2008 CHAMPION   -   MARAUDERS

What can be said? It was a great season for the Futurians with a disappointing ending.  Coming out of the auction they had a strong team that should have been capable of fighting for the top three spots if things went right and maybe a chance to win it. The team was lead by its powerhouse offense with the likes of David Wright, Carlos Lee, Ryan Braun, Chipper Jones and Matt Kemp along with nice fill-in production from players such as Skip Schumaker, Chris Snyder, Jeff Baker, Jeff Keppinger and others.

In the early going it was the pitching side of the Futurians was preventing them from occupying the top spot with an injury to John Smoltz ($27) in April that saw him go out for the season and their other top pitcher Aaron Harang ($30) pitching to about a $6 value. With a bunch of no-names it looked the first six weeks of the season as it the Futurians would be all hitting and no pitching.

Then in early June a cobbled together pitching staff led by Jair Jurrgens, Paul Maholm and Jorge Campillo, not exactly household names, started putting together a run of quality starts that slowly pulled the Futurians pitching up by the boot straps and started climbing the standings. Along with these starters were some quality relievers such as Takashi Saito and Matt Capps.

With the powerhouse offense and the revamped pitching the Futurians started a slow climb to the top of the standings and moved into first place on June 17^th to begin their run of dominance that saw them remain in first place for 15 consecutive weeks.

The Futurians were rolling along even though the pitching was faltering a bit even with the acquisition of Johan Santana in a mid August trade. Then what would ultimately be the demise of the Futurians occurred a week later, a broken pinky on the hand of slugger Carlos Lee, who was leading the NL in rbi when the injury occurred, knocked him out of action for the remainder of the season.

While others felt that it did not matter, that the Futurians would hold on to win, they did not feel that confident. Chipper Jones, who had a monster first half, especially in batting average was injured almost constantly and was a game time decision practically the entire second half of the season.

At the same time, The Marauders were pulling off trades to try to secure second place for himself. Well he did that and more. While the Futurians were stumbling throughout September the Marauders were on fire and climbing the standing fast. They finally caught the Futurians and led by a point on the September 26^th with just two games remaining. Trying not to go down without a fight the Futurians managed a good hitting day on Saturday the 27^th that saw light hitting Josh Anderson hit two home runs and put the Futurians one point ahead of the Marauders with one game to play.

As the NY Mets were doing themselves in on the last day of the season they also did in the Futurians. In the 6^th inning of the Mets/Marlins game Carlos Beltran hit a homerun to allow Double D to tie the Futurians in homers. At about the same time Jose Valverde notched his final save of the season tying the Marauders with Eight Men out in saves and the Futurians at 97.5 points. Then seemingly out of nowhere, Ryan Braun hits a two run home run to vault the Brewers into the playoffs and give the Futurians the homerun needed to move back ahead of Double D and give the Marauders by a ½ point with about two innings remaining in the season. Then disaster struck in the form of a meaningless Dan Uggla solo homerun against the Mets causing the Futurians to lose the precious ½ separating them from the Marauders. The season ended and the two teams were tied at 97.5 points. The Marauders won the head-to-head tie breakers 6-4 and stole first place on the last day of the season, almost in the last inning of the season. An exciting win for them and a gut wrenching loss for the Futurians after being in first place for 15+ weeks.

 Had the Futurians had either just one more homer or two more rbi they would have tied Double D in those categories or if Jose Valverde did not record that final day save the Futurians would have held on for the ½ point win. In the end you can say that the Futurians lost by a pinky, the pinky of Carlos Lee and the extra homerun and two rbi that he surely would have had.