the greatest weekend of the year (with pics!)
22 March 2011
Every year, during the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament, my buddies and I get together for our annual “man weekend” (though we don’t call it that, as that would be stupid). This consists of two parts: taking the day off (or half the day off) on Friday and meeting at someone’s apartment to eat lots of food, drink lots of beer, and watch lots of college basketball; and getting together for our Iron Sheik (that’s our league name) fantasy baseball draft on Saturday.
So, yeah. It’s pretty hard to fuck that up and not to have a good time. Still, this was an especially good one.
On Friday, I took a half day, and me and my buddies (Site Guy) Brendan, John and Bill went to my place in Brooklyn to begin the festivities. But before I got back to my apartment, I stopped a picked up a little sumpin’ sumpin’:
What you’re looking at, ladies and gentlemen, is our standard order for the Friday portion of our annual man weekend. But because it was just the four of us, we halved the order (usually we have about 6-10 on this day, but it was a light year). All told, we got:
- half pound of prosciutto
- half pound of genoa salami
- half pound of hot soppressata
- half pound of sweet soppressata
- half pound of hot capicola
- half pound of pepperoni
- one pound of provolone cheese
- two pounds of fresh mozzarella cheese
- two pounds of roasted red peppers
- two pounds of macaroni salad
- three large rolls
So there’s that. What you see above is what we did on Friday, from 2pm until 1am. To be honest, I don’t recall much from that day, thanks to a nitrate-induced haze, as well as all the Bud Light and constant flipping from game to game to game to game. It was like a time warp.
What I do remember is waking up on Saturday with not even a hint of a hangover (thank you, constant lunchmeat grazing over the course of eleven hours). So at 11am on Saturday morning the four of us went to the LongBow, a lovely Welsh pub on my block, for some breakfast and to watch the Arsenal match and BC basketball game.
The bad news was that BC lost (which I didn’t really care about, as it was the first BC basketball game I watched all year). The bad/ok news was that Arsenal went down 2-0 to a team that might not even be in the Premier League next year, before coming back and playing to a 2-2 draw. The good was this:
That is the LongBow’s bacon egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. The two twists that make the sammy special are that the cheese is melted over the Irish bacon, with two eggs then added on top, and that the bread is this thick “country” white bread that is to die for. A terrific way to start the day.
When the games were over, it was into Manhattan to get ready for the Iron Sheik XXXI draft. For the second year in a row, we met at Foley’s, a baseball-themed bar near Penn Station. And there, from 2pm until 9pm, we drank a lot and ate a lot and watched a lot of basketball (are you noticing a theme here?) and, oh yeah, drafted our teams.
As for my team…we’ll see. The team is listed below, and the numbers in parentheses indicate the rounds in which I drafted that player. Each team had to keep four players, so when I write “(3)”, that means that player was drafted in the third round after keepers, which would be the seventh round overall. Because of in-season trades last year, I had extra picks in the first, second and sixth rounds.
C Víctor Martínez (1b)
1B Luke Scott (14)
2B Chase Utley (K)
SS Hanley Ramírez (K)
3B Evan Longoria (K)
OF Shin-Soo Choo (1a)
OF Jayson Werth (2b)
OF Chris Young (3)
Util Colby Rasmus (5)
Util David Ortiz (11)
Bench Kelly Johnson (9)
Bench Matt Wieters (10)
Bench Chone Figgins (12)
Bench Adam Lind (16)
SP1 David Price (K)
SP2 Cole Hamels (2a)
SP3 Brandon Morrow (4)
SP4 Ted Lilly (6a)
SP5 Josh Beckett (8)
SP6 Jhoulys Chacin (15)
RP1 Neftali Feliz (6b)
RP2 Chris Pérez (7)
RP3 Joel Hanrahan (13)
This is a very, very different team for me. Usually, it’s two starters and one solid closer within the first ten rounds, then the rest of my staff in the later picks. Instead, this year, I drafted only two pitchers after the 8th round: Hanrahan in the 13th and Chacin in the 15th. As such, I’m not sure how to feel.
The good: In an OBP league (we count OBP instead of AVG and TB instead of HR), I’ll take Choo and Werth in those spots any day. I also like that I didn’t have to draft any one-dimensional speed guys, because I’ll be getting some here and there from my regular starters at SS, 3B, and all of my OF; if Utley were healthy, it’s wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that I have EIGHT guys (Utley, Hanley, Longoria, Choo, Werth, Young, Rasmus, and Johnson) capable of 20-20-ish seasons. Figgins that late was great, because he still walked a bunch last year, will pick up 3B eligibility, and had a decent second half, which should translate into better overall numbers. My last pick, Adam Lind, hit 46 doubles and 35 homers in 2009, so that’s worth a flier.
The bad: I reached for Morrow at the start of the 4th. But he wasn’t making it all the way back to me, and I remember watching his 17 K, two walk, one hit shutout against Tampa Bay last summer, and I fell instantly in love. So it was a reach, but one that I’d probably do again. As for the Wieters pick…this is sort of a running joke in our league, as I’ve been touting Wieters since even before he became the supposed second coming of Christ, but with a better home plate to second base time. Even after getting V-Mart, I took the flier. Meh.
The ugly: Chase Utley’s fucking killing me. When I announced him as a keeper, I had no idea anything was wrong with him. But with no news but bad news, I had to take Kelly Johnson in the 9th, and still wanted to draft Figgins as extra protection. Honestly, I went into this draft with the mindset that I’d get nothing from Utley all year, and drafted accordingly. I mean, fuck.
After the draft ended at 9pm, five of us, including our new buddy, Mike, who answered the bell and joined us for the draft, went back to Bay Ridge and one of my local bars, where we played darts until 3am. It was there that I played darts for the first time, and also learned for the first time that I AM ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST DART PLAYERS. Because apparently all you need to become one of the world’s greatest dart players is to have never played darts before and then had 15+ alcoholic drinks over ten hours. After 31 years, I think I’ve found my sport.
************
And so it was one of my favorite weekends of 2011 so far. But having said that, I’m glad the next one is 51 weeks away. Because I think it’ll take about that long for me to recover.
So, yeah. It’s pretty hard to fuck that up and not to have a good time. Still, this was an especially good one.
On Friday, I took a half day, and me and my buddies (Site Guy) Brendan, John and Bill went to my place in Brooklyn to begin the festivities. But before I got back to my apartment, I stopped a picked up a little sumpin’ sumpin’:
What you’re looking at, ladies and gentlemen, is our standard order for the Friday portion of our annual man weekend. But because it was just the four of us, we halved the order (usually we have about 6-10 on this day, but it was a light year). All told, we got:
- half pound of prosciutto
- half pound of genoa salami
- half pound of hot soppressata
- half pound of sweet soppressata
- half pound of hot capicola
- half pound of pepperoni
- one pound of provolone cheese
- two pounds of fresh mozzarella cheese
- two pounds of roasted red peppers
- two pounds of macaroni salad
- three large rolls
So there’s that. What you see above is what we did on Friday, from 2pm until 1am. To be honest, I don’t recall much from that day, thanks to a nitrate-induced haze, as well as all the Bud Light and constant flipping from game to game to game to game. It was like a time warp.
What I do remember is waking up on Saturday with not even a hint of a hangover (thank you, constant lunchmeat grazing over the course of eleven hours). So at 11am on Saturday morning the four of us went to the LongBow, a lovely Welsh pub on my block, for some breakfast and to watch the Arsenal match and BC basketball game.
The bad news was that BC lost (which I didn’t really care about, as it was the first BC basketball game I watched all year). The bad/ok news was that Arsenal went down 2-0 to a team that might not even be in the Premier League next year, before coming back and playing to a 2-2 draw. The good was this:
That is the LongBow’s bacon egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. The two twists that make the sammy special are that the cheese is melted over the Irish bacon, with two eggs then added on top, and that the bread is this thick “country” white bread that is to die for. A terrific way to start the day.
When the games were over, it was into Manhattan to get ready for the Iron Sheik XXXI draft. For the second year in a row, we met at Foley’s, a baseball-themed bar near Penn Station. And there, from 2pm until 9pm, we drank a lot and ate a lot and watched a lot of basketball (are you noticing a theme here?) and, oh yeah, drafted our teams.
As for my team…we’ll see. The team is listed below, and the numbers in parentheses indicate the rounds in which I drafted that player. Each team had to keep four players, so when I write “(3)”, that means that player was drafted in the third round after keepers, which would be the seventh round overall. Because of in-season trades last year, I had extra picks in the first, second and sixth rounds.
C Víctor Martínez (1b)
1B Luke Scott (14)
2B Chase Utley (K)
SS Hanley Ramírez (K)
3B Evan Longoria (K)
OF Shin-Soo Choo (1a)
OF Jayson Werth (2b)
OF Chris Young (3)
Util Colby Rasmus (5)
Util David Ortiz (11)
Bench Kelly Johnson (9)
Bench Matt Wieters (10)
Bench Chone Figgins (12)
Bench Adam Lind (16)
SP1 David Price (K)
SP2 Cole Hamels (2a)
SP3 Brandon Morrow (4)
SP4 Ted Lilly (6a)
SP5 Josh Beckett (8)
SP6 Jhoulys Chacin (15)
RP1 Neftali Feliz (6b)
RP2 Chris Pérez (7)
RP3 Joel Hanrahan (13)
This is a very, very different team for me. Usually, it’s two starters and one solid closer within the first ten rounds, then the rest of my staff in the later picks. Instead, this year, I drafted only two pitchers after the 8th round: Hanrahan in the 13th and Chacin in the 15th. As such, I’m not sure how to feel.
The good: In an OBP league (we count OBP instead of AVG and TB instead of HR), I’ll take Choo and Werth in those spots any day. I also like that I didn’t have to draft any one-dimensional speed guys, because I’ll be getting some here and there from my regular starters at SS, 3B, and all of my OF; if Utley were healthy, it’s wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that I have EIGHT guys (Utley, Hanley, Longoria, Choo, Werth, Young, Rasmus, and Johnson) capable of 20-20-ish seasons. Figgins that late was great, because he still walked a bunch last year, will pick up 3B eligibility, and had a decent second half, which should translate into better overall numbers. My last pick, Adam Lind, hit 46 doubles and 35 homers in 2009, so that’s worth a flier.
The bad: I reached for Morrow at the start of the 4th. But he wasn’t making it all the way back to me, and I remember watching his 17 K, two walk, one hit shutout against Tampa Bay last summer, and I fell instantly in love. So it was a reach, but one that I’d probably do again. As for the Wieters pick…this is sort of a running joke in our league, as I’ve been touting Wieters since even before he became the supposed second coming of Christ, but with a better home plate to second base time. Even after getting V-Mart, I took the flier. Meh.
The ugly: Chase Utley’s fucking killing me. When I announced him as a keeper, I had no idea anything was wrong with him. But with no news but bad news, I had to take Kelly Johnson in the 9th, and still wanted to draft Figgins as extra protection. Honestly, I went into this draft with the mindset that I’d get nothing from Utley all year, and drafted accordingly. I mean, fuck.
After the draft ended at 9pm, five of us, including our new buddy, Mike, who answered the bell and joined us for the draft, went back to Bay Ridge and one of my local bars, where we played darts until 3am. It was there that I played darts for the first time, and also learned for the first time that I AM ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST DART PLAYERS. Because apparently all you need to become one of the world’s greatest dart players is to have never played darts before and then had 15+ alcoholic drinks over ten hours. After 31 years, I think I’ve found my sport.
************
And so it was one of my favorite weekends of 2011 so far. But having said that, I’m glad the next one is 51 weeks away. Because I think it’ll take about that long for me to recover.
