Lots of folks spend a lot of time creating the "Best First Half Team" list, or a list of "Most Likely to be Second Half All-Star" lists, and those are fun and valuable and great. I'm not going to do that. Mainly because I'm lazy, but also because so many other, talented writers do it that I don't think it adds the right kind of value.

So instead, I'm going to toss out a few stats here and there and see what you can make of it. 

For instance...do you know that one of the more fantasy relevant games EVER happened between the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox back on June 14 of this year? I missed it when it happened, and I can only blame the fact that I've been knee deep in diapers and baby wipes since mid-May with our newborn daughter. But it happened nonetheless.

Indeed, this game may have helped more fantasy owners than almost any other game this season...or at least, it potentially had that impact.

'Fast' Willy Parker Taveras is your current MLB stolen base leader with 41. Photo Credit: Icon SMI

What happened? Rockies centerfielder Willy Taveras stole five - yes, FIVE - bases. That's a better fantasy day than hitting five home runs in one game, and nobody has EVER done that. (The most recent hitter to swat four in a game was Carlos Delgado in September 2003. I always remember hard hittin' Mark Whiten for his effort back in 1993, when he produced a record 12 RBI in one game, but then, that's just me.)

Anyhow, Fast Willy sure had a good game, and it's worth a mention.

Someone else who is getting a lot of love is St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Ryan Ludwick, who ended the first half with a gobsmacking 21 HR. That's pretty insane for a guy who probably wasn't drafted in 99 percent of leagues. But I do think that the Rick Ankiel story is one that's probably already in development at a Hallmark Movie of the Week near you. Seriously - this is a guy who was a joke around the league, lumped in with Steve Sax, Steve Blass and Mark Wohlers as a head case who simply forgot how to play the game. So he gave up pitching and developed into one of the better power hitters in baseball.

Yeah, you heard me. He had 20 HR and 50 RBI at the break and cracked yet another dinger in his first game afterwards. But after deliberating a bit, I think I'm here to say you should explore trading him. Why? Not because he's due to cool off. It's because his stats look like he's due for something close to a 40 HR, 100 RBI season -- but he's actually on pace for a 34 HR, 85 RBI season. Because the Cardinals played 96 games before the break. Seriously - 96 games! The first half should be close to, if obviously not exactly, 81 games. Our friend Mr. Ludwick, who casual fans would project for something like a 42 HR, 130 RBI season, could not cool off and end up with a 35 HR, 110 RBI season. No shame in that, but he LOOKS like someone who is playing like a first-rounder, when he's really on pace for simply a very good season. Milk that if you can.

The problem with my situation, aside from the fact that most people in my leagues read this column and therefore won't fall for the above advice, is that folks in my leagues also tend to be pretty savvy roto veterans. But if you are playing with folks who don't quite realize how unbalanced some team's schedules are around the All-Star Break...well, pounce.

As a Giants fan, I noticed (as you may have) that stud pitcher Tim Lincecum did not play in the All-Star Game after complaining of not feeling well and being treated for dehydration and flu-like symptoms. Now, I have a few thoughts here. One, I've always assumed that any player complaining of flu-like symptoms is doing so because he (or, conceivably, she) is hung over. Because WAY, WAY too many players seem to get the flu. Now, it turns out Tim wasn't hung over (though it's not hard to get in that state in Manhattan), but either way, my other thought was this:  AWESOME. 

You see, Giants pitchers don't have a great history in the All-Star Game. It stems back to the bane of my existence, Atlee Hammaker, who basically collapsed on the pitchers mound in the 1983 game and never recovered. (God, I spent a lot of time loathing Atlee. I even had to hold back boos at a recent Giants game where they introduced veteran players and Hammaker was one of them.) Next, Big Daddy Rick Reuschel gave up a leadoff home run to Bo Jackson in 1989 that might finally be coming back to earth any day now. I present you the names John Burkett, Jeff Brantley and Robb Nen, the latter of which gave up the runs that caused the first and only tie in All-Star Game history.

It's not been a pretty picture. (And sure, Brian Wilson escaped unscathed this year, but please don't let facts get in the way of my argument here.) Little Timmy Lincecum is the future of the Giants, and one of the most promising young pitchers in all of baseball. As a Giants fan, I can't say I'm unhappy that he wasn't subjected to failure on a national stage as many of his predecessors have. That's the kind of experience that can wait. (By the way, remember before spring training there were rumors of trading either Lincecum or Matt Cain for Toronto Blue Jays OF Alex Rios? Here's something I probably shouldn't admit: I wanted the Giants to do it. And I was wrong.)

We'll get to Brett Favre in a bit, but the big news of the week is, of course, that Big Brother is back! If you've never watched, you may wonder why one would want to watch 13 strangers sit in a house with no outside contact for three months. And there's one simple answer: THEY ALL GO CRAZY. Not eating-your-own-waste kind of crazy (that wouldn't be so great to watch), but insanely paranoid, making mountains out of molehills and freaking out over things that normal folks wouldn't even notice. Plus, there are usually some good-looking women who parade around in bikinis for the summer. This year, the spectacle seems to be a 51-year old woman named Renna from New Orleans who wears a wig, has no sense of personal space and very well may be mentally unbalanced. Hey, good times! In the first week of shows, there's already been arguments, blonde girls crying and massive strategic blunders. Not a bad start. In any case, the show is on far too often ... so I'll be milking it even more by writing about it from time to time this summer. You've been warned.

So...yeah, about Favre. Enough has been written about him that I'm unlikely to break new ground. Depending on where he lands, he could be a good fantasy quarterback - he was last year, and he's a first ballot Hall of Famer. But what he's doing is not going to age well on him. He'll still be considered one of the greats, but its one thing to look wistfully at an athlete who isn't sure if he can hang up the cleats or not ...and yet another thing entirely when his way of doing that is by throwing his franchise under the proverbial bus. Whether or not Favre has a beef with GM Ted Thompson -- and it seems fairly clear that he does have one -- doing it so publicly is just serious bad form. Does Favre really not care how Packers fans treat the team this season? That seems hard to believe, and yet....and yet. Because what's going to happen here? There's no realistic scenario where Favre comes back to play for a truly competitive team, regardless of what you believe about the Vikings, Panthers and Ravens, the three teams that he's most often linked to. (Or even the Buccaneers, to give a nod to RotoExperts Grand Poobah Ben Ice's local team.) Some of those teams will certainly be good this year, but none of them are one player away from a title.

So this is about Favre, and Favre only.

Which is fine...except it's not all that pretty to watch. Part of me likes it when so-called icons expose themselves to be simply human, probably because I root for the San Francisco Giants and had to listen to people try and portray Barry Bonds as the only bad guy in sports. (I'm not equating what Favre is doing with steroids, by the way.) But when folks like Favre and Roger Clemens show that they too are just as capable of acting like morons as the rest of us, well, that only makes me feel a little vindicated.

Remember that moment as a kid when your father or mother said something ... and it just clicked that, "Hey, they DON'T know everything. In fact, it's probably not even close." That's what some experts would label as a fundamental step in the process of growing up, and the same thing has to happen as a sports fan. The list that you have in your head of "good guys" in sports is probably already pretty small -- and several of those guys actually aren't such princes; they just have really good public relations people. Very few people in the world would hold up to scrutiny for how they live every part of their lives, and asking incredibly wealthy athletes who have largely been sheltered from anything resembling the real world to act more mature than the rest of us is a bit unrealistic.

I'm not saying Favre is a horrible guy.  It's just that he's acting like one. Favre owes a lot to the Packers, as they do to him. 

Look, realizing that your sports heroes aren't actually heroic off the field is just one more rung on the ladder of growing up. It's not always fun to keep climbing, but it sure beats the alternative. It's a big world, and it keeps on turning, folks. Until next week.

Matthew Greber is a Senior Writer for RotoExperts.com and has no plans to play in the NFL this season, regardless of how many teams knock on his door. (So far, it's been disturbingly quiet.) He's spending his days working on his draft slotting for football, wondering if he will soon have more players on the DL than active on his baseball team, and feeding and burping his newborn daughter. And that list probably isn't exactly in order. In the meantime, he also loves reading and replying to email, so send him a treat at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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