MLB you did what?

I found this article via Twitter from @mashable.

http://mashable.com/2009/09/16/little-girl-throws-ball-back/

If you don’t want to read the article yourself (it’s very short) I’ll give you a short synopsis.

A Phillie fan caught a foul ball and promptly gave it to his 3-year-old daughter. She, like any grown man would if he were hopped up on apple juice, throws it back. This absolutely adorable moment was quickly posted all over sites like YouTube.

MLB, in all its infinite wisdom, decided to place copyright restrictions on the video forcing YouTube to remove the video. Then, it uploaded the video here on MLB.com without an “embed” code so the video can only be seen on MLB.com.

I understand wanting to drive traffic to your site as a business and company, but in this digital age trying to “control” the medium will only cause backlash against your brand. A better solution is to create a better quality video of it, then make it distributable, so the top quality videos out there are your’s and not user-generated. As cute as the video is, users do not want to, or regularly, search a site like MLB.com for videos. There is already a site for stuff like that. It’s called YouTube.

Back from hiatus

Been gone for a while with family, friends and work.

Planning a few things for upcoming posts. So, sorry for the prolonged absence.

Grading TMR’s “You Heard Me”

Last year, Matthew Berry, a.k.a. The Talented Mr. Roto, over at ESPN Fantasy put out a list of bold predictions. I saved them for fun and thought I’d revisit them and see how many he nailed and how many he whiffed on.

Berry’s prediction – actual results in italics

1. Anquan Boldin, 1,300 yards and 10 TD – 1,038 yards, 11 TD
2. Leonard Pope, 7 TD – 0 TD
3. Michael Turner, fewer than 1,000 rushing yards and 7 TD – 1,699 rushing yards, 17 TD
4. Willis McGahee, 16 games played, top 10 RB finish – 13 games played, finished ranked 34th
5. Troy Smith, 24 total touchdowns – 1 touchdown
6. Marshawn Lynch, more than 1,700 total yards and double-digit TD – 1,336 total yards, 9 TD
7. Steve Smith, will not reach 1,000 receiving yards or 8 TD, and only play 12 games – 1,421 yards, 6 TD, 14 games
8. Devin Hester, finish as a top-25 WR and a total of 10 TD – 45th finish, 3 TD
9. Kenny Watson, leading RB for Bengals – #4 RB for Bengals, Cedric Benson was #1
10. Brady Quinn, start by Week 9 – started Week 10
11. Marion Barber, finish a top 5 fantasy RB – Finished ranked 16th
12. Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson will break up. And Romo will have his best game of the season the week after. And then Joe Simpson will say something creepy about his daughter. – Still together
13. Tony Scheffler, finish a top 5 fantasy TE – Finished ranked 10th
14. Calvin Johnson, top 10 WR, Jon Kitna, more than 4,000 yards – Johnson: finished ranked 3rd, Kitna: 758 yards
15. Even more people will realize that because its leagues are 100 percent free and offer free live scoring, fully customizable options (including keeper league and fractional scoring) and an auction draft room, ESPN is the place to host your Fantasy Football League. Sign up now! (As you know, I’m a company man.) – Not sure how many people signed up because of this, probably 3 million
16. James Jones, 800 receiving yards and 7 TD – 274 yards, 1 TD
17. I’ll make good on my baseball prediction of dating a totally sane woman. – I’m gonna guess this didn’t happen
18. Matt Schaub, 3,500 yards and 28 TD – 3,043 yards, 15 TD
19. Dallas Clark, finish as #1 fantasy TE – Finished #3
20. David Garrard, top-10 fantasy QB and no more than 6 INT – Finished #10, 13 INT
21. Reggie Williams, double-digit TD – 3 TD
22. I’ll beat Nate Ravitz in a footrace and win more of the board bets. We’ll have a listener dress up as a monkey and be our slave for a day. (I’m telling you, you have to listen to our daily Fantasy Focus Football podcast.) – I got nothin
23. Kolby Smith, end year as leading rusher for Chiefs – Finished #4, even Tyler Thigpen beat him
24. Ted Ginn Jr., 1,000 yards and 7 TD – 790 yards, 2 TD (2 more rushing TD)
25. Adrian Peterson (Minn.), less than 13 games and finish outside top 5 fantasy RB – 16 games, finished #3
26. The new “90210″ show will be terrible. Yet I’ll still watch every episode. Tori Spelling will end up showing up, eventually. – This was a prediction? Even NBC knew this would be a horrible show, and they know bad.
27. Tom Brady, 40 TD – Nobody predicted an ACL injury in game 1
28. No Saints RB will have more than 600 rushing or 1,000 total – Pierre Thomas: 625 rushing, No Saints RB had 1,000 total yards
29. Eli Manning, no more than 25 TD – 21 touchdowns
30. Amani Toomer, 7 receiving TD – 4 touchdowns
31. Thomas Jones, finish as a top-10 fantasy RB – Finished tied for 4th
32. Jerrico Cotchery, finish as a top-20 fantasy WR – Finished 29th
33. Brett Favre, consecutive game streak will end – Negative, the old bastard did it.
34. Brett Favre will retire at the end of the season and do a long, tearful farewell at various stadiums. There’ll be magazine covers and retrospectives. – Bingo.
35. Brett Favre will suit up for the Buccaneers next season. – Do the Vikings count?
36. Darren McFadden, more than 1,600 total yards and double-digit TD – 499 rushing and 4 TD
37. Ronald Curry, at least 1,000 receiving yard and JaMarcus Russel, 25 TD – Curry: 181 yards, Russell: 13 TD
38. Donovan McNabb, play all 16 games – Yes, how did he get that one right? Must be the Campbell’s soup.
39. Santonio Holmes, finish as a top-12 fantasy WR – Finished 32nd
40. Marc Bulger, 3,500 yards and 24 TD, Holt, 10 TD – Bulger: 2,720 yards and 11 TD, Holt: 3 TD
41. Antonio Gates, at least 8 TE will finish higher – Gates finished 4th
42. Michael Phelps will “date” Lindsay Lohan and find himself in a weird love triangle with Samantha Ronson. For no apparent reason, a picture of the three of them with Wilmer Valderrama, David Spade and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog will show up on TMZ. – Can we pay for this to be arranged?
43. Frank Gore, will not be a top-15 fantasy player, less than 1,300 yards, less than 10 TD – Finished 36th, 1,409 total yards, 8 total TD
44. Ben Obomanu, 800 yards and 6 TD – Injured all season
45. Tampa Bay Defense, finish top-5 – Finished ranked 5th
46. Chris Johnson, leading rusher for Titans – Yardage yes, touchdowns no, fantasy points, yes
47. Justin Gage, more than 1,000 receiving yards and Alge Crumpler, 8 TD – Gage: 651 yards, Crumpler: 1 TD
48. Santana Moss and Antwaan Randle El, more than 1,000 yards receiving and Jason Campbell, 3,000 yards and 25 TD – Moss: 1,044 yards, Randle El: 593 yards, Campbell: 3,245 yards, 13 TD
49. There will be at least 100 comments on this article on ESPN Conversation (beta!). At least 10 of them are positive. – 563 comments, but only 9 positive. Ouch.
50. My Redskins will win the Super Bowl, and Jim Zorn will be named coach of the year. – Always love the homer picks

Check out Berry over at ESPN. Always a fun read.

Triple Threat League Update!

I’m participating in a triple threat league…Glad you asked. The same 14 guys play fantasy baseball, fantasy football and fantasy basketball adding up points accumulated across all 3 sports to determine who gets bragging rights. It is a keeper league too, so you play for this year and the future.

Currently in head-to-head format my team, Dixie Cup Check, is gasping for air at the bottom of its division. Struggling with injuries to 4 of my first 5 draft picks I’ve been scraping the free agent market hoping for a gem. Josh Hamilton (round 1 – 2 DL stints), Brandon Webb (out til the All Star Break), Cole Hamels (struggling, spent a few weeks as DTD), Daisuke Matsuzaka (spent a couple weeks on the DL), Joe Mauer (started first month on the DL). Needless to say, if this was Rotisserie style, I’d be trading and looking toward 2010.

The drafts for all 3 leagues were randomly generated and I scored the 2nd pick in Football and the 1st pick in Basketball. Being weak in the NBA I traded my #1 pick in basketball for the #1 in football, giving me the first 2 football picks. We also swapped the 11th round picks, me giving my football pick and him giving his basketball pick.

My other team, Triple Playa Haters Ball, is in a standard 10-team ESPN league and currently sitting in 6th place. I’m hoping my strategy of having a core of solid starting pitchers and quality relievers will help net me most of the pitching categories.

Tune in closer to football and I’ll unveil my rankings for each position. And around the All-Star Break, I’ll give my mid-season rankings based on current production and projected production.

Draft Day

Welcome to my fantasy life.

In the future I’ll post about my personal fantasy teams, answer questions from readers regarding trade advice or pose questions to the readers. For the time being I’ll explain how I came to love fantasy sports.

I’m 23 years old, and have been playing fantasy sports in some version since I was 8 years old. Mostly fantasy football and baseball, although I am extremely active in salary cap style “mini-games”, March Madness (still trying for that perfect bracket) and have even been known to dabble in golf (mistake), NASCAR (mistake), tennis (mistake) and soccer (fun – during the World Cup).

This blog will focus on the big 3 (with my admitted weakness being the NBA).

I’ll post my rankings for players and take a look at Free Agents and analyze match-ups as I see fit.

Enjoy.