One's a request

'Cause it's my blog...my fantasy baseball team this year...

A little background: The league has undergone some contraction this year - down to eight teams (instead of last year's twelve) but still draws from the same full-MLB pool of players. We play a head-to-head, ten-category scoring league.

I've made one pick-up (Soria) since the season started and dropped one player (Jeremy Bonderman), as well, and this is how I've gotten my team to here:

C - Brian McCann (ATL)
1B - Travis Hafner (CLE)
2B - Richie Weeks (MIL)
3B - David Wright (NYM)
SS - Rafael Furcal (LAD)
OF - Chone Figgins (LAA)
OF - Alex Rios (TOR)
OF - Grady Sizemore (CLE)
UTL - Vernon Wells (TOR)
BN - Brad Hawpe (COL)
BN - Hunter Pence (COL)

P - Francisco Cordero (CIN)
P - Jokiam Soria (KC)
P - James Shields (TB)
P - Brad Lidge (PHI)
P - Jake Peavy (SD)
P - Jered Weaver (LAA)
BN - Cole Hamels (PHI)
BN - John Maine (NYM)

First week, I went 6-2; second week I'm currently down to Calen 4-5 but with a weekend to come. Don't know that I have much to say about the team yet other than it's a tiny league so the free agent pool is amazingly deep. It's kind of weird having so many choices to play with in swapping guys into and out of the lineup.

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And because Joey asked, a quick run-through of some of my iTunes playlists, a glimpse into my madness...

• 80's Music - this is mostly my eighteen cd's of the greatest 80's hits, broken up into cd's by genre (Big Hair, Brit Pop, Bubblegum, College Hits (3 of those), Miscellaneous, Movie Hits (2 of those), New Wave, Rock (3 cds of those), Sap, Soul, and Women).
• All the Wilco - Wilco's obvious here (my favorite band), but we also get Loose Fur (one of Tweedy's side projects), Jeff Tweedy solo, Uncle Tupelo, and Golden Smog (another side project).
• Children's Music - From a couple of cd's that I made for a former colleague heading out on maternity leave. I hunted down two cds worth of my view of kids songs. Not a whole lot of plain, jane, kiddie lullabyes here. We're talking about Brian Dewan, Bob Dylan, Enya, Jerry Garcia, PPM, Tom Rush, Willie Nelson, Don White, Los Lobos, Linda Rondstat, and - sure - the Muppets and Bobby McFerrin. Plus it throws in my faves from the Spongebob soundtrack.
• Cold Songs - Pretty straightforward...any song that contains any of these words in its title: ice, cold, freeze, snow, or winter. No real reason for this playlist, just curious.
• Days of the Week - Same as the last one but with a day of the week in the title.
• Five Star Song - 397 of those, my most-played of which is Wilco's "Wishful Thinking" and then "Hummingbird".
• Hot Songs - Fire, hot, or warm in the title.
• Least Played - If I haven't played it more than 9 times, then it heads here. That way there aren't any sort of favorites played - it's an egalitarian system we're running here. Not in a "Harrison Bergeron" kinda way, either.
• Rain - Took a second try to get the train songs out of here, but I was surprised to find that I have 34 songs with rain in the title - including two versions of "Rainbow Connection".
• Ryan Adams - Ryan and the Cardinals, Ryan solo, and Whiskeytown - his first major band. He's a petulant snot, but the music's good.
• Summer - I'd been working things through for various seasons and was surprised to see that I'd struggle putting a cd of the seasons together - especially with only five summer songs in my library. Maybe someday I'll hit this project again.
• Cornhole Music - For this year's Cornhole 4A Cause tournament, I worked up about five cds of music. Clean, up-beat, mix of new and old. I like the mix.
• For Grace - G-Race was looking for some warm-up music for her rec-league basketball team, and I've got 38 songs that qualify as rockin', up-tempo, good for girls to dunk to.
• For Red - Before I lost track with Krisin the Red, she and I would record tapes for each other, things that we would send back and forth in our snail mail packages. I've got these sixteen songs ready for the next time I get ahold of her. I should do that.
• From the Heart - I've mentioned my lament of the mixtape untimely demise, and I've had a start of a new tape for The Girl going for years. One song in it so far - "My Best Friend" by Weezer.
• Instrumental - Seventeen songs without any words. They were bound for a cd theme that I did in class five or so years ago, before iTunes at school.
• Lost Love Songs - Twenty-five songs all dealing with lost loves, lots of regret here. This'll be another Seeqpod post for another day.
• Quiet - When I was in Dallas, and I'd headed back early from the conference - skipping the last session on the Friday - I wanted to have some music playing while I took a nap. So I put this playlist together really quickly. I've added things since then, but the idea's stayed the same - quiet, calm music.
• Sad songs - This one just started a few weeks ago, and it's working up to be songs that are just pathetic. They're not all about sad things, but they give a miserably sad feeling.
• Steve Duke - When people 'round school need something music-related, they tend to head my way. When Steve-o was looking for a definitive collection of music of the sixites, he came to me, and I put together this 34-song collection. I'm really proud of it as it does a good job covering Philly Soul, protest songs, psychadelia, the death of 50's pop, Motown, and the British Invasion in those 34. One of my better collections.
• Train Songs - Wait a couple of weeks as this is a Seeqpod that I've got already ready and waiting.
• Upbeat - Sometimes you just need to party. There's no sequencing here, but all the songs keep the mood up.