Steven Schulman: The Collapse of The RP

My team, beset by an epic collapse and management dysfunction, has me angry, depressed and sleepless. The seeds of this disappointment were sown when I lived in Boston, a recent college grad who stayed in the cradle of idle young men (a tradition that started with the Sons of Liberty, the first Bostonians with way too much time on their hands).

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had the good fortune to live in easy proximity of the leadership of the franchise that has so disappointed me this year. I watched faithfully as ownership built some great teams, and even though we both spent plenty of time at Fenway, I could not truly call those my own. It was only this year that I allowed myself to buy in fully, but given past performance, I should have known that heartbreak was more likely than a shower of Champagne.

Our Entourage. From Top left, clockwise: The author's much better looking brother, the RP, the author, and Turtle

I am, of course, talking about the recent disastrous performance of OVFTY Charts and my co-owner, The RP. Fantasy football is killing me. (Yes, I am also a Red Sox fan, but two World Series wins in the recent past has assuaged the pain of this year’s flop.)

While Jonathan and I have enjoyed Rotisserie league baseball as rivals over the course of 22 seasons, it was only his year that we decided to co-own a team. Because The RP has matched me with 6 titles in our Rotisserie league over its long history, I had high expectations. OK, so neither of us know anything about football, but how hard could it be for two men with absurdly expensive educations and penchants for obsession over the most trivial matters? (For Jonathan, politics; for me, Slovakian mud wrestling.)

Tom Brady, good

Turns out I put my faith in the wrong man, and now I know how Kentucky voters felt for eight long years.  Jonathan has taken the primary responsibility for putting together our team, and has made some good calls, like Tom Brady in the second round of the draft (a blind squirrel will find an acorn every now and again, after all).  But he frittered away our first pick on gimpy Arian Foster (a Jew picking an Arian – never a good idea).

Scott Chandler, not so good

But the most galling malfeasance came this weekend, when we lost to the heretofore winless theChosen1s in the Menorah League II.  I knew the matchup was off to a bad start when The RP arrogantly (do they teach that attitude to all politicians?) rejected my humble request that we activate Indy’s Dallas Clark (what a great football name!) instead of playing Buffalo’s Scott Chandler (OK, sure, he is already but 2 touchdowns from an all-time Bills single-season record for tight ends, but that is kind of like being the best all-time treasurer in the history of Kentucky).  Sure enough, Chandler “scored” -0.3 points for OVFTY Charts this weekend, while Dallas Clark came through with 9.3 points on our bench, more than the difference in the team’s epic collapse to those winless Chosen1s.

Perhaps most shocking, though, is that I have learned that Jonathan has been drinking beer and eating chicken while managing our team.  Who does he think he is, Josh Beckett…or John Lackey…or Jon Lester?  So, please, Mr. RP, listen to your constituents.  Play Dallas Clark, stop the trips to BW3, and get your focus back – or go the way of Theo Epstein and Terry Francona.