Sure, I can wear the hat -- but can I play the game?

I had a terrifying dream last night. A nightmare, really. The kind of dream that jolts you awake with a sudden start, and makes you wonder – just for a split second – if it might have been real.

I dreamt that I came in second-to-last in my fantasy baseball league.

In reality, I’m in third place right now, a standing I am NOT happy with at all. I started the season in first place, and had a pretty good hold on it for a while. But the last couple weeks, I’ve been switching between second and third place with Nick, and some sneaky interloper has moved in and taken over first place. This can not last. I must put a stop to it, and the sooner, the better. The interloper has had a string of good luck lately, and it has to come to an end eventually. And when it does, I’ll be there to reclaim my rightful place at the top of the league.

This baseball league has reminded me of the quiet competitive streak that runs through me – a part of my nature that tends to either stay hidden, or manifest itself in obscure, ambiguous ways. Like the silent cheers I would give myself if I happened to be the best student in a class – and the daggers of failure I would telepathically send out to any student who might happen to exceed my progress. I remember a biology class where there were only two of us who actually seemed to understand the material – this other girl and I would cast glances at each other when it was announced that the grading curve was once again thrown out of whack based on the two lonely A’s in the class. I made it my year-long quest to out-grade this other girl – if she got a 93, I wanted a 94. If she got a 100, I had to get the extra credit right.

In school, this kind of competition has to remain hidden, lest you end up with some sort of label like “teacher’s pet” or “know-it-all” or something worse. And my secret competitive streak was confined merely to academic pursuits – when it came to sports, I was the kid who was always chosen last for a team, and I suppose for good reason. I was never very good at ANY sport, so what was the point in being competitive? Get me back to the classroom with the books and the tests and the term papers. THEN maybe I’ll have a chance. In fact, the first taste I ever got of a sport-related victory was when I won a game of horse I played with Faisal. He’d just finished teaching me how to actually SHOOT a basketball (I really had no idea…), and lo and behold – I managed to get good for about five minutes. But that’s all I needed. I sank the winning shot, and that was it – I’d beaten a guy at a sport. (Well, a sort of random, made-up sport.) And while I still have suspicions that Faisal let me win, that one game made me so bizarrely happy that I suddenly realized my competitive streak COULD be persuaded to spill over into the vicinity of “sporting event.” (And the fact that I still talk about it after several years pretty much illustrates how few “sporting events” I’ve participated in recently…)

So I suppose fantasy baseball doesn’t actually count as a “sport” – but at least it’s ABOUT a sport. And if beating ONE guy made me happy, I have to imagine how much MORE happy I’d be if I managed to defeat ten. So maybe fantasy baseball is a perfectly balanced activity for my competitive nature – it’s like a pseudo-sporting event, but I get to rely more on my brains than my basketball abilities.

Which is good, because I really think Faisal let me win…