What an Odd Life

October 30th, 2009 | by Ray Flowers |

Mine is an odd life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to regale you with stories about how hard my life is, it’s really not, it’s just at often times rather odd. Here are some thoughts about why mine is an odd life.

* I get to work in the field of sports. How many people, male or female, would kill for that job? Millions I bet. For those of you are only slightly jealous at that news, how about I add in the fact that I work from home. Now you all hate me, right?

* I get to state my opinion on a daily basis on a myriad of topics, and no matter how much empirical data I use to help form my opinions, I still get a smattering of emails detailing how stupid I am. Really, it’s pretty funny sometimes. I mean there are certainly guys I don’t personally like because of their off the field issues or simply because of the team they play for, but at the same time I’m never going to say that Manny Ramirez or Alex Rodriguez stink because of the teams they play for. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I’d like to think I let the data lead me to the “correct” conclusion. Even so, I still get the occasionally humorous email asking me how dare I propagate such inane advice on an unsuspecting public. Always brings a chuckle to me.

* I write about “fantasy sports” almost exclusively, though a good deal of my analysis wouldn’t look out of place on a report written by a scout for whatever sport I’m discussing. Still, try impressing a lady by telling her you work from home, write about fantasy sports, and drive a Ford Focus. Now you know why I’m single.

* Each morning I wake up at 7:22, 7:20 or 7:25 is so yesterday, and then spend the next 38 minutes waking up, scaffing down something edible to give my brain some giddy up, and reading all the recaps of the previous night’s action. I then spend an hour on the Fantasy Buffet with Kyle Elfrink talking sports. At 9:01 AM my day has already crested and I’m heading down the mountain as the most exciting part of the day passed when I wasn’t even fully awake.

* I get to do live advice to help pass on some of my knowledge to the fantasy faithful. Some people ask a question and just want a “yes” or “no” type answer, while others will spend 15 minutes arguing with you about whether or not Tim Hightower will pick up four or six carries in the coming week. Quite a bit of diversity here, and you just never know whether you will laughing, or crying, at the end of a shift.

* My seasons are all off, you know, like Mother Nature has been lately (at least here in California where no one, plant or animal, seems to know just quite what to expect anymore). In my case my seasons are off because of the schedules we keep. As a general rule of thumb, I get the chance to follow most sports quite intently for about half the regular season before I end up moving on to the next in some form. As an example, it’s Week 8 of the NFL season, right smack dab in the middle of things, but for the last two weeks I’ve been working on player capsules for our holiday Baseball Magazine (yes, the World Series is still going on too and that adds an odd twist to the proceedings). Honestly, if I think back three months, I was knee deep in putting together the content for our preseason NHL coverage even though baseball was still in full effect. The bottom line is that I’m partially schizophrenic when it comes to my sports coverage because of the responsibilities of my job.

So there you have it. In this brief trip around a day in the life of Ray, I’ve attempted to give a few pointed examples of why my job is a bit odd at times. Believe me I’m not complaining, I can think of about, oh, 138,975 other jobs I wouldn’t rather have, so I’m clearly in the camp of understanding just how lucky I am to have my current position. And with that, I’m going to continue to plow through pitcher capsules for our Baseball Magazine which you will be able to find in time to have something to stuff into your brother’s stocking for the holiday season. Now who is it that just scored that touchdown…

By Ray Flowers

Tags: Alex Rodriguez, Fantasy Buffet, Manny Ramirez, Tim Hightower