offseason worth of bragging rights. You guessed it – it’s time for Fantasy Baseball!

For some, fantasy baseball is an opportunity to display their MLB prowess to their friends. For others, it is a method to force themselves to remain thoroughly acquainted with the game, as it is easy for one to become so engulfed by their favorite team that they neglect what goes on around the rest of the league.  

To most, though, fantasy baseball is both a project that consumes their free time, and a welcomed respite from their daily grind.

The “sport” (or activity, since the only physical aspect of it is pounding the keyboard when a late inning homerun costs you the series) is far from uniform. Leagues can be set up “rotisserie-style” in which owners draft their teams, select their categories (RBI, HR, AVG., SB, R, W, ERA, SV, K, WHIP – for example) and add up the stats from each category at the end of the season. In a 12-team league, the player who finishes first in a category earns 12 points, while last place earns one point. The points are added up and the team with the highest total at the end of the season is the victor. This is a simple method that requires little attention throughout the season – you should check in from time to time for injuries or trades.

Leagues can also be set up as week-to-week face-offs with a set number of statistical categories that add up over the course of a week. Each team gets a notch in the W column for each category they win and one in the L column for each that they lose. The notches from all the weeks are added up and determine which teams make the fantasy playoffs. The last few weeks of the regular MLB season serve as the playoffs in the fantasy season so that everyone on the fantasy rosters is still active in the real world. This head-to-head version of fantasy baseball requires more daily attention – checking when pitchers are starting, what categories you need to make up ground on late in the week, or if you have a favorable matchup (like Albert Pujols against Chris Capuano). It requires more skill and maneuvering.

Some leagues have loopholes if the commissioner fails to pick the right categories. Last year, the commissioner of my league decided he wanted to work with only whole numbers – no averages. 

“It’ll be easier for everyone to understand,” he said. 

So we used Hits, Runs, Homeruns, Stolen Bases, and Runs for our offensive categories, Errors (as a wildcard), Wins, Strikeouts, Saves, Runs Allowed, and Walks Allowed for our pitching categories. We also had just two bench spots.

I found the loophole during week two of the season when I noticed that Phil Hughes, one of my roommate’s starters, was touched up for three runs in three innings and pulled early in the game.

“Man, what a shoddy pitching performance,” I said. “If we had ERA in our league, that would have hurt you pretty badly for the week.”

That’s when a light went on in my brain. With no quota for innings pitched in our league, and no statistical categories taking innings pitched into account, having starting pitchers actually hurt more than it helped. By dropping or trading all of my starting pitchers in return for “sure thing” closers and stellar offensive players, I had an edge in the Saves and offensive categories, while also securing victories in the Walks and Runs Allowed categories. All I had to sacrifice were my Wins and Strikeouts. 

Everyone warned me not to do it, because once I dropped my starters, I couldn’t get them back if they were picked up off the waiver wire. I didn’t care. Take Sabathia, Lowe and Liriano. I wanted Nathan, (Carlos) Lee, and Kinsler.

I soon cruised to the top of the league and whenever other teams played me, they employed my strategy and benched their starters. It didn’t matter. By that time, my offense was so stacked that when they had just six guys playing due to MLB off days, I had nine due to my deep bench.

I floundered in the playoffs as I was plagued by injuries (Carlos Lee, Carlos Quentin and Ian Kinsler all went down in the last couple weeks), but I won back my money and proved that my roommate/commissioner was not the fantasy guru after all.

There is a downside to becoming so involved in your fantasy league. While some people let it affect their work and/or relationships, most of us keep it as a nice little side project to become secretly obsessed with. But when the season ends, there is a void. We click the link saved at the top of our homepage, but there are no new numbers to crunch. Sure, fantasy football, basketball, or even hockey are worth playing, but they don’t offer the same day-in, day-out, statistically driven game that fantasy baseball does.

Sit tight fantasy fanatics, the long offseason will soon be over. Listen for the sound of baseballs popping against gloves. That’s when you’ll know to get your draft order ready.

 
 

At my Penn State commencement ceremony last May, they left out a line after, “Congratulations to the College of Communications graduating class of 2008.” They should have followed with, “… on spending $140,000 on an education that will provide little help to finding you steady employment in the next year.”

Not to say that it is Penn State’s fault that the economy is in the toilet, most companies are on hiring freezes (or firing sprees), and large corporations cutting their budgets start with public relations and advertising. I just wasn’t prepared for the seemingly unachievable task of launching my career.

With my public relations degree and a pair of useless minors under my belt, I thought finding a job would be a cinch. My 3.71 GPA was impressive even to me, and my internship working in the press box of one of the NCAA’s most prestigious football programs provided me with experience, published clips, and the ability to say I met Joe Paterno.

Finding an entry-level job in athletic communications that pays well is a daunting task, even in a thriving economy, because there are a limited amount of positions being sought after by so many people, several of whom are willing to work for less than the other guy (or girl). So I broadened my job search from public relations jobs in sports, to public relations jobs in general, to communications jobs in general, to non-communications jobs that could get my foot in the door and offer me a salary with benefits!

No such luck. My limited experience is overmatched by the guy (or girl) with five-ten years worth of experience who was just laid off and willing to take a step backward in his (or her) career so that they don’t remain unemployed.

That means I often get to read the words: “We’ve decided to move forward with a candidate whose experience greater fits our needs.”
 
That’s if I am lucky enough to get an email back, or an interview in the first place. Normally, after spending the $50 plus to interview in New York City (parking is expensive, not to mention it costs eight dollars to cross the George Washington Bridge), I won’t hear from a potential employer for weeks, and my follow-up emails will go unanswered, as will my phone calls.

In a society and time where the demand for jobs is high and the supply is very low, employers can afford to save time, effort and money by forgoing the common courtesy of sending a “rejected” email. Could you imagine if, during the college application process, you never heard back from some schools to let you know if you have been accepted or rejected? It’s just unprofessional and ill mannered.   

I once went to a NYC company twice to interview because they happened to schedule my interview on the day of the boss’s wife’s baby shower and the associate couldn’t spare fifteen minutes to question me. Then, after wasting my time and money, and not getting back to me for weeks, I found out that they decided not to fill the position at all!

I’ve even applied for internships, but most companies don’t want to pay interns so they offer college credits in lieu of money. Even if I wanted to work for free, labor laws prevent such actions. So once again, I am out of luck.

Such is the post-collegiate world we are stuck in today.

Aside from Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com, there are other ways of going about the job search – networking, creating an e-portfolio, headhunters, temp agencies, etc. The sobering fact is that these are great ways to lead jobseekers to open doors, but what to do if all the doors are closed?

For the time being, we can only keep treading water and try to keep from sinking.