How To Survive A Fantasy Baseball-Induced Anxiety Attack
Fantasy baseball is scary, and it makes you feel small in a large and frightening world. Don't lose hope: we have a plan.
Follow these easy steps:
1. TAKE DEEP BREATHS.
2. Go to baseball-reference.com.
3. Set baseball-reference.com as your homepage until the end of your draft.
4. Buy a graphing calculator. (If you already have a graphing calculator, buy another one. Name it "Wonder Boy.")
5. Use the calculator to create some arbitrary metric for players by combining a bunch of random stats — for instance: on base %, triples, and bases on balls. Apply it to ever player in the majors, and as many in Triple A ball as you can.
6. Never, ever look at this graph again.
7. Eat a salad with guacamole.
8. Print out a picture of Bill James, paste it onto a music stand, and surround it with a ring of candles. If it's convenient — read: if you live in New York — have the word "SABERMETRICS" tattooed down your left forearm.
9. Hold a seance. Tell Ty Cobb about fantasy baseball. Let him swear and berate you for as long as you can stand.
10. Sleep.
11. Wake up half an hour before the draft. If there's more than two days between your seance and your draft, you may wake up ONCE, but only to eat peanuts and crackerjack.
12. When you wake up, you'll know what to do.