For those of you unaware of such stuff, there is a time-waster known as "fantasy basketball" where you assemble line-ups of players, and keep stats based on your players' stats.

There are also forums where people discuss fantasy basketball.  Some of these forums have classified sections where people seek out owners and leagues.  It's kind of like match.com for balding middle aged guys who like both stats and the NBA.

I recently responded to a post on one such forum from a person who was trying to start a keeper league. I sent an e-mail stating that I would like to join.

I received back an e-mail which said:

"i do have a spot left, but i like experience owners, doing a keeper league and 1 year league is different, how many leagues r u in right now"

If, like me, you are old enough to remember the Beatles, you can probably recall when people used punctuation and capital letters, and even friggin' words and such, when they wrote to each other. Although I realized my commissioner was probably a pimply-faced 16 year old in Des Moines who was running a league in between downloading porn from hotblondes.com, working as the part-time fry-cook at Mickey D's, flunking English, and smoking drugs that I have never heard of, I wrote back and explained I have been in basketball fantasy leagues since 1989.

I told teenager that I generally play in money leagues where there are pots of more than $1,000, and that I was in 3 of them this year, but I wanted to be in a keeper league. I promised that I would never quit, and that I was kind to animals, and that I never called directory assistance for numbers I could look up myself.

I directed the illiterate, acne-ridden teenager, to my yahoo fantasy sports profile which shows I have won numerous fantasy sports trophies. For crying out loud, I am in the head to head championship in a $1,500 money league in baseball, and I know so little about baseball that I could not identify my fourth round pick from a police line-up. This is because I am the king of the spreadsheet, and statistics can really help the ignorant. In contrast, in hoops, even when I make a dumb pick and select Al Harrington in the 7th round, I know who he is, and could guess his stat line blindfolded.

I received this e-mail back: "im not sure man..."

That's it. Four little words. They hung in the air. Damn. I was wait listed by teenager. What would I tell my parents? Should I have written a better essay to get in? Now I will have to go to a second tier keeper league, which would impact my earning ability for the rest of my life.

First of all, sonny, don't call me "man", and learn to use an apostrophe. (It's down next to the enter key.) I read the e-mail and laughed out loud. (Or as the teenager would say, I "LOLed.") This jackass is making getting in to a keeper league harder than getting in to an Ivy League college -- which by the way I did back in 1977, mostly because I used punctuation and full words.

Second of all, I am not going to beg someone to get in a league, unless it is a league of female pornstars or Hooters girls, and there is a live draft. (If anyone knows of such a league, I want in. Unfortunately, all the leagues I am in are middle aged balding guys. In fact, we are all happy to have the "ing" on "balding".)

In any event, I wrote back to the teenager with the following response: "No problem. I'll make it easy for you: I am out." I imagine teenager was disoriented by this response. It had capital letters, and a colon. He probably thought to himself, "wat is this dude sayin". (That's a question, but teenager does not use question marks.)

In any event, I am still a man without a keeper league. I will continue to apply and some day, hopefully, I will be selected. I can only hope...