The grueling length of the major league baseball season always makes this an odd time of year. Five major league teams are playing for three playoff spots right now, while most of the league is just playing out the string. A couple of nights ago, I couldn't catch any post game interviews from the Cleveland Chicago game because all of the players left so fast after the game -- everybody has something else to do.

Fantasy baseball plays out similarly. Pockets of teams remain in contention, but by and large, the season is over, and everyone is thinking about football. I do have one league where I'm in a life and death struggle for first place, and it probably will come down to the final day. But we've got weekly moves, which means that I've got nothing left to do but watch and see what happens.

That's a difficult proposition for me, as one of the most active owners in the league. I've made myriad moves during the season, and the better I do, the more moves I generally make to try to maintain an edge. I presume it's the same for my competitor, who traditionally makes the most moves in the league (this year is no exception).

My competition is the commissioner and the hub of the league -- the only guy who knows everyone in the league and the one who put it all together. I've only met him a couple of times -- he's married to one of my sister's best friends. However, as the on-line competition, he's developed a personality in my mind that probably has little relation to reality.

While I haven't seen this guy in some three years, my memory is that he looks suspiciously like a shorter version of Stephen Colbert. So, after discovering, as I do most days, that my competition has undercut me for Francisco Cordero and left me with Derrick Turnbow (for example), I then turn on the television at 11:30 every night to be further tortured by an overgrown version of my competitor seemingly mocking me through the television set.  I find that I feel like I am Fox News.

I know my competitor isn't really Stephen Colbert -- in reality he's an English teacher somewhere in Connecticut. He uses a lot more puns than Colbert, and he seems to be unnaturally obsessed with the Van Zant family. And medieval diseases, particularly those contracted by David Wells. But otherwise, the resemblance to Colbert, at least in my head, is uncanny. And I get really nervous every time Colbert plays Fantasy Colbert Report on his show.

So I'm left to sit around for the next four days, watching a lot of baseball and hoping that I can get the few strikeouts and RBIs I need to win this thing. But it doesn't look good -- I think Colbert is winning.

So come Sunday, I'm afraid that I'm going to feel like I'm sitting up in that interview chair, watching my competitor run through the audience, high-fiving everyone in sight. Then he'll pause, pick up a baseball bat, take a big swing, and knock a styrafoam version of my head off a pedestal into the crowd.  And finally, he'll step up to me, shake my hand, and sit down across from me and look at me with that "I'm smarter than you and I'm going to twist your words around to make you look silly" grin. Just like he does every night.