The missing links

Tom Brady was the greatest playoff QB in history. Then he met Champ Bailey. And last year, irony of ironies, he throws the game-clinching interception in Indianapolis. You can't win 'em all. Tiger Woods lost to a guy who couldn't beat Carl Spackler. The mighty can't help but fall.

I won all three of my opening week fantasy baseball contests. I'm even in first place in one league. There are times when you don't look too deeply into success, because ultimately it doesn't mean anything. Ryan Freel isn't going to steal 100 bases. My opponent isn't going to leave Chone Figgins in the starting lineup every week.

In my ultra-competitive GDR leagues, I feel like the girl who wins the NCAA basketball pool by picking the teams with colors that she likes better. It wasn't enough that we had to put our hitters in a batting order. Having pitchers in a starting order, one through five, along with a four-man bullpen, not enough. Nope, we had to add bonus points for starting pitchers, so if your number one starter outscored their number one, you get ten extra points, and so on. In the other league, to get the "feel" of a 162-game season, every week's result is prorated to a seven-game result. So, when the Mets beat the Braves 11-1 last week, it would have counted as seven wins. I think you get bonus points if your catcher has a last name that starts with a vowel and hits a home run on Tuesday. This kind of league makes you feel hard-core, but it just ups the luck factor. Breaking a one-week head-to-head contest into two different three-day battles just means that you have a smaller sample size. Smaller sample size equals more lucky breaks, not fewer.

I think Johan Santana could throw 62 MPH fastballs right down the middle and the White Sox couldn't hit him. He just crushed them. At least I have him in one league. I like what I saw from Javier Vazquez and John Danks, which is good since Contreras, Garland, and Buehrle all sucked in their first rotation turn. Long reliever Nick Masset still leads the team in innings pitched. Bobby Jenks looked like crap in spring training and has an ERA of 0 so far. Yep, he's on my first-place Yahoo team.

Single of the week: Starting Monday by Linus of Hollywood. Starting Monday, I might be over the hangover from a friend's bachelor party.