GatewayRedbirds.com

I have never played fantasy baseball. However, I just finished Sam Walker's "Fantasyland" (if we ever get an interview with Sig Mejdal, I want to ask him if signing Troy Percival was his idea) and I have a question I'm hoping somebody will be kind enough to answer. In the book Walker's 2004 team owns Doug Mientkiewicz, who is rumored to be on the trading block to make way for Justin Morneau. Walker owns a team in an AL-only league, and the two real-life teams rumored to be after Mientkiewicz are the Pirates and the Red Sox. Walker surmises that the Red Sox would make Mientkiewicz a defensive substitute, which is bad for fantasy leaguers. OK, I get that. But Walker was trying to steer Mientkiewicz to the Pirates (he even called Littlefield to advocate such a move), who, of course play in the NL. Wouldn't this completely kill Mientkiewicz's value in an AL-only league?

I get the feeling Walker was distorting his obsessive behavior for comic value. Some of the stuff, like the Jose Guillen protest, seemed to be deliberately over-the-top. Nothing wrong with gonzo journalism, I suppose, but it changes the way I look at the book a bit.

I think you get to keep the player anyway.

Did you like the book? I've been tempted to pick it up a couple of times.

Good read, with plenty of LOL zaniness like Moneyball, although it's more a library book than a keeper. I finished it in about four days even though I've been forced to work long hours recently. Walker's writing is very fluid, but a lot lighter than most of the stuff I've been reading lately. I guess the ironical hipster route (or whatever label I'm supposed to slap on Michael Lewis or maybe Mike Judge) is an easier way to a best seller for a good writer like Walker. Which is to say, it's a shame he didn't go further into stories like Jacque Jones, because the profiles of the fantasy gurus were pretty much what anybody who quotes FIPs would expect.

Sig Mejdal comes off with the exact same attitude as MGL; I would pay money to hear what he really thought of the return of Aaron Miles. One interesting little thing is that the Cardinals have a private message board somewhere, or at least they did when Shandler was working for them.