Baseball fan tries to grasp fantasy football

As if pre-football season wasn't rude enough to encroach on the heat of the baseball season in August, here comes fantasy football draft. And guess which one has my newsroom in a lather? It ain't the St. Louis Cardinals (hence, you can tell they ain't brown-nosers)...

Check out Universal Desk Editor Jason Bartolone's spectacular package today on that fantasy world. For the past couple years, he has posted a blog on fantasy sports . For this fantasy football season, he proposed a preseason story and an explainer of sorts on his addiction. He composed the blog, wrote the story, designed the sports centerpiece, laid out the package and organized the online-only podcast. That's the definitive multi-tasking -- oh, it makes us old-timers weary...

Here's the lede-in to the sports team's podcast:

Still agonizing over who to take with your first pick in your fantasy football draft? Allow us to help.

Six Herald staffers and self-professed fantasy geeks took part in a special mock draft this week, running through their top 12 picks for 2009 and spurring plenty of debate along the way. Hear Jason Bartolone, Alan Bellittera, Ryan T. Boyd, Grace Gagliano, John Lembo and Timothy R. Wolfrum discuss their selections and ponder some of this year’s biggest fantasy quandaries in our special podcast.

I remember losing my best buddies for hours to fantasy baseball in the early '80s at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, long before computers hastened the addiction. It's another layer of newspaper characters who must be preserved, cherished, promoted, relished. They have every stat known to humankind in their heads. Let's not lose that.

-- Joan