Truthfully, and this is the key to the story, whether he was getting a new kitchen or not, Tij just loved to trade; he was constantly wheeling and dealing. “Every year,” Dan tells me, “Tij would either be a buyer or a seller, always planning for current or future domination.”
In a heartbreaking turn of events, Dave “Tij” Armitage is no longer with us, having lost his battle with cancer on New Year’s Eve 2011.
He was 33 years old.
Dan tells me, “He leaves an infant son, Kingston; his wonderful wife, Lauren; his mother, father, and sister. Besides his friends, family, and his teaching career, I can’t think of anything more important to Tij than fantasy sports. He was the guy when it came to blockbuster trades.”
And so, two months before his death, Tij took his close friends to dinner. “We talked fantasy for hours.” One last negotiation, one last deal with each of his best friends, a wheeler-dealer to the very end. By the end of the evening, Tij had traded his entire team (except Megatron) to different people in his league and amassed an absurd number of picks for the upcoming year, “virtually guaranteeing Tij’s first championship.”
Tij’s team is run by a close friend of his who carries on his legacy and passion for fantasy football. “Now the rest of us are playing catch-up, just the way Tij would have wanted it.” The team ended up in second overall in 2012 and is set up for a run of domination. As for Dan, he’ll have Aaron Rodgers on his team forever. Not just because he’s awesome, of course. “But also because I never want to forget just how I ended up with him. Miss you, bud.”
Heartbreaking as that story is, I love the league gathering for one final dinner/massive trade session for a guy who loved to deal. I love leagues that find all sorts of ways, big and small, to honor those who have passed away.
Zach Miller tells me about the Flop Dong Fantasy Baseball League and its commissioner, Brian Rose. Brian’s father, Fred Rose, passed away after a long battle with cancer. On the day of his funeral, June 15, 2012, everyone in their league benched all their players for a day of silence to honor Fred. As Zach says, “In our league, we are a family, and we need to support our members.”
John Raymond agrees. John has been in a fantasy football league with the same people since 1993. As John says, “To be honest, we are not the best of friends. We just happened to have converged early in the rise of fantasy. I haven’t seen most of the people in the league for at least 10 years.”
Heart-wrenching is the only way to describe October of the 2009 season, as John’s nine-year-old son Carson got sick suddenly and passed away a week later. “The rest of the year was a hazy fog. I know there were several times when I neglected to set a lineup only to find on Sunday that someone had done it for me, replacing a bye week or someone who was injured with an active player. Despite the kindness and assistance of my competitors, I crawled to an 8–8 finish.”
Later that year, John and his wife started the Carson Raymond Foundation in honor of their son. And the league? “Without provocation, every weekly winner, the Super Bowl champion, and runner-up donated all their winnings to the foundation. This little society that we construct in the ether has real-world implications and I am grateful for it.”
Carson’s favorite sport was baseball, so as a result, the Carson Raymond Foundation provides opportunities for children who normally couldn’t afford it to play ball. In the past two-plus years, the foundation has built three baseball fields, provided equipment and scholarships to hundreds of kids, and run baseball camps for about 500 elementary-age children in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area.
As for the league? It continues on and, John says, “slowly the usual array of snide comments, cheap shots, and disparaging Photo-Shopped pictures have reemerged.”
Adrian Orona wrote me to tell me about his fantasy football league, now in its fifth year. Just after Thanksgiving, one of the members, Richard Ortiz, passed away from a heart attack. After finding out the news, the rest of the league decided to leave all of their lineups untouched. And Richard’s team, which had two losses at the time of his passing . . . just kept winning. “Week after week until, finally, Richard made the finals for the very first time!” Adrian tells me.
So what happened in the finals???
“Well, Tony Romo happened.”
I remember. Week 15 of the 2011 season, Romo hurt his hand and finished 0-for-2 with 0 yards. I assume Romo was Richard’s quarterback?
“Yep. Richard ended up losing by 11 points. Even in death, you can’t count on Tony Romo.”
The league has renamed their league and trophy after Richard’s screen name as a way to honor and remember their friend. “While it didn’t end the way we had hoped, he will always be a champion in our books.”
Oddly, I ended up getting a lot more stories about guys dying midseason than I would have thought. But this next one is one of the most shake-your-head-and-say-damn stories I’ve heard.
About a decade ago, Brent Adamo remembers, the Weese Football League in Phoenix needed another member. One of the guys in the league, Chris Campeau, invited a coworker named Jim. A huge football fan, Jim had never played fantasy before but was very interested. And, apparently, very good at it. The first eight weeks Jim’s team went 8–0.
“Every Tuesday he’d always say, ‘Rookie ball coach . . . knows what he’s doing.’ Drove me nuts.”
And then, Brent tells me, without warning, Jim fell off the face of the earth. No one has heard from him. “We determine we will just set his best possible lineup based on the website’s projected points.”
And the team kept winning, reeling off three straight. That’s when they finally found out why no one had heard from Jim. He had been found murdered, the victim of a robbery.
Speechless.
But in the middle of all this horrific darkness, there was one cool little moment: Jim’s team kept winning and it never lost. That’s right. Start to finish, no trades or pickups, just the league setting the projected best lineup . . . Jim’s team ran the table and won the championship.
In the history of the Weese Football League, Sean says “this is the first and only team to ever go undefeated. We sent the winnings check to his sister.”
Chris adds, “The perpetrators were later arrested. One of them died in a shootout with police. At the funeral for Jim, I had let Jim’s relatives know he was doing rather well in our fantasy league and that we would be donating all the winnings to the family. I remember receiving a thank-you card from the family with Jim’s photo in it.”
I can’t prove it. I realize it sounds crazy at worst or hopelessly naive at best. But I believe there is a reason Jim’s team won that league. Small and dumb as it may be, given the atrocities he and his family suffered, there is something mystical and magical about fantasy that goes beyond what we understand.
There are a million things in this world that make no logical sense. Every day we see and hear stories, big and small, for which there is no explanation or a tenuous one at best. The cynic would say it’s just luck, and they might be right. But, and maybe it’s the child in me, I still like to believe that there are forces greater than us working here on Earth. And that sometimes something doesn’t happen because it is supposed to, but rather, it happens because it should.
TIME-OUT:
The Best Fantasy Team Names
From death to birth. Specifically, the birth of fantasy sports. When you talk about the start of it all, the thing that always gets overlooked is the book. They’ll occasionally mention Bill Gamson, Robert Sklar, and the Baseball Seminar. They’ll sometimes talk about Bill Winkenbach and Andy Mousalimas and the GOPPPL, the first fantasy football league, created in 1963 and played in the Oakland bar King’s X. They usually discuss Strat-O-Matic, APBA, Bill James, and they will always speak lovingly (and deservedly) of Daniel Okrent, the creator of Rotisserie League Baseball. They mention the impressive résumés of that initial leagu
e, they bring up the now defunct restaurant they all gathered at, they remark ironically that the founding fathers never made money off this insanely popular game they created, and they always throw in the fact that Okrent has never won the game he created.
But they rarely mention the book. And the book is key. Had Rotisserie League Baseball, the little green book that introduced the world to the game, been boring or written poorly, who knows where we are or if it ever catches on? But luckily, it wasn’t. It was smart and clever and funny and it just seemed like the founding fathers were having such a blast playing this game that I (and everyone else) desperately wanted to find a league. From their individual “team media guides,” complete with details about “promotional days” at their “home stadiums” to the trash talk to mocking of athletes, even the way they wrote the rules . . . the book was inviting and fun, opening up a whole new world that people had never considered.
And for me, I loved the team name. In the book, they made a big deal about the team name, declaring that all team names should be some sort of play on the owner’s name. That’s why you saw among the first-ever fantasy baseball names Daniel Okrent’s Okrent Fenokees, Bob Sklar’s Sklar Gazers, Valerie Salembier’s Salembier Flambes, Peter Gethers and Glen Waggoner’s Getherswag Goners, Lee Eisenberg’s Eisenberg Furriers, Corlies Smith and the Smith Corons, Bruce McCall’s McCall Collects, Michael Pollet’s Pollet Burros, Tom Guinzburg and the Guinzburg Burghers, Steve Wulf’s Wulf Gang, Rob Fleder’s Fleder Mice, and more.
More recently, team names are not just a play on an owner’s name but plays on athletes’ names, plays on pop culture, inside jokes within the league, or just plain filthy. They reflect the personality of the owner, the personality of the league, and they are crucial. Personally, I like having the same team name year after year after year. Builds a sense of history. I tend to use names that have meaning to me. The Fightin’ Rabbis has been a longtime favorite and the Hollywood Phonies (based on my previous career) is the Fat Dog entry. Podcast fans will not be shocked to learn my team in the league that I lost Mike Trout in is The Bitter Berries. My love of Jimmy Buffet is the inspiration behind my Doug Logan team name, the Parrotheads, and my unhealthy obsession with Beverly Hills, 90210 shows up as I am often the West Beverly Wildcats. (I know. Nothing crazy there. I’ve just had them for years. I’m sentimental.)
Others change it up, sometimes as often as every few weeks or at least once a season. They are very different, but the one thing they have in common is they are almost always hilarious. For years I have printed the best ones (that I can print, it is a family website, after all) in the preseason of both baseball and football.
So here’s a sampling of the best and/or most popular fantasy team names I’ve heard over the years. In no particular order . . .
Football
Breesus Is My Homeboy!
Yippy Ki Yay, Marshall Faulker
Multiple Scoregasms
Run, Forsett, Run
The Chronicles of Favria
The House [Why? Because the House always wins!]
Pimpin’ Ain’t Brees-y
Kibbles and Vicks
It’s on Like Ndamukong
I’m Bringing Hasselbeck
Snakes on Reggie Wayne
Brady Gaga
Gronk if You’re Horny
Belicheck Yourself Before You Rex Yourself
Wilfork for Food
Pete Carroll-ine [Bum Bum Bum]
Moons over My Tamme
Luck Be a Brady Tonight
Gronky Punch
Learning from My Vickstakes
Hakeema Matata
Teenage Newton Ninja Turtles
That’s What She Bid
Whoa Whoa Whoa, Stop the Gronk
Off in a Corner [because no one beats . . .]
Somebody That I Used Tebow
Luck, Beat Tom Brady Tonight
My Delhomme Is My Cassel
A perennial . . . Somewhere over Dwayne Bowe. Or Double Dwayne Bowe.
4th and Drunk
2 Mannings, 1 Cup
Ed Hochuli’s Gun Show
Suggs to be You
Romosexuals
Cut That Meat!
She Hate Me
Darth Waivers
Boy Named Suh
Orakophobia
Praters Gonna Prate
Baseball
My Dinner with Andrus
Openly Bay
Hameltime!
Tabata Bing!
FIP 2 Be Square
To Kila Marlon Byrd
902Cano
Sipping on Gin & Youk
Dexy’s Midnight RISP
The Duda Abides
Baby Got Bacne
A Priest Walks into Aybar
Bryce Bryce Baby
Lady Galarraga
I Shin Soo Choose You
Blue-Va-Ja-Jays
Aroldis and Kumar
New Kids on the Knoblauch
Attack of the Chones
Personal DeJesus
Angels in the Troutfield
Longorious Basterds
Call Me Mabry
Twisted Fister
A perennial . . . Honey Nut Ichiros
The Kempire Strikes Back
Another perennial . . . Carry on My Heyward Son
Dropping Gloads
R. A. Dickulous
99 Problems but a Pitch Ain’t 1
Of course, some people go meta.
[Insert Terrible Pun Here.]
And, when all else fails there’s always . . .
I Blame Matthew Berry.
12.
Fantasy Sports Saves Lives
or
“I Used to Think He’d Be Dead by 50. Now I Think He’ll Outlive Us All.”
I am a big believer of moments in time. That life is comprised of them and that they are fleeting. And when one such a moment happens, they are to be grabbed on to, held tightly, and shared.
Jeremy Carroll’s fantasy football league, Ten Yard Fight, formed in 2002 with 12 best friends from Clawson, Michigan, experienced that moment. Jeremy explains: “Our founder and first commissioner, Christian Davis, is a great guy, but he has never been the best fantasy player.”
Christian confirms this: “Over the first 11 years of the league, I only made the playoffs four times, and I never won a playoff game. In the other years, I was always near the bottom, and in fact, I once had back-to-back seasons of 1–12.”
Christian is an only child, and tragedy struck in February of 2011 when his mother, Susan, suddenly passed away. “It broke my heart. My dad Richard suffered through chronic arthritis, a quadruple bypass, and many other issues, so when my mom passed first, it was a very sad shock. To be honest, with all of my dad’s health issues, I felt like if he went first, Mom wouldn’t have to stress out all the time and could focus on herself. So when it happened to her, there was almost more of a sadness to it. I don’t mean it to sound like my dad and I had a bad relationship. I loved him very much, but I don’t think I told him that as often as I told my mom.”
Soon after, Christian’s father would succumb to his failing health: just five months after his mom passed away, Christian’s father died too. “At 31, Christian was suddenly without any immediate family,” Jeremy says.
Christian’s father’s funeral was just a week before the draft, and naturally, between his dad’s last days and all the arrangements, Christian had had no time to prepare. Jeremy is blunt. “His draft was terrible. But he did unveil a new team name and logo.”
Christian says: “Knowing that it was hard to tell my dad exactly how much I appreciated him, I came up with a way to honor him. Before his health failed him, my dad
was actually part of a skydiving club called the Thunder Chickens. So in my silly attempt to make things better, I promised myself I would add that to my team name.”
And so, with the most career losses in league history, a terrible team, and a heavy heart, Christian Davis began the 2011 fantasy football season.
After an 0–2 start, it was looking like another typical season for Christian, who had made only one significant change: switching his team name to Team Super Punch and the Thunder Chickens. Then, out of nowhere, “Christian starts making some smart moves, buys low on Arian Foster, etc., and suddenly . . . his team starts winning!”
Did it ever. He went 9–2 the rest of the way, winning his division and his semifinal matchup. For the first time in the history of the league, he was playing in the finals. Against Team Jellyfish, his archrival, a team that had already beaten him twice that season and owned him every other year.
The championship game came down to the Monday night game and the whole league got together to watch the game. The Jellyfish had a lead heading into Monday night, and combined with Roddy White’s 127 yards, Christian was still losing with less than five minutes to play in the game. Their matchup should have been over at that point because the Saints were beating the Falcons handily. But Christian’s QB Drew Brees stayed in anyways and, with 2:51 left in the game, threw a touchdown pass to Darren Sproles . . . clinching Christian’s first-ever title by a slim margin!
Christian remembers, “I know it’s fantasy football, and Drew Brees finding the open man has nothing to do with my parents and me, but that night it was hard not to feel that maybe, just maybe, there was something bigger than us at work. I like to think of myself as a man of faith, but it’s been hard at times to imagine heaven. Still, that night, I snuck away, looked to the stars, and literally said thank-you to my parents.”
Jeremy adds: “It was an incredible moment, brought to us by fantasy sports. For the first time in nearly a year, I saw him truly happy. The tears of pain were gone, replaced by tears of joy.” Christian agrees. “Obviously it was a tough year, but the way the season unfolded definitely made me smile. Not sure I’ve truly stopped since.”
Fantasy Life: The Outrageous, Uplifting, and Heartbreaking World of Fantasy Sports from the Guy Who's Lived It Page 14