For each sport in every season there is a pack of men huddling around their computers anxiously calculating figures in order to correctly tweak the one thing on their minds at that particular moment: Their fantasy team.  Originally thought of as too technical or nerdy, this statistical fascination has manifested itself deep within the culture of the average sports fan.

Every game on the planet can be represented in the fantasy sports world.  Average Joes sport their own gridiron squads.  Normal folks play GM with an NBA team.  Hell, you and I can even pretend to call the shots for hockey, baseball and NASCAR clubs.  The simple fact is that today’s fan feels more informed and educated than ever...and they want to prove it. 

So we dive into football season before we take off on a hoops escapade while baseball awaits us to round out the year.  Meanwhile hockey, racing and golf fill in whatever time we have left that could have been wasted doing something like...socializing.

I’m currently the owner of five fantasy teams.  One NBA squad, two baseball teams, and two NASCAR entries.  As overwhelming as that sounds, it should be made clear that I annually stop paying attention to my hoops team by the All-Star break and proceed to hoard any talent I managed to collect while those who actually try are looking for the subtle differences between Darius Miles and Bonzi Wells.  (Gotta take Bonzi, by the way.)  NASCAR, however, is quite simple.  Similar to football, there’s only one race a week and picking which drivers you want to use takes no more than thirty minutes.  This leaves only baseball.  One of the few games left that has no element of time, baseball is a sport where everything seems to slow down.  Maybe it’s the ease of listening to it on the radio or the arduousness of the 162 game season, but baseball is something where you just have to take your time.

Patience, that’s the key to fantasy baseball.  Coming from a man who drives 80 on the freeway and refuses to deal with instant oatmeal because it “just isn’t worth it,” this may seem nearly impossible.  Maybe so, but having watched plenty of baseball and never done fantasy before I decided to jump in head first and see whether the methodical pacing of the game would eventually drive me towards an inner-peace or a hard drug habit.

The game seemed to start out just like any other fantasy league.  You signed up and thought up the ever important team name.  “Chico’s Bail Bonds” seemed to hold both an old-school resonance and new-school edge that let everyone know I meant business.  This was followed, of course, by the mandatory sputtering of cliché smack talk on the league message board.  After letting Wahoowarrior87 know that I enjoyed his mother’s new pantsuit and that she should perhaps improve on her personal hygiene, it was time to move on to the draft.

This is where we begin to see who knows their stuff and whose just trying to look tough around the office.  In every draft there’s one pick that stands out as the most absolutely worthless decision you will see that day.  Usually this involves something like picking Adam Dunn in the second round and coupling that with a third round snatching of Ken Griffey Jr. all because your team name is Cincy4Life.  People like this make you wonder if they’re basing their draft on back issues of Sports Illustrated for Kids.  Nevertheless, you move onward looking for bargains like someone’s great aunt at a garage sale.  However, the novelty of picking your own team quickly wears off and all of a sudden it’s round 24 and you’re saying things like, “Brady Anderson?  Is he still in the league?  I’ll take him, it’s the 24th round and I love the sideburns.”

Once you finally piece together this rough and tumble bunch of ragamuffins through tireless strategy and endless research you get to do what seems to make perfect sense.  You get to mess with it.  Trades here and there, picking up a free agent starting pitcher to up your strikeout total, all this should make the average sports fan feel like a kid in a candy store.  Nay, better.  In fact, imagine this: Joe Johnson, Darius Miles, and every other 2 guard in the NBA just became available and are looking for big contracts.  Now imagine that YOU are Isiah Thomas.  Yeah.  That’s how happy you are.

After a veritable cornucopia of transactions before opening day even rolls around, you’ll probably be worn out and just ready to move on with your life.  Of course, once the season actually starts you’ll see that you don’t have enough pitching, your RBI’s are down, and no one seems to be interested in a trade for Brady Anderson.  (Even with those sideburns?)  Unable to leave your club in such disarray, you put your nose to the grindstone once more and begin the search for that one missing cog that will pull it all together.

If anything, this process should give us a newfound respect for our team’s front office executives.  Far too often, though, just the opposite is true.  We wonder why the GM isn’t able to move Paul Pierce, along with his attitude and huge contract, when we shipped him off just last week by asking our buddy if he was willing to swap for Michael Redd...just to see what happens.

Sports fans of today are the most informed the world’s ever seen.  For that same reason, however, we’re the most ignorant.  We expect instant gratification for the simplest of tasks and demand that our teams work like dogs to give it to us.  Today’s baseball fans don’t see the sun going down after the nightcap of a twin bill at Wrigley field, they don’t see how pitchers warm up in the bullpen, they don’t see Omar Vizquel laughing like a little kid during batting practice while he’s pushing forty.  Instead they see numbers.  Dead, lifeless numbers.  Baseball is a slow game but, then again, maybe we’re just a little too fast.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I just got a tip that Shea Hillenbrand is gonna have one hell of a year.

Jesse Mosser is a journalism major at Ohio University who also writes for The Post. Send him an email at jesse.mosser@atomicsportsmedia.com