Games (Other, More Physically Fit) People Play

I'm a sports person. I'm not diehard, I don't collect articles of clothing worn by athletes, I can't look at a program and go all John Nash on the stats, and I still hope for a Leisure question when I'm going for the green pie piece in Trivial Pursuit, but sometimes I'm sick of being responsible for my own happiness and I want that weight to rest on someone else's shoulders for a few hours. Also, I like to drink and gamble. My motives are pure.

I'll take twenty on the white guy.

As a teenager, I chose the Buffalo Bills as my team, right before they made it to their third Super Bowl, against the Cowboys. Clad in a starter jacket that displaced roughly four times the volume of my own body , I sat at my best friend's house, on a rug made out of something her dad had killed, eating chips and (I believe) pure sugar cubes, learning what it truly means to have a man break your heart, and earn millions doing it. I also learned why one never should spend their Christmas money on a commemorative t-shirt before the actual event, because if your team loses, it will only serve as a painful and unfashionable reminder of your loss, and because it is made of some indesctructible 1990s polymer and will somehow remain in your dresser forever, so that when you return home for Xmas and need a tshirt to work out in, you'll be forced to dress exactly as you did in 1993.

I stayed with the Bills through the next year, recreating the same scenario at my best friend's house the next January, only a little more aware of Frank Reich's ass...ets as a respectable backup QB. This ended much the same way as it had the last time, and I was taught a lifelong lesson in why you don't go back to someone who broke your heart the first time around; I believe this also planted the seeds for what now might be termed "a clinically unhealthy hatred for all things Texas".

Also makes an excellent burger.

Sick of justifying why I continued to like a team that had brought me so very much pain, I took a break from the sport for several years, rejoining at the advent of fantasy leagues, where I could distribute my expectations and minimize the risk of crushing blows- the mutual fund of sports. Though I toy with other sports, my main fantasy squeeze has long been football- I find the draft offers just the right mix of knowledge and hunches in the earlier rounds, and reliance on dirty-sounding names in the later, less-informed rounds (God Bless You, Neil Rackers, for years of juvenile joy). I've played with the same guys for years now, and even though I wouldn't know to spit on half of them if I passed them in the street, we've remained a pretty constant group. There have been a few wild cards that cycle in and out (I always get the league in custody battles), and when a new person enters, usually the coworker of a friend's cousin or someone else with similarly solid credentials, the first thing we need to know is what niche they'll corner in the shittalking market. With an Asian Guy, Italian Guy, Black Guy, Irish Guy, Girl, Canadian Guy, and Once Highlighted His Hair in 1998 and Has Been Called Gay Ever Since Guy, my league is a veritable small world of slurs after all, so it's often a stretch to find new material; when we got some fresh blood a few years back and discovered that he had a young daughter, I could practically see saliva dripping onto keyboards across the country, such was the breadth of new (and highly incrimimating) jokes opened up to us.

Racker? I hardly even know her.

Now, as my fantasy baseball team begins what looks to be a looonnnng season of pooch-screwing and general fuckuppery, my hockey team enters the playoffs wiping the blood of the rest of the league from its mouth. I've been here before, and I just don't know how much of my soul to invest in a city that has essentially shoved me down the stairs then told me it loves me so many times before, especially considering how long-term the commitment is. It looks good going in, but two months is a long time to vest yourself in something without the guarantee of eggs in the morning. If we win, I get to lord it over the other three hockey fans in the city, but if we lose, well, back-to-back viewings of Miracle can only do so much healin'.