Time Begins Again

Time begins , strangely, at dawn and in Japan. And with the start of Time we have, also, the start of the season for the Malden Mallards, my cellar-dwelling fantasy team. Fantasy Baseball helps make it possible to root for players without wishing too many good things to befall the corporate titans who own their contracts.

Our league has 15 teams with 28 man rosters, which means that, for adjusting your roster to the inevitable in-season disaster, one must pay a great deal of attention to the 421st-best player in the major leagues. This means that you spend a lot of time looking at players like Boof Bonser (oh! what a baseball name!) and Conor Jackson, which is really more pleasant than endlessly contemplating Manny Being Manny.

Manny, incidentally, is a Mallard. Pedro Martinez, however, is not, having been swept away by the new team on the block — The Sleep Deprived — whose team logo is a baseball cap emblazoned with the letters, "NEW". I believe we've had Pedro every year since he was wearing Dodger Blue in 1993 — that;s about 2500 innings for the Mallards.