Fantasy Baseball Camp: Comparing Pirates, Yankees & Tigers

Locations in this article:  Atlanta, GA Detroit, MI Pittsburgh, PA

Roy Berger has been reporting on his Fantasy Baseball Camp experience for the last four years, so he’s well versed in the standard camp traditions. Stepping up to the plate today he compares his second trip at The Pirates to his time at the Yankees and The Tigers.

A beautiful sunny day on the west coast of Florida and when the alarm rang at 6 this morning I actually bounced out of bed.  Didn’t need to pick my legs up with my hands, got out all by myself the way it’s supposed to happen in the non-fantasy camp world.

Went down to an early breakfast and Vernon Law was sitting by himself and asked me to join him.  You can’t make this stuff up when you are living a fantasy.  I could listen all day to stories about the 1960 World Series as I saw it through an eight year old’s eyes.

Somehow though I had a feeling this was as good as the day was going to get. I wasn’t wrong.

The woes continue for the beat-up Traynor’s as we dropped both games today to run our losing streak to three after winning our first three. All of a sudden the gang that couldn’t lose a game became the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.’  To say we are unraveling like a cheap suit would be unfair to the haberdashery industry so let’s say so we have come undone like an Ace bandage.

We finished round-robin league play at 3 up and 3 down which was good enough to give us first place in our division by tie-breaker having beaten the other 3-3 team. So as Division champs (ring ceremony TBA) we move into the playoff round tomorrow as a very weak co-top seed.  Two semi-final games in the morning with the winners playing for the camp title in the afternoon.   Sports books in Vegas not taking much action on us right now.

Our stout nine survivors opened the day against a 2-2 team coached by former pitcher John Candelaria and infielder Dave Cash.  During the 17-4 thrashing they layed upon us, I got to visit with Candy who was coaching first base and as the run merry-go-round kept spinning we had a lot of time to chat.

Candelaria, 59, was an intimidating 6’7″ lefty with 177 wins over an 18 year career with eight teams. He was a 1977 All-Star, a 1979 World Champion with the Pirates and the 1986 American League comeback player of the year.  He’s retired, lives in Davidson, N.C. and his significant other works for Aflac which he spent a good portion of the rout trying to convince me was perfect for our Medjet staff.

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