The Alabama Truck Nuts League
Presented by Alabama Truck Nuts Dot Com
This is the true story of seven strangers… actually, they’re not all strangers. Addy Baird and Britt Huber are on Willets Pod together often, and I’m not sure whether or not any of the other five people here know each other.
Also, it’s not really a true story, it’s fantasy baseball. Except, it’s not fantasy baseball the way that you think about fantasy baseball. It’s a league, and there are teams, and those teams have players…
…you know what, let’s just meet those teams and players, and it will quickly become evident that calling this fantasy baseball also isn’t quite right.
Since I mentioned Addy and Britt first, let’s start with their teams.
Addy is running the Ganymede Gals, headlined by Shohei Ohtani, Jacob deGrom, and Jeff McNeil.
Britt, meanwhile, enters our league with the Gelderland Trudgers and their marquee players, Adley Rutschman, Ty France, and DJ LeMahieu.
So far, so good, seems to make some sense? Hey, here’s the big three for another Willets Pen regular, Bill Hanstock, and the Salinas Spurs: Daniel Vogelbach, Joc Pederson, and Tim Anderson.
And to get us to, and past, the halfway point, here are the Shreveport Sickos, which is of course the Sickos Committee entry, featuring Shohei Ohtani, Austin Nola, and Taijuan Walker.
Similarly, the Chicago Gremlins, run by Parker Molloy, have built a roster featuring Shohei Ohtani, Kris Bryant, and Kyle Schwarber.
Across the Windy City, you better believe that Cousin Larry Appleton will be rooting for the Mypos Mallrats, the team brought to us by Herb Lawrence. No Ohtani here, but yes Tim Anderson splitting time between Mypos and Salinas, or existing simultaneously in both places. It’s Juan Soto, Anderson, and Sean Doolittle.
Doolittle might seem an odd choice here, as he’s been in Florida rehabbing an injury, but he does project to play this season. That’s extremely unlikely for any of David FIrstman’s players on the Forest Hills Fuzzballs: the late Captain Jack Glasscock, Bobby Murcer, and Nick Adenhart.
So, what’s going on here? How is Ohtani on half the teams that have living players on them? Why is there a team with no living players?
Right now, these teams are comprised entirely of the players you see above. Each team was given the same instructions for the Opening Day Challenge, and those instructions were to choose three players (with players from Major League used as examples):
Their DUDE. Their ride or die for the season. Because that’s what this is. (Willie Mays Hayes)
The pride of their city. Or area. Or planet. The hometown hero and fan favorite. Who do they just see in that uniform with their place name across the front? (Jake Taylor)
Same thing, but for the team. What does it mean to be a Gal, a Trudger, a Spur? Who is the most Sicko, Gremlin, Mallrat, or Fuzzball player? (Ricky Vaughn)
Addy added that “being a gal means playing OUT OF THIS WORLD baesball,” and the league office did not reach out to find out if that was a typo or purposeful, feeling that it’s better left as a mystery.
Also a mystery: the scoring for this first little bit of the season that we’ve had so far. Like, how do you score it when one player is on three different teams and another team has three guys out in the Iowa corn?
Trying to figure that out is part of the reason that you’re only now reading about this two weeks into the season. Another part is that there’s a long way to go, and the main goal here is to have something that’s entertaining all the way to the end of the year, for the players and all you great fans of the Alabama Truck Nuts League PRESENTED BY ALABAMATRUCKNUTS.COM.
So what are the standings after the Opening Day Challenge? Glad you asked.
Points for the Opening Day Challenge were calculated by going to a player’s Baseball Reference page and adding up all the numbers on the first line of stats. For players who have appeared in 2023, this means their 2023 numbers. For others, it means their career numbers.
Also, no distinction was made between good and bad stats, just the numbers that were there. Walker has a 6.00 ERA so far with the Phillies, but you know what, he is making things happen and that is entertainment!
Sometimes you hit a ball 405 feet right into a glove at the center field wall. Sometimes you break your bat and hit a home run. Baseball doesn’t make sense, and neither will this. But we’re gonna have a good time.
Welcome to the Alabama Truck Nuts League PRESENTED BY ALABAMATRUCKNUTS.COM
A note on Alabama Truck Nuts, and this website: We’re a co-op, and this is supposed to be a fun place, which we’d rather fund through the merch store than by asking you to pay a subscription. Among other things, the pressure that comes with collecting money every month in exchange for content is exactly what we’re here to avoid. It’s about having the time and space to do interesting things, but also it’s nice to be able to give people money in exchange for their labor, something that everyone here is a big believer in doing. We also would love to have our little shop put some good into the world, so we are going to take the local nature of what’s in our shop, and start adding the specific places that we want to support when we sell our Alabama Truck Nuts.