The Maniacs Blew It Up

There is a point that I get to any time I play the baroque soccer management game “Football Manager” in the dregs of semi-professional leagues where I have to decide whether to sell off the contract of my club talisman and star who may or may not be any good at the next level or sign him to a potentially ruinous contract that will destroy the wage budget and every time that has happened I have just stopped playing the game. These are not real people but digitally-created blips that I can sort of watch pretend to play soccer for me over a spreadsheet that have been given ludicrous computer generated names like “Paolo Pasta” but I have gotten so attached to these digital athletes heroically dragging my sorry-ass team from a league where you have a van to one where you have a slightly bigger van that I can’t possibly let go of them. I get so anxious about making the wrong decision that it completely drains the fun of playing anymore; the experience transforms from being in a rollicking overseas soccer adventure to a middle management layoff simulator, at which point I just stop playing and turn to other ways to waste time like writing long, ponderous blog posts for 45 people. It should come as no surprise that this is a post about the Chicago Cubs.

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