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Hi, welcome to my take on baseball. My name's Travis and the folks here at Fantasy Baseball Headquarters have agreed to let me express my views, opinions, and outlook on how we can get baseball to become America's sport again. Now let me post a little disclaimer here, if you've made it this far. I am by no means a "Fantasy Expert" or "Guru", I do not get paid to go watch the Arizona Fall League (although your e-mails to FBH are greatly appreciated), I do not know if trading Ichiro for Rich Harden and Chase Utley is going to be fair. What I do know is baseball. I've played in numerous fantasy leagues for six years, I played Little League for numerous years and I've been umpiring Little League for seven years. I'm Canadian; in fact I'm a northern Canadian. I live in Edmonton, Alberta home of the Trappers (Expo's farm club). Think Great Falls, Montana and drive eight hours straight north. Land of snow and baseball weather for about five months, I had four games "snowed" out this year. But I love baseball and that's already more than enough about me. I hope to be writing this column on a weekly basis while the season is on, maybe a little more sporadically in the winter and back at it full force for 2004! So I hope you enjoy the ride and fell free to contact me, I'll be happy to discuss baseball at any time.

It's the time of season where most people in your league have folded tent and have arranged the Madden-esque ribs, cheezies, pork rinds, nacho plate and golden tinted alcoholic beverage. Football is upon us and trying to get a response out of your owners for the last few weeks will seem nigh on impossible. What to do? Well if your one of those teams that folded, better pull your Barry Sanders jersey out of the closet cause it looks like the Lions may have got dentures. But if you're like me and in the hunt for your league championship and terrified that someone on your roster might go 0-fer here's what you do. Lets face it, roster pick-ups this late in the season may yield a win or two a few SB's whatever, but if this win's you your league kudos. For many of you and myself it may not, so here are some rules to follow for the next few weeks…

§ Do phone or e-mail your closest competitors and taunt them, telling them that you're going to hunt them down, etc, etc. I'm sure you can think of many things.

§ Do not watch your star players (i.e. Roger Clemens) they will invariably blow up and ruin your ERA.

§ Do calculate exactly how many scoreless innings it will take to get that extra 0.02 off your aforementioned ERA.

§ Do not watch your competitors star player because he will hit two homers, knock in six, and pick off your best base stealer at first. This is called Murphy's Law.

§ Do disdain at your complete and utter loss in your first week of fantasy football like I did because you did no research and still think Emmitt Smith is "Da Man!"

Remember this is all for fun and absolute gloating for the next five months so cross your lucky stars and hope for the best. I'll be back next week with another column, hopefully longer and a little less about me. Until than A-rod is the man and an unstoppable force. Only one other player has hit forty home runs in six straight seasons and he built a house in New York, who knows what A-Rod might do with all that money. Until next time…

Travis Merrick
Fantasy Baseball Addict