Fantasy Baseball Advice From The Cosby Show

Because we don’t want five

The quote above serves to answer two questions. The first: "Why do I limit myself to four fantasy baseball teams?" The second: Clair’s question to Cliff in the pilot episode of the Cosby show, "Why do we have four kids?" Throughout the show’s run, the Huxtables had five kids: Rudy, Vanessa, Theo, Denise, and Sondra. However, in the pilot episode, Sondra was not a character, and let’s be honest, it should have stayed that way. If you have more than four fantasy baseball teams, the completely avoidable mistake is on you.

The Cosbys had it perfect from the start with three girls: a rebel, a goody-goody with middle child issues, and an adorable five-year-old. Add that to the boy who can’t seem to get himself out of trouble and you have more than enough plot lines, characters, and message board posts to last an entire season; but somebody had to add a non-descript character with boring plot lines who somehow added more boring characters in Elvin and the twins. Think of all the rat tails we had to endure just because somebody wanted to add one more kid to the mix. It is the same with fantasy teams.

Don’t subject your friends to a Sondra. You might be somewhat interested in the beginning of the season, but then you forget to set your lineup on Monday a couple times and your team is a Sondra. Then you’ll keep a guy on the DL on your active roster and your team is an Elvin. Then you see your team in eighth place at the All-Star Break and you just stop checking everything and you are a father-son rat-tailed combo. Don’t subject your friends, or even strangers, to a rat-tailed team.

Full disclosure: I speak from experience. I had six fantasy football teams last year. Honestly, by week four, the Sondra and Elvin teams were finished and I was getting pretty tired of even the Vanessa team and just focused on Denise, Theo and Rudy. You still have to have the Vanessa team just in case Denise goes to college or drafts Michael Vick and Hakeem Nicks, or Rudy isn’t as cute as she used to be. If you have an Olivia team: a curse on you and yours.