Margie’s Marriage Counselling

1984 to 2004

I joined the world of fantasy baseball in 1984. My team, Margie's Marriage Counselling, named for my wife's business, included 25 American League baseball players selected from various teams filling all the normal positions. I was the general manager and the fantasy was competing against others by comparing stats, making trades, dropping under-performing players and discovering phenoms.

An early high point of fun was when Terry Vollum, an owner with media connections, was on the cerebral CBC Morning radio show with Joe Cote waxing on about fantasy baseball. Joe was especially taken with the inventiveness in the team names. Margie’s Marriage Counselling was singled out for its prescient prediction that owners’ marriages would be challenged as we became addicted to our fantasy.  

I was good at enjoying the game but not much of a competitor. All my natural faults;  impulsiveness, over-optimism and greed, led to finishes near the bottom. One year I finished last. Margie tried to buy me the vanity licence plate, Loser, but it was taken. I lost out on that front as well.

It turned around for one eventful season; 1989. I took in a partner, my childhood friend Dennis. I needed Dennis because I was scheduled to be in Israel for the season opening draft when teams were assembled.

Dennis and I did all our homework together before the draft. I contributed tiny touches of wisdom gained in the previous five years. He added a mature analytical sense. He was a teacher. But in order to win in fantasy baseball you need to be a rebel. You can't get frozen  into the status quo. Dennis was qualified. In his  college days he was a political Weatherman. He had been arrested in Chicago at the 1968 riot filled Democratic convention.

After the Fantasy League draft Dennis faxed the names of the  players he chose to me at my hotel in Jerusalem. I cut the faxed page into tiny pieces with each player's name on one slip. I then took the slips to the Western or Wailing Wall, which is the holiest site in the world for Jews.

The Wall is one of those special gathering places that are not visible until you are in them. In the case of the Wall I entered the plaza it dominates from a tiny city street in the old city of Jerusalem. You turn a corner and suddenly it is upon you. Huge. White. Busy. Religious. Coveted. Armed to the teeth. Similarly when I visited the Taj Mahal in 1971 I entered thru a small green guardhouse. I turned a corner and suddenly there’s the Taj Mahal elevated to the sky on the horizon of a huge reflecting pool. Same thing at the immense, chaotic, exotic, ancient  Jemaa el-Fnaa market which appears suddenly as you walk to the end of any number of side streets in downtown Marrakech.

At the Wailing Wall my job was to give each of our players the best chance for a successful season. I squeezed each slip of paper with the name of one Counsellor on it into his own crack in the wall. And in my best cover of Dionne Warwick I said a little prayer for each man.  

Jews and others had been slipping their wishes into the wall for generations. Even Pope John Paul II tried his luck in March 2000.

As the season progressed our team was performing well. In the stats for the week ending May 14 we were in 1st place. We were leading in both total hitting and total pitching. A rare achievement. Dennis had drafted well. God had done his bit.

A highlight of the season happened August 2nd. The Counselors were in first place. Almost every player was having a good season. I was enjoying another sumptuous expense account lunch on the patio of the Bellaire Cafe in Yorkville on the beautiful summer day. As lunch was ending I looked up and saw two Kansas City Royals, George Brett, always an all-star, and Dan Quisenberry, then the best closer in baseball, sitting a few tables over. I went to them. They were friendly when I told them that they were on my fantasy team. George Brett was in a slump at that time. Memorably, he apologized to me for dragging the Counsellors down.

The Counsellors went on to win the season in 1989 but it was bitter sweet.

The low ebb of the season came in June. Dennis died suddenly of a heart attack while at work. He was 41. Margie and I had the gut wrenching job of picking up Jaron and Jessamyn at school; telling them their dad had died and taking them to the hospital.  A hard day.

Dennis and I had bonded twenty nine years earlier in grade six. My dad had died two years earlier at age 47 of heart disease. Dennis’s dad had died months earlier at age 36 from a heart attack.

I was deeply saddened when Dennis passed  with feelings of dread for his wife Nell as I remembered how my mother suffered when my father died.

I also got the message that my own days were numbered given my family history. That’s proved to be a very large number. Doctors now tell me my heart barely beats I’ve taken such good care of it.

The Counsellors didn't win again under my care but that turned around when my son, Stephen, took over the team in the around 2004.