Phil Brody's Commentary

Week Five: Fat Jessica Alba

An unfat Jessica Alba

Baseball’s regular season came to a close this week, giving way to new postseason hopes where records are wiped clean, as clean as on Opening day, when anyone can be champion, when everyone thinks, “this is the year.”

However, in the realm of fantasy sports, a season usually ends along with the regular season. The fat lady sings and for the few, it’s cheerful, for many, cheerless.

I own and operate a fantasy baseball team by the name of FiveFifteenEightyOne (Indians fans should get the reference, others can just click here. Sunday, that fat lady’s tune sounded blissful, absolutely joyous. Yeah, you guessed it. I won “the whole F-ing thing.” I am a champion. Get this, it turns out when you win, the lady not only sounds good, but she reveals herself to be very unfat and extremely unugly. In fact, she looks like Jessica Alba (FiveSix, OneFifteen). I swear. Specifically, the Into The Blue version of Jessica Alba (see visual reference).

Yeah, it’s good to win. Feels awesome to win. How good?

I was walking my dog and it actually started to rain. Didn’t mind. Felt like a tickertape parade to me.

My mother called and I told her, “Mom, great news! Your son is a champion.”

A friend inquired what I was going to do with the winnings, said “that’s a nice (impending) birthday present.” Me: “Birthday? No. Has nothing to do with birthdays. It's not a present. It is an achievement no one can take away from me. Ever. What am I going to do with the winnings? I’m taking every single dollar from that achievement in excellence and plaster them onto my walls so when family and friends come over, they’ll say, “Wow, what’s this?” And I’ll be like, “That’s just my resume. Resume of a champion. Now step into my home, home of a champion. Would you like some Champagne (of Beers)?”

Mind you, my victory was not without heartache. The heartache of Last Year. Last year, I came up short. Felt I had the best team, but fell in the playoffs, fat lady crooning, looking fatter than the fatties that cry on all those daytime talk shows. I’m talking Five-Six, TwoFifteen. Ugh. Traumatic.

I swore I’d be back. Swore next year, I’d do anything and everything to get to that next level. Swore next year, this year, was my year. And it was. Luckily. Very luckily.

I say this because it’s not always that way. It’s rather hard to win, place or even show year in and year out. Do the math. With x number of teams, there exist x number of smart owners (sometimes two brains even combine efforts) who scheme, toil and aim at knocking everyone off en route to hearing and seeing something jessicalbaish at season’s end. That leaves a lot of heartache for everyone else.

Lots of big, FAT heartache.

But not for FiveFifteenEightyOne. Not This Year.

So where am I going with this, a fantasy FOOTBALL commentary? Here’s where I’m going. Reality says the window to victory does not stay open long, and all too quickly ThisIsTheYear can become MaybeNextYear. You can see it throughout the history of real teams -- the Indians, Cubs, White Sox, even the Yankees.

The NineteenEightyFour Chicago Cubs
The NineteenNinetyFour Chicago White Sox.
The NineteenNinetyFive Cleveland Indians.
The NineteenNinetySeven Cleveland Indians.
The TwoThousandOne New York Yankees.
The TwoThousandThree Chicago Cubs.

If we’re talking football, and we are, look no further than the Buffalo Bills in the eighties or the Cleveland Browns of the same decade.

All, windows of opportunity that slammed shut. Fat ladies gaining octaves, along with poundage. Maybe Next Years that, quite simply, have come to haunt.

I hinted at it before, a few weeks ago, but I have to ask again. What would/will you do to win it all? I said, “build a better army,” because who knows when and if This Is The Year becomes Maybe Next Year? No one knows, except that fat F-ing lady. She knows all.

What will she look like to you come December? Will she look like Into-The-Blue-Jessica-Alba, or will she look like Fat Jessica Alba? (Don’t even try and picture it. Trust me, it scars.)

Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, I’ll be dreaming of Jessica, all slender and singing my name, of course.

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: Matt Leinart, Vince Young, Bulger, Kitna, Brunell. Laurence Maroney, Joseph Addai, Jordan, Green, Westbrook. Marques Colston, Andre Johnson, Chad, Terrell, Laveranues. Dallas at Philadelphia, Pittsburgh at San Diego.