Slowly Going Bald

Dear sirs,Shut up.I guess I should elaborate on that, or at least give you some insight into my reasoning. But while I do that, while you read this, you should take this opportunity to shut the hell up about your fantasy team. I don't care. Your wife doesn't care. If you have a girlfriend, she will leave you if you keep talking about this. If you don't have a girlfriend, rattling off stats for "your guys" won't help you get one any faster than if you were one of those guys who camped out for an Xbox 360.And that's another thing: You say things like "my team," "I scored," "We did well over the weekend," etc. And you are in no way connected to any professional athlete. At all. At. All. You hear me? Not at all. It's one thing for parents to vicariously live through their children's successes, as in "My boy did well" or "My girl just made starter," and it's ultimately acceptable, though not encouraged, for them to use the plural possessive and say things like "Our team did great" or whatever. But you, gentlemen, don't do anything for the players you say are "yours." Their performance in any given game is not dependent on your watching the game, or having money riding on it, or getting sucked up in a fantasy draft. They do it without you every time. Every. Time. When you say things like "We need another win to clinch a playoff berth," you don't sound smart or informed or like you're an insider; you just sound like a tool.Which brings me to another point: the name itself, "fantasy sports." Let that word roll around your Pabst-addled minds for a minute. Fantasy. Fantasy. Not real. In no way connected to reality. Fantasy. Say it as many times as you need to, but be sure you understand it. Sure, I realize it takes different strokes and all that, and I get how you feel excited when someone you "picked up" in a "draft" does well; I get how you like to feel involved with something bigger than yourself; I get how you like to feel somehow connected to high-performance athletics despite the inability of most fantasy sports nuts to do anything remotely close to the displays of physical prowess on the field we take for granted; well, I don't get all that exactly, but I kind of see where you're coming from. It's your passion, and that's fine. Numbers, games, stats, injury reports, bragging rights, inane legacies from father to son; it's all in your blood, and that's okay. I myself prefer a good story, well-told, something that will stick with me long after you've stopped breathlessly recapping the fourth game of the 1996 ALCS, for example. But hey, that's my hang-up, being able to emotionally connect to art and music and film. We've all got our crosses to bear. And I encourage you to enjoy yours.But I don't want to hear about it all the time, okay? Seriously. Somewhere, deep down, you have to understand that I don't care, that most people don't; that you're only participating in the random collection of facts and performance charts, not the real game; that there are bigger, better things out there. I implore you to listen to that tiny voice that occasionally pipes up within you and tells you to take things down a notch when you're babbling to anyone within earshot about how "your boys" did over the weekend. It's a big world, fellas, and we've all got to get along.Until then, though, shut up.Sincerely,Daniel Carlson

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