Barred from physical participation in the May free agent draft on the flimsy excuse that I was on a different continent at the time, I eagerly anticipated taking my long-overdue seat at the head of the drafting table for the June event. Never before have the Cheese scaled such lofty heights. Before the morning was over I learned first-hand the misery and suffering that first-chair occupants must endure. In future meetings I vow to have more empathy, more love, more patience with the league leader – unless it’s somebody else, of course.
And it probably won’t last. Thanks to the Memorial Day Massacre, $40M worth of star-power hit the bench until mid-July at the earliest. That’s going to be tough to replace. Still, Le Fromage Cotage, we did not despair. We exiled our weak-hitting infielders (Franco and Russell) to the bench and D.C., respectively, and replaced them with Forsythe and Seager, who are SUPPOSED to be better. I hope nobody tells them that they are now Cheese. We also sacrificed a couple of pretty good pitchers in the process, but you must break ze eggs to cook ze breakfast, as they say.
I was WELL AWARE of the game that the wily Wolverine whiner (sorry, I needed the alliteration) was playing with me during the Ian Happ bidding process. Having noted the scurrilous tactics successfully pursued by my former friend, the representative from Flint Hill, in the bidding for Zimmer, our 9th-place manager decided that he would do a variation on that theme – he bid me up until I was completely out of money. He didn’t want Happ at all – what he wanted was revenge. For Trout. And Archer. And Duffy. I knew all that – and I played along anyway. But I got him, and Happ got two homers yesterday.