I couldn’t find a good picture of the trophy in my files so I had to use this screenshot of our defending champ celebratorily raising it during the draft.

Dave, Justin, Kevin, and John.

That’s been my fantasy baseball league for 20-plus years now.

We used to be able to find a weekend where we’d all get together for our draft - sometimes as early as January - and those were some of my favorite weekends ever.

But in recent years we’ve just done the draft on a video call of some sort.

The four of us have always been a little spread out around the country in various combinations. We went to Boston University together and since then we’ve never had more than two of us living in the same city at the same time.

Our relationship goes far beyond fantasy baseball - much of my life these past 25-plus years has been spent trying to impress Kevin and Justin and Dave or trying to make them laugh or just sharing life with them - but for today’s purposes we’re talking strictly fantasy baseball…in which I also try to impress them or try to make them laugh.

Our league is somewhat unique. If you’ve read my work beyond the 2025 writing you have probably read what I’ve written about this before.

But because there are just four of us we use a smaller player universe. We don’t need every player in Major League Baseball, so we just use the players in the American League’s and National League’s East divisions.

Hence, the league is called ‘East Coast Bias.’

It’s a brilliant idea, and I’m not sure who gets the credit for the brilliance. It was definitely not me. But besides the narrowing of the player universe it’s also great because it includes our favorite teams - the Mets, Yankees, and Red Sox.

Last Friday night we had our draft, and I had the second overall pick.

I was able to get Juan Soto there, which is great because we don’t use batting average, we use on base percentage. (Another league quirk - a few different stats than you might expect. We don’t use home runs - just runs and RBI, and stolen bases to go along with the OBP as positive categories, and hitter strikeouts count against us. Pitching it’s wins and saves and strikeouts and ERA, with walks counting against us.)

Dave has been working on an all-reliever strategy in recent years where he wins the ERA and saves and walks categories, and he finally won a trophy with that strategy last season. (I think he’s had two in five seasons. I might also be on that pace. I don’t have the records conveniently accessible.)

I like my team this year. Not too many Mets, which is often a problem of mine. It’s actually a pretty even spread of teams so if I throw on a game with one of these teams chances are I’ll have someone to root for. Some exciting young players to watch mixed in, too, like Jackson Holliday of the Orioles.

We have a trophy that gets engraved with the winning team’s name every year and has made its way from New York to Boston (and Framingham) to North Carolina to Washington, D.C. to South Carolina.

When Dave throws himself into a strategy full-fledge he’s hard to beat. But sometimes life distracts him and then we have a chance.

My strategy is usually just to try not to have an all-Mets team so I’m not disappointed twice by a bad Mets season.

Kevin is just very dedicated to fantasy baseball and he’s always a threat.

Justin often picks first so he often has the best player. But he has also won the trophy.

And this year I’m hoping Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, Clay Holmes, David Peterson, and my band of non-Mets can get that trophy back to my house.