The Reid Option: Week 16

by Sammy Reid (SammyReid) Last Updated 2018-12-21 20:03:58 Premium Content Part of the product Core4

Each week, Sammy Reid will break down each position in detail, pinpointing his favorite plays at various salary ranges. Who should we be focusing our core on this week? Read below to find out!

Week 16

Lawr Michaels died on Wednesday.

If you’re in your 20s or you don’t play seasonal fantasy, you might not know Lawr. But trust me on this: Lawr was a legend. He was one of the OGs of fantasy baseball, someone who got into fantasy in the pre-internet days back when it was the sports version of Dungeons and Dragons. He’s also one of the guys who brought fantasy sports from mom’s basement into the modern era and allowed things like high stakes leagues, podcasts, XM fantasy sports radio, DFS, and all of the other things that we have today to happen.

The thing about Lawr isn’t that he was a GOAT of fantasy; he was a GOAT who happened to play fantasy. If you were on Twitter this week, chances are you saw some of the many tributes people wrote for him. And if you did, I’m sure you noticed that almost no one talked about the fantasy players that Lawr was; they talked about the man Lawr was.

Lawr had an ease about him that was unmistakable. He could talk to anyone about anything and made you immediately feel comfortable in his presence. He was one of those people who always wanted to know about you, and he had something about him that made you want to open up to him.

Unlike the majority of people we see in the fantasy industry, the man had no ego. He was always so quick to heap praise on someone else or talk about how smart they were, even though he was the one who had the longest-running fantasy baseball column in history. And to him, it didn’t matter if you were a lifelong member of LABR or you were just starting in the fantasy industry, he wanted to talk to you and get to know you as a person. I think he genuinely loved people; fantasy was just something he did because it made him happy.

I was lucky enough to spend a good amount of time with Lawr over the past couple years. I first met him at a live industry draft in San Francisco, where we puffed casual together on a street corner and bonded when we discovered we wore the same Eye of Ra necklace. Every time I saw him from then on, he’d chant “Ra Ra Ra!” as a greeting to me. I loved it. The next year I went and played a round of golf with him, and I swear you’ve never seen a 140-pound hippie hit a ball so true. Spending hours riding around in a golf cart with him was pure joy, it felt like he was just basking in every moment he got to spend out there. Later that year I got to hang out with him at First Pitch Arizona and flew back to the Bay with him. On the plane, he helped ladies put their bags in the overhead bins and by mid-flight, he’d made new friends all around us. He just had that gift.

So many people knew Lawr better than I did, and the stories I’ve read about him over the past few days have really touched my heart. It’s a small consolation to know that he lived an amazing life and that he had such an impact on the people he left behind. He was a guy who had gone through some tough sh*t in his days too – some genuinely horrible things that you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy – and yet he remained the most positive person in any room. Through everything, he somehow maintained the ease of Andy Dufresne walking around the prison yard of Shawshank, and I’m grateful to the universe that our paths crossed in this life, even for a short time. You’ll be missed, my friend.