Chapter 4: The Collapse
Henry slammed his mug of flat beer down on the sticky bar top, sloshing lukewarm dregs across the scarred wood. A chorus of boos erupted from the crowd gathered around the TVs mounted above the bar.
“Useless!” he spat, loud enough for nearby patrons to shoot him confused looks. “Absolutely useless!”
On screen, Miami Marlins outfielder Jorge Soler dejectedly tossed his bat aside after watching strike three go by. With the whiff, his batting average ever-so-slightly dipped below the threshold Henry had meticulously calculated would propel Ship of Fouls into the fantasy playoffs.
It was an agonizing repeat of a familiar scenario that played out each season – his managerial wizardry dragging his team’s collection of spoiled, undeserving million-dollar talents to the precipice of glory, only to see them implode with the finish line in sight. The cruel mathematical realities mocked him from the television:
Ship of Fouls BA: .259 McDonald’s Fry Guys BA: .260
The crushing finality of those numbers bored directly into Henry’s soul, stoking a raging wildfire of resentment and fury within his gut. So close, yet so infuriatingly far – his team of underachieving losers had squandered yet another opportunity to etch his cerebral genius into the fantasy baseball history books.
Henry’s hands balled into tight fists, knuckles whitening as repressed rage coursed through his veins. He visualized each smug, overpaid batter who had let him down over the course of the season – Albies, Arenado, Betts, Guerrero. At least they had pocketed their exorbitant salaries. Meanwhile, his brilliant strategic mind wrung out night after night went uncompensated and unappreciated yet again.
The roar of the crowd crescendoed as the eyes of his fellow league members focused on the McDonald’s Fry Guys – his archrival – celebrating his cheap, unearned playoff berth with a choreographed handshake sequence straight out of a kindergarten play. Henry’s stomach turned as their boorish, number-blind manager Zeke Wilkins planted a sloppy kiss on his girlfriend amid a champagne shower.
“I…I just love this game!” Zeke bellowed into a microphone as he wiped cheesy nacho residue from his chin. “All you need is heart, great guys, and ice water in your veins for those big at-bats! That’s Fry Guys baseball!”
Ice water in his veins? More like blissfully ignorant self-delusion in his veins. The human dung heap clearly couldn’t calculate WAR if his life depended on it, yet he wallowed in mindless glory while Henry languished in stat-head purgatory.
“Keep gloating, you smug imbecile,” Henry muttered under his breath. “We’ll see who gets the last laugh.”
The bartender eyed Henry cautiously as the scraggly, embittered fan slapped some crumpled bills on the bar and stormed toward the exit. Enough was enough – his beloved Ship of Fouls had gone to war with inferior strategists for too long.
Failure was unacceptable any longer. It was time to take the fight directly to the clueless masses by venturing deeper into the industry’s darkest, most arcane recesses.
If honing his craft to a razor’s edge was what it took to hoist that trophy, Henry would grease whatever sinister wheels were required. The arrogant Wilkinses of the world would soon have their reckoning – that much was guaranteed.
certifiable 
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