Remembering My Fantasy Baseball Antichrist

I've been playing fantasy baseball now for about 6 years. And in that time, I've had good teams and bad. Good players and crappy ones. But I've never owned anyone that challenged my will to live more than ex-Orioles closer Jorge Julio.

You see, it seemed every year for 3 straight years I ended up with Julio on my roster. Looking back now, you may be asking: why did you let Jorge Julio anywhere near your fantasy roster? Well, remember, Julio was the Orioles closer back in the day and actually posted decent saves numbers for a couple of years.

But man, he came with a huge Buyer Beware tag. To be honest, part of the reason I ended up with Julio so often was because he was so predictable. He was going to end up with 25-35 saves and at least 500 heart palpatations and 5 broken remote controls. You could always tell a bad Julio outing right from the get-go. His first pitch would be a slider that would bounce 5 feet in front of home plate. Then he'd throw another slider that would bounce 8 feet in front of home plate. Keep in mind that Jorge threw a 97 mph fast ball. Behind 2-0 in the count, Julio would try to crank up the fastball and overthrow it, usually 6 feet over the hitters head or half a mile outside. And that would be all she wrote. Pretty much an automatic blown save and Orioles loss.

Not only that, but much like his forefathers Doug Jones, Mike Timlin and Armando Benitez, you could always count on Julio imploding in a big spot. The guy was like the A-Rod of closers: he would go 1-2-3 with a 3-run lead in a meaningless May game against Texas but in a 1-run game in August against the Yankees or Red Sox, Julio set more fires than a 90s Norwegian black metal band.

My ultimate memory of Julio was duing an interleague game against San Francisco. Me and my buddies were in attendance and Julio came into a close game to try to get the O's out of a jam. Not a chance. Julio got shelled and I got drunk as hell. I let Julio have it with a stream of obscenities and had the urge to see how many beers I could drink before alcohol poisoning set in. When he was dealt to the New York Mets in the trade that brought Kris Benson to Baltimore, I didn't care whether Benson was a bust or not (he was), I was just glad to be rid of Julio. He was the sort of pitcher that cost fantasy GMs championships and real life GMs their jobs.

I had purged Julio from my brain for a number of years. The last I saw him, he was pitching for Colorado and nearly cost the Rockies a playoff berth by imploding (as always) in a tight spot. I thought the league had run out of teams for him to play the role of bullpen arsonist. So imagine my surprise when I turned on Sunday night baseball yesterday and saw Julio pitching for Milwaukee. I watched him briefly. He started the first hitter off with ball one high and inside and I quickly switched the channel. I knew how this one was going to end.

Non-Sporting Links

Ok, one more batch of linkage and then I will close tonight's flurry of posts with something original. Really, I promise. Here now are some non-sporting links for those who don't give a crap about sports.

"You seem like shporting fellows, ja?"

- R.I.P. Natasha Richardson. My only question is, this week we've had Ron Silver pass on and now Richardson. Who's next, because celebrity deaths always come in threes. Probably the most star-studded threesome (that didn't die in the same event) was actually 10 years ago this month when Stanley Kubrick, Joe DiMaggio and Dusty Springfield all died in the same week.

- George Bush is writing a book about his decisions. It should be called "If Elected, Don't Do This."

- And we wonder why kids are so fucked up these days.

- Duke Foster is writing a Wrestlemania retrospective for the Icon. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Just as long as there is mention of Roddy Piper spraying the late Morton Downey Jr. with a fire extinguisher at Wrestlemania V I'm cool.

- Got $32 million dollars? Then you too can buy your own English village.

- Drunken riots in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. In other news, the sky is blue, roses are red and women have secrets.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Ah yes, St. Patrick's Day. A day for a fine Irish lad to celebrate our heritage with copious amounts of alcohol. So allow me to get all of you in the mood for a St. Patty's celebration through the magic of YouTube.

...First up, you must learn to do a Irish jig. If only to make a fool out of yourself when drunk. And to prove your Irish street cred. Drinking and eating potatoes isn't enough anymore.


...Now we just need some Irish music. And it's pretty much impossible to have Irish music on here without having The Pogues.


...Now to give it an American flavor, we'll bring in Boston's Dropkick Murphys.


...and for those moments when some of you will be drunk enough to get into a fight, you can do like L.A.'s Flogging Molly and tell them to "Kiss My Irish Arse."


...throw in some of this...


...And boom! Happy St. Patrick's Day! Be safe out there everybody and as my old sociology professor used to tell us, "Don't drink and drive. Do one or the other."