As I See It: Don Mattingly
As part of a new running feature, each Friday one franchise owner will have the opportunity to write whatever they want in this space. This week’s we are scraping the bottom of the barrel – Don Mattingly. Don, take it away….
It was merely three years ago, yet it seems like a lifetime ago. It was October 2007, an unseasonably mild month, in which the Legend of the Chiefs began.
Fall 2007 was an interesting time for me. I entered the autumnal season after a bizarre August and September that left me not much different than Bill Murray at the beginning of Stripes. I spent my days constantly wearing a bandana as a headband, surfing Career Builder, and listening to hour-long Phish songs. When I wasn’t serving Half and Half’s to Gary Thorne at the James Joyce, my nights were spent carousing around town, pathetically spending my last pennies on the trivia machine at Rafters.
Unlike any other time in my life, I had neither the time nor motivation to sit in front of my computer for hours on end researching box scores and fantasy stats (Ironically enough, I DID have time to play about 20 seasons of Baseball Mogul in which Jim Thome won 15 MVP awards including one well talked about season in which he blasted 80 homers and drove in 200 runs!). I couldn’t even tell you a single player from my pathetic 2007 fantasy football team. Needless to say, I definitely didn’t have the interest to try and sort through weekly NFL lines and pick teams for this so-called up and coming Funny Money league which I had just joined a month before (I confess. I had Antonio Gates). Then, one night, it all changed…
As legend has it, I had bet late for about three consecutive weeks, but one Saturday night at approximately 11:56 PM, I remembered I had to place my bets, so I blindly texted the Executive Director (at this time, we could still use this archaic method) my two favorite teams… $300 Giants/$200 Chiefs. The pick was in. I had no idea who they were playing, what the spread was, or if they were even playing at all that week, but the deed was done. The Giants, at the time, were middling in mediocrity, Coughlin’s job on the line, while the Chiefs were off to a surprisingly good start. What was I thinking with these picks? I was already in dead last. Could it get any worse? What happened next was a mythical rollercoaster ride the likes that had not been seen since the great Johnny Appleseed.
As was customary of this period, we all met at Don’t Know the next day. Wouldn’t you know…the Giants registered double digit sacks on Sunday Night Football, while the Chiefs smashed the Chargers. The following week came around, and I rolled the dice again… $300 Giants/$200 Chiefs. Covers again! Was I on to something here? Little did we know at the time that this was going to be the Giants’ Super Bowl season and they were sneakily good at covering, while it only took some garbage time screen from Trent Green to Larry Johnson when the opposition was playing Kutler’s prevent D for them to cover their enormously large spreads. The ride continued throughout October…$300 Giants/$200 Chiefs…spawning a new handshake, Don’t Know Rumplemintz sales through the roof, and even, at its apex, me being thrown into the side of a Mercedes on Light Street.
But alas, as quickly as the meteoric rise of $300 Giants/$200 Chiefs had taken place, the fall was just as abrupt. By the end of October, gone was the time fighting corporate. I was back in the cubicle, back in the khakis, back to pretending to work on some random spreadsheet, back to 15 minute Dead jams, and back to tirelessly obsessing over fantasy sports. Gone was the freewheeling $300 Giants/$200 Chiefs; in was the conservative $200 Indy/$200 Pats/$100 Titans picks, and gone were any hopes I had at trying to be good at Funny Money.
So, here we are – 3 years later. The Giants are middling in mediocrity; Tom Coughlin’s job is on the line, but they did just have a double digit sack game on Sunday Night Football. The Chiefs are off to a surprisingly good start. I am dead last in Funny Money. I’m putting the league on notice. This Sunday, I’ll be the guy enjoying chicken salad, on rye, untoasted …with a cup of tea!
