Fantasy Draft

    “Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.”   Dr. Seuss

I just completed drafting my NFL Fantasy Football team for the upcoming 2020 season, due to begin in six days despite the pandemic necessitating empty stadiums.  It seems crazy to proceed; but billions in TV revenue are at stake, and in America that trump’s health concerns.  As customary, I was with Dave, who helped set up my computer and offered advice when it didn’t conflict with his desires. On zoom we chatted with nephew Bob’s family – Niki, Addie, and Crosby - in San Diego and met grandson Anthony’s new girlfriend.  In many ways the Lane family zoom interaction was the evening’s highlight.

California Lanes

Thanks to Carolina running back Christian McCaffrey’s 2019 heroics, I am the defending champ in our Lane league, now in its fifteenth year and recently expanded to ten teams. I had the number 2 pick and, as expected, McCaffrey went first to nephew Dave’s Bruisers.  So, Jimbo Jammers settled for running back Saquon Barkley (on right, below).  The consensus draft ratings recommendations are top heavy with running backs and wide receivers, but after securing Tampa Bay wide receiver Mike Evans with my second pick, I decided to opt for the best remaining choices in the other positions.  Thus, I drafted Eagle tight end Zach Ertz, Baltimore QB Lamar Jackson, and later, the top-ranked Steeler defense and the top-ranked kicker Justin Tucker (left) of Baltimore.

My prediction (hope I’m wrong): Covid-19 will wreak havoc on the gridiron, necessitating cancellations and possible derailment of the entire season. For the 90 minutes of socializing and strategizing, however, we allowed out football fantasies to prevail over the so-called new normal.

Within minutes of posting the above, Facebook Nick Mantis posted: “Your team is solid.”  I replied: “As you know, injuries play such a major role, running backs are the hardest to predict since they are injury-prone, age fast, and an unheralded one typically bursts on the scene in the first couple weeks.  Top-ranked running backs of the very recent past – David Johnson, Todd Gurley, Le’Veon Bell, Mark Ingram, Frank Gore – are far down on the list. 

While I didn’t miss sports that much when everything was on hold, now I’m enjoying the Cubs and Flyers and next week I expect to watch my share of NFL games.  Unless I’m rooting for a team, games bore me; so I haven’t been interested I NBA basketball since the 76ers got eliminated.  Ditto the Kentucky Derby, this year without fans at Churchill Downs. The Bayers used to have Derby parties complete with mint julips; and, more recently, when family was visiting, I’d arrange for everyone to throw in a dollar and have horses picked out of a hat.  My bowling league started up, but Frank Shufran and I decided to drop out and reassess next year if the pandemic is over. Last year, we were scrambling to find substitutes when two players went on the DL, and this year probably would have been just as bad, if not worse.

Stuck upstairs without reading material while the cleaners were at the condo, I found Sue Grafton’s mystery novel “P Is for Peril” in the bookcase and, 50 pages in, plan to finish it.  My dad Vic loved hat genre for work-related train or plane trips, but the private eyes were macho men, unlike Kinsey Millhorn, whom I find infinitely more interesting than a Sam Spade type. The missing person had been a nursing home administrator, a job rendered almost impossible by our current pandemic.  Kinsey found listings for 20 in the yellow pages.  Grafton wrote:

    Most facilities had names suggesting that the occupants pictured themselves in any place but where they were: Cedar Creek Estates, Green Briar Villa, Horizon View, Rolling Hills, the Gardens. Surely, no one envisioned being frail and fearful, abandoned, incapacitated, lonely, ill,  and incontinent in such poetic-sounding accommodations.

South Shore Arts director John Cain (on left) announced he’s retiring within the year. I first met him at a meeting and at first glance he resembled nothing more than a Truman Capote clone, complete with mannerisms. The first time he spoke, I realized he was someone I wanted to know better.  We’ve become friends and collaborators on several arts projects.  I wrote an essay for a booklet for an important show titled “Gary Haunts.”  I’ve given several talks on Rock and Roll music for the Munster Center’s Art in Focus series.  Toni and I are regulars at Cain’s annual Holiday reading, often a selection from his doppelganger Truman Capote.

Former Gary teacher Jim Spicer provided a history of “Joke Day.”  “Since the early 1970’s students in my classroom were taught that on Friday, with a minute remaining in the hour, their response to my question, “WHAT’S TODAY?” would be, “JOKE DAY!” Since retirement the Friday tradition continues. Here’s one of my favorites are repeated: “If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?”

Eleanor Bailey wrote about childhood memories during World War II:

    In the mid-1940s, our family lived in the Newton County small town of Lake Village.  Playing with my friends and cousins was a lot of fun. We didn't know what being safe meant, it just was. It was war time. We had radios, but no televisions. News was not constantly replayed all day long. I remember as a child of five or six that my parents would put we three children to bed and late in the evening they would tune the radio to the Walter Winchell program. He would open his broadcast by saying, “Good Evening Mr. and Mrs America and all the ships at sea.” Lying in bed awake and secretly listening, I would wonder to myself, “Why is this man telling those terrible stories?” I knew that two of my uncles were away from home and they would write letters to the family. The letters came in special thin blue envelopes. Uncle Charles Bailey was in the Army Air Force and stationed in England. Uncle Paul Bailey was a Navy radioman on a ship that carried fuel and equipment to Murmansk in northern Russia. The Russians were our allies at that time.

    Dad and many other men drove every day to the steel mills and other factories in the north end of Lake County. They car-pooled and shared their ration stamps to buy gas. Dad worked at Harbison-Walker Refractories on Kennedy Avenue in East Chicago. Other men worked at Linde-Air, at one of the steel mills, or Pullman-Standard Company. All were making goods that were war-related.

   “Often we would go to Aunt Flora Iliff's restaurant on the south end of town. Town residents gathered there to drink coffee and discuss the latest news. When the bombs were dropped on Japan, their conversation turned to questions, such as, “What will happen now? Someone repeated what they had heard, "The oceans will come up and cover the earth!” This was a frightening time for a child whose only care had been which friends to spend the day with and whether to ride bikes, roller skate or play with our doll-houses.

On a hike along Lake Michigan Dorreen Carey photographed dragonflies mating and basking turtles.  Awesome!