Hag's Hawgs

By the time I was in high school I had been given the nickname "Hags" by my sports friends, a necessary on-the-baseball-diamond abbreviation of my three-syllable last name. (My band friends never used that name, and my A.P English friends probably snickered about it behind my back.) I didn't care much for it until I heard some of the other nicknames people had hung around their necks, and suddenly, it wasn't so bad. Michelle says that her nickname in high school was "Smelly Odor," taken from Shelly Ober. Now THAT'S what I'm talkin about.

I dusted off the name again nine years ago when my friend Jeff Wheeler and I started the Iowa Farm League, a fantasy baseball competition. At that time, internet-based fantasy sports were not well known. Today, of course, there's a fantasy sports league of every kind imaginable, and some leagues compete for big bucks.

We started the "IFL" in 1996 with eight teams, all "owned" by employees of the church software (QuickVerse) division of Parsons Technology in Cedar Rapids. None of us had ever played before. I finished second that year.

Hag's Hawgs is currently in fourth place of our 12-team league. My bats are better than average, but my arms (pitchers) are not so hot. As I'm typing, Corey Lidle is probably getting lit up for waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy to many runs. Part of the fun of fantasy baseball is the excuse it gives me to follow baseball more closely, the professional sport I enjoy the most that I can't readily go out and play on my own. Part of the fun is trash talking to the other league members, who return the favor with fervor.

We hand out token cash prizes and I nice trophy for first, second, and third place. Last year I finished fourth. It wouldn't surprise me to end this year at about the same spot. I gotta get a little better run support for Roger Clemens and a bigger stick from my slew of outfielders if I'm going to bring home some mantle jewelry. As Harry Carey would say, "Let's get some runs!"