When I first started working at my current job, I spent my lunch break with a different group of people than I do now. They were good guys and everything, still are in fact, but when football season rolled around, it seemed that a lot of them would spend the entire lunch break talking about their fantasy football teams. Now, I'm as big of a fan of the NFL as anybody else, and I'm especially eager to talk about the wins and woes of my favorite team, the Green Bay Packers. But in my opinion there was nothing more boring then listening to some fantasy owner drone on about the performance of their team last Sunday, their "fantasy" team, called that because after all, it doesn't actually really exist.

That was, of course, before I became one of them.

So that's fair warning for you non-football fans out there; I strongly suggest to those of you that you quit reading now, and come back next week or next month when I think of something else to write about, for example, like what happened after I sprayed "Off!" on all my house plants to kill the bugs that were living on them. Or maybe some anecdote about the latest problems with my golf game. Or perhaps even my complaints about how hard it is sometimes to open those little ketchup packets.

Anyway, if you're still actually reading this, I'm guessing that there's a possibility that today, the first day of the 1999 regular season, you might've caught a game or two on the tube. And if so, there's a good chance that you probably saw the devastating injury that occurred today, during the Patriots-Jets game. New York quarterback Vinny Testaverde, whom many expected to lead his team to the Super Bowl this year, went down with an Achilles tendon rupture, and now he's going to be out for all of 1999, taking his own and most likely his whole team's championship aspirations for this season.

And what's especially tragic is that Vinny wasn't even tackled on the play that he went down. He was just standing there on the field after handing the ball off to the running back, planted his foot wrong, and went down, completely untouched. It was as if the finger of God just came and struck him down.

Well, it wasn't the finger of God. It was me.

Because, it seems that I have a certain gift. A gift enabling me to destroy promising football players. Via my fantasy football team. I've been playing in my fantasy league for five years now, and every single year my first-round draft pick has been a bust. And I don't nail the players just anytime, either; I get them right away in the season, usually the first game or two. Four years ago, my first year of trying fantasy football, I happened to draw the number one pick, and so I selected San Francisco quarterback Steve Young, who had just come off his best year ever and was the number one pick in a lot of fantasy leagues. He got injured near the beginning of the season and was out for more than half the year, making his statistics for 1995 wholeheartedly mediocre. And the 49ers haven't been the same since.

The next year I played conservative and decided upon a solid running back in the first-round and selected Chris Warren of the Seahawks. For the past several years he had consistently run for a thousand-plus yards, and in the last two seasons he had scored eleven, then sixteen touchdowns for that year. Four weeks with him on my team and he was sitting on the Seattle bench. He certainly hasn't been the same player since. He's now at Dallas as a backup not getting any playing time. Probably next year he'll still be working in Dallas, though maybe for the Golden Arches instead of the Cowboys.

In 1997 I figured enough was enough and picked Jerry Rice in the first round. He hadn't missed a game in twelve years and held the record for playing the longest string of continuous games in the NFL. So I figured he and I were pretty safe. He was on my roster for approximately an hour that season before an injury sidelined him and then he missed the next fifteen games. Sorry, Jerry.

Last year, still believing that I was merely a victim of circumstance and coincidence, I was stupid enough to actually brave choose a Packer in the first round. So naturally that's why Dorsey Levens got injured in week two, of course was basically out for the entire season, and the Packers' then had no running game in 1998 and therefore did not make it to the Super Bowl for the first time in three years. Brought down an entire franchise. Never will I pick a Green Bay player again.

And now, it's 1999, and it's still only the first week and my star quarterback, the position expected to score the most points for my team, is gone for the season with no chance of coming back. And that illustrates that my gift is getting even worse with time. When I got Steve Young, four years ago, at least he was only out temporarily and managed to come back near the end of the season. At least Chris "Would you like fries with that" Warren wasn't actually physically injured, though his career certainly was. But Rice and Levens did get hurt, experienced strong physical trauma, and they both missed almost their entire seasons.

It's getting worse because this year Vinny wasn't even my first-round selection. This year it was Randy Moss, one of the reprehensible Vikings, picked just so at least I'd experience some modicum of satisfaction when I see his leg break. And he will...I guarantee that he surely will. So my gift is now getting more than one player at a time. His injury is tragic, but Vinny should count his blessings; he won't be playing football in 1999, but at least he's still alive.

Because one of these days my gift is actually going to kill one of my players. It's just a matter of time. And I can't have the death of a football player on my conscience, even if it were a Viking. No matter how much I like to participate, I'm going to have to give up fantasy football for good. It's the price I'll have to pay.

And Vinny, since you won't be playing for the Jets this year, you'll probably have a lot of free time on your hands. You may even be in your wheelchair in front of a computer reading pages on the web. If you are reading this, please believe that I'm genuinely sorry. It's a terrible injury, you did nothing to deserve it, and I sincerely didn't mean for me to do this to you.

And if you'd need me to send you a few bucks, let me know. It really is the least I can do.

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