conscription from 60' 6".

Here I am ten years removed from my eighteenth birthday. And yet, over the next few weeks, I have no less than three drafts staring me in the face. I'm not prepared for any of them.

Giants Draft. Pac Bell Park is the most beautiful new stadium in the United States. The Giants have been the best team in the National League this decade. Big Barry is about to pass the Big Babe and the Big Hank on the Big Bomb list. All of the above adds up to a very tough ticket.

So there are workarounds. One of the best is to hook up with a season ticket holder. This is the only way you can enjoy the game without suffering a nosebleed. One such season ticket holder is particularly ambitious. He has asked a consortium of individuals to "rank" the home games, #1-81. Then he will run a draft and notify us of our games. Works for me.

Here's a sneak preview: Dodger games rank, #1-12. Beat LA.

March Madness. OK, so it's not a draft. But it might as well be. I spend six months ignoring college basketball and then pretend to be an expert in the office pool du jour. Fortunately, I'm not alone.

Personally, I think a really interesting bracket would be one that pits mascots against each other. My brother-in-law and his law school buddies "ran" a mascot bracket a few years back that featured such intriguing matchups as:

UMass Minutemen v. Xavier Musketeers (who has the straighter shot?)
Stanford Cardinal v. Dartmouth Big Green (can a color beat a tree? what about a BIG color?)
Arizona Wildcats v. Kentucky Wildcats (a draw, eh?)

The Final that year came down to the Tulsa Golden Hurricane versus the Miami Hurricanes. After all, not even a Blue Devil or Demon Deacon can kick Mother Nature's ass.

Who wins this year? It's hard to pick against Illinois and UNC. So I'm going with Old Dominion.

El Guapo. The grandaddy of them all, my seventh annual rotisserie baseball draft takes place in two weeks. And I haven't even begun to strategize.

Here's what happens. Everyone "keeps" four players, so I have a good sense of who I'll go after in the first few rounds. The problem is this: I have a lot of time between picks. Which means I drink beer(s).

As you can imagine, Gentle Reader, by the time we hit the tenth round I'm having difficulty choosing between left field and left out. By the fifteenth round, my insults-to-opposing-manager ratio is better than Bonds' on-base percentage. By the twentieth round, a quick perusal of my roster reveals four solid players, a bunch of AAA posers, Danny Ainge, and Marge Schott. It's fun.

So wish me luck. They're about to call my number.