Baseball Season is upon us.

Amanda & I went to watch the New Orleans Zephyrs, AAA affiliate of the New York Metropolitans, play in their season opener tonight against the Nashville Sound, AAA affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. It was the first minor league baseball game for either of us: I'm an Astros fan, and I might have gone back when they were the AAA of the Astros franchise, but now they're not. (That's the Round Rock Express, also in the Pacific Coast League.)

We went because there were fireworks, and because it was something to do.

$6 tickets on the "levee" (a hill in right center field) and dollar sodas made it affordable, too. An evening well spent. The Z's won 5-2.

What is this fantasy that has ended? Well, it also has to do with the "boys of summer."

For the first time this millennium, I do not have a fantasy baseball team to show off.

Oh, I've been playing with some guys from the church softball team in 2007 & 2006, and I'd played off & on with some other guys here on BZP. 2001, I nearly won a 14-team league with some friends from college on the now-defunct Sandbox.com. That was the summer I went to Ohio: for 10 weeks, the Moss Bluff Cruisers were the Akron Cruisers. I was even messing around on Yahoo! in 1999.

And here it comes to 2008, and I don't have a team. I don't have a league to participate in: the softball contacts are now at other churches (because the coordinators were ministers at the church: one now pastors in Dry Creek, LA; another in Hattiesburg, MS; and a third is now an army chaplain).

Oh well. I suppose it's a good thing: now I don't have to selectively root for players playing against my favorite team (the Houston Astros) on any given day.

Not that my rooting ever makes that big a difference, but hey, I'm a satisfied fan. I have my 2005 NL Pennant, and I can live on for the next 19, er, 16 years happy.

-KIE