Five years later, I still thank the good ol’ KBO.
For a certain subset of us, the names are like a call from a long-forgotten universe.
Aaron Altherr. Jin Sung Kang. Jose Miguel Fernandez. Hyun Soo Kim. Ji Hwan Oh.
I was reminded of those names — and plenty more — as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs played the first game of the Major League Baseball season with a 6:35 a.m. ET first pitch Tuesday.
Why? Because back a billion years ago during the height of the COVID lockdown — well, it feels like a billion years but it was technically only five — I would routinely set my alarm for 5:15 a.m. so I could make sure my Korean Baseball Organization DFS lineups were locked and loaded.
Remember? Remember when the only DFS in town was KBO and League of Legends? When every other sport was shut down? When we were stuck in our homes, when everyone was wearing a mask, when hospitals were overrun, when …
Yeah. You remember. I remember it as well.
And KBO DFS was my lifeline.
To be clear: I was on the far left of the pandemic. I was the guy leaving mail on the front porch for days on end, the guy scrubbing down his groceries, the guy who would cross the street if someone else was headed my way while out on my daily walk.
I was a wee bit crazed in those early days.
A big part — well, the big part — of the craziness (besides the threat of death, naturally) was the fact my day-to-day life was turned upside down. I mean, everyone’s day to day was turned upside down, but I’m just me, not everyone, and so yeah: All my routines got shot to smithereens.
Including playing DFS.
As it turns out, playing DFS was an integral part of my life. Not because it was my job, but because it was (and remains) my main hobby. I love thinking about it, building lineups, all of it.
So when that was taken away … well, not happy.
But in early May of 2020, the KBO decided to brave the pandemic, DraftKings decided to post contests, touts decided to start giving their opinions, and before you could say “play ball!” I had about 20 different tabs open on my browser researching everything I could about KBO.
And then … I’d build lineups. Every day. Except Mondays, which were the off day.
I became as much of a devotee to KBO DFS as I was to MLB, NFL, or NBA. It scratched the itch. Didn’t hurt that I won a tournament, either.
It’s crazy to look back at the five years and realize, with absolute honesty, that it was KBO DFS that got me through COVID. I’d look forward to it every day, I’d do my research, I’d set that alarm, I’d fix the lineups, I’d go back to sleep, and I’d usually wake up an hour or two later, just in time for a late-inning sweat. It created a structure in those structure-less times.
I hope to never see KBO in the DraftKings lobby again, but I thank both of those businesses for helping me pass the days and have some semblance of normalcy in an otherwise ridiculously abnormal time.
