American Hooligans

Just to recap, it may be baseball season. I may also be a nerd. Here are some warning signs:

• I’m in two fantasy baseball leagues, one traditional and the other the greatest experiment ever undertaken by man.
• I now own two baseball simulators, Out of the Park Baseball and Baseball Mogul. I have OOTPB because it runs on my laptop, and also because I’m putting it on my resume when I apply to either business school or go straight for a GM job. This fucking game has you directly managing every level of a baseball franchise, down to micromanaging the summer rookie league’s local popularity. And it’s all fake names, so good luck remembering anyone. I knew I was getting good when a kid I traded away in the rookie leagues appeared against me in a AAA game. Or maybe that means I’m bad. Anyway.

  Baseball Mogul is slightly less insane. You only have to worry about your top prospects at each level, and most of the money stuff you can set and forget, provided you don’t go crazy on player options in contracts. I think the best way to sum up the difference is in BM I took the Yankees to the World Series in an evening. In OOTPB I keep getting fired when my shitty AAA players can’t keep their OPS above .600 for months on end. I’ve established myself as the Billy Martin of the Braves’ minor league system at this point, and I don’t think there’s any going back.

• Despite my best intentions, I’ve completely stopped following NCAA basketball and the EPL over the past month. Good time to lose my breadth of knowledge.
• Baseball baseball baseball!