OH RIGHT, IT'S STILL BASEBALL SEASON

So I'm watching the Mets on their way to what's sure to be a slaughtering by Philadelphia, and realizing that you're probably wondering what I do with this next month, considering it's the first time in five years that the Mets have not had the ol' "meaningful games in September" thing going on.

Besides rooting for David Wright to hit doubles.

And the answer is quite simple - I root like the dickens for Josh Johnson and the rest of my fantasy baseball team.

Let me give you some history. (Wow, fantasy baseball history! The excitement is dripping from the walls!) Each year four of us from college get together and do our fantasy draft - a four-person league. Because it's such a small league, we have to narrow down the baseball universe, so it's just American League and National League East teams that we choose from. Hence the super-clever league name, "East Coast Bias".

Well, every year one guy, let's call him "Kevin", just dominates the league. He pretty much lives and breathes his fantasy baseball team, so it's not a surprise. What's so painful is that, not unlike my Mets, I've had season-long leads that have fallen apart in the last month of the season.

But not this year. This year I was in third or fourth place much of the early part of the year, and waited for everything to come together, until I took over first place in just the past couple of weeks.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, I drafted a really good team. I really did...I didn't worry about certain negative categories (like hitters' strikeouts), and loaded up on some big RBI/Runs guys.

More importantly, though, "Kevin" has some very important, and positive, things going on in his life that have leveled the playing field a bit. Now, he doesn't have two kids, which is the circumstance I will blame if I don't hold my lead, but he has some serious demands on his time that he hasn't had the past few years.

So one more month of rooting for the Phillies every fifth day (Pedro). One more month of rooting for certain guys to get wins (Beckett, Lester), but only by 2 or 3 runs, so I can get a save (Papelbon). One more month of sitting through the terrible Marlins telecasts for my dose of Josh Johnson. And one more month of juggling through the baseball channels to catch my hitters' at-bats (V. Martinez, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Evan Longoria, and Ryan Zimmerman, to name a few).

At least I don't have the Mets (well, besides Angel Pagan) to distract me from all that.

P.S.: School has started, and for those of you who don't know, that's my real job. So I apologize for the slowdown in posting...I'll find some sort of rhythm soon.