Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat. I'm a happily married man; in fact, I'm still wondering how in the world I got the greatest female baseball fan on earth to actually agree to a legal ceremony that binds her to me for life.
But I'm also a fantasy baseball nut. And that means, just as I feel I'm entitled to a single scoop of Key Lime Pie in a waffle cone at Brusters once a week, I also have a birthright to have nearly unhealthy fascinations with certain MLB players.
Ryan Braun ended up on my Christmas card list in 2007. Last year, Mark Reynolds and I were in the love-hate relationship of a lifetime, and he doesn't even know about it. (Side note: air conditioners are going away in Phoenix, since Reynolds' whiffs are providing plenty of cool air for the city).
This year, I turn into a giddy little schoolgirl when the name Kendry Morales comes up in conversation.
Let me paint the picture for you, with several gallons of bleak prison-wall gray paint. My fantasy team's disabled list has Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Jake Peavy, Ian Kinsler, and Carlos Delgado right now. That's right, my best fantasy players got together, went behind my back, and signed a collective 3-year contract with the disabled list. (You know, the same people that have Mark Prior under a lifetime deal.)
But in the midst of pulling out what remaining hair I have over having to start Cristian Guzman and Josh Willingham in an 8-team league, there's one sunny bright spot beaming from sunny Southern California.
He's Kendry Morales. And if Justin Timberlake were here, he'd have just enough time to call my fascination with Kendry a 'bromance' before I started throwing tomatoes at him.
What, you've never heard of Kendry the Great? Or you can vaguely recall him as some new guy that might play for the Dodgers, the Angels, the Padres, or the Hiroshima Carp?
Wake up and smell the Cuban cigars, man!
The Angel in the outfield has 23 home runs. That's right, 23. More than Paul Konerko, more than Jim Thome, more than Jason Bay... more than the three-headed monster of Josh Hamilton, Magglio Ordonez, and Carlos Beltran COMBINED! (How many fantasy owners groaned with the mention of those three names?)
23 long balls doesn't exactly inspire memories of Barry Bonds in 2001-2002. But ever since baseball's roid rage has died down to an ember, those coveted homers are harder to come by than a Hollywood celeb without a hoard of TMZ papparazzi following his every move.
The point here is that it's probably a good thing I live on the opposite coast, 'cause I might play TMZ-guy to Morales's John Mayer. Except I'd just thank him over and over for somehow keeping my scrap heap of a fantasy team in second place... until the LAPD put me in a little cell with Amy Winehouse.
So I'll just admire the .293-23-70 line from afar. I'll keep replaying that pair of 3-run bombs in the Metrodome Sunday. And in this era of depleted 401k plans and bursting real-estate bubbles, I'll keep reminding myself that values like Kendry are available - for free - on your local waiver wire.
And I might buy out the Angels team store of Kendry Morales posters. But, then my wife might start to get worried.
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