By Mark Carpenter

People’s Defender

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? (Apologies Freddie) I believe I was trapped in some sort of football netherworld past weekend, a weekend that without Notre Dame or the Bengals meant a lot of honey-do jobs. Anyway, is it possible for fantasy football to emulate real life? Let me explain.

The Bengals went into last Thursday night’s game with a 1-2 record, matched up against a 3-0 Miami team. The Bengals win to improve to 2-2, and give the Dolphins their first loss. In my fantasy football league last weekend, called the Devils Domain (you figure that one out), my squad went into the weekend at 1-2 and faced off with the league’s first place and unbeaten Men of Rock at 3-0. Care to guess what happened? Yep, my winning squad moved to 2-2 while the loser dropped to 3-1. Eerily similar.

I began playing fantasy football decades ago sitting around a table with a bunch of friends, which is so much more fun than today’s impersonal online drafts. In those days, we didn’t play for money, the winner got a plaque that I created, using the football cards of the best players on their squad. It was a pretty neat prize actually and I had quite a collection, but over the years they have seemed to have disappeared, but I have one left here in front of me. It features Rick Mirer (my annual Irishman), John Elway, Terry Kirby, Jerry Rice, Keith Jackson (not the announcer) and Carl Pickens. Quite a list, huh?

Though there are many who enjoy fantasy football for some very big money, we just play for pride and bragging rights (those Devils are cheap). As if Bengals games aren’t stressful enough for me, this year I loaded up with Burrow, Chase and McPherson. Actually makes the games more fun to follow, because big fantasy numbers for me usually means big wins for the stripes. a win-win situation for sure.

On another topic, I took some well-earned vacation time last week and when I wasn’t pruning trees or staining decks, I continued the process of reorganizing the man cave, a job that means trying to organize a very large collection of sports cards and memorabilia plus shelves full of books, most of which are on the topics of sports or history. To be honest, I had no idea how much I had until I started emptying closets, cabinets, shelves and any other hiding places I’ve used over the years. The problem is that my progress is slow because it’s more fun to sift through a box of cards than it is to find a place to store them. for example, I found an 800-count box (collectors know what that is) stuffed with 1970’s common basketball cards, ABA and NBA. I thumbed through that whole box and recalled names that most of you would never identify, but who were all at one time Nerf basketball stars in my bedroom.

I’m in serious “sell” mode, knowing my kids and grand kids, if they ever come, will have no room for all of this stuff. The problem with selling is that I am way too much of a sentimentalist. Every single item in the collection has some special meaning to me, making it hard to part with, but sell I shall do when I decide. I’ve been buying sleeves and snap downs off of Amazon to try to reorganize, but it is overwhelming to say the least. I have to have the mess cleaned up by Christmas, so there is a target goal. I have an entire trunk filled with common baseball cards from the 70’s, that might be the last item organized because it will take me hours to look at every card in the boxes. Can’t help it. memories keep us young.

I even found the box that held all my old Kellogg’s 3-D and Hostess cards from the 70’s. Gotta thank my Mom for those. Whenever her and Dad went to the grocery store, I sent a list of players to look for on the back of those Ho-Ho boxes and from what I found here, she came through with flying colors. The 3-D cards, well, how about that feeling of reaching into that box of Frosted Flakes and digging around for the card? Nothing quite like it.