🦆 The 2 Songs Dominating My Life

In this week's P.O. Box:

I don’t know how it happened, but somehow two songs about ducks have become the most important songs in my life.

🦆 #1: Six Little Ducks

I’ve probably listened to “Six Little Ducks” by The Countdown Kids a couple hundred times by now. This isn’t something you need to listen to, but I’ll link it here for the completists:

The reason for this is because it’s my 6-month old daughter’s favorite song by a country mile and it functions as a true silver bullet solution to any fussiness.

April getting agitated in the car? Put on the ducks for her.

Attempting an extra long walk? Gonna need the ducks…

It’s legitimately hilarious to watch a sad, pouty face immediately turn into a smirk the second the lyrics, “Six little ducks / That I once knew / Fat ones, skinny ones / Fair ones, too” hits the speakers.

Although I guess it is vaguely problematic that the song is fat-shaming big-boned ducks.

Anyways…eventually April will grow out of it and demand other bops, but for now I’m going to savor this “Six Little Ducks” era as long as I can.

🦆 #2: Feeding The Ducks

Sometime last Fall I was doing my Monday morning GPP lineup review show—a masochistic in-season exercise where I review my shitty DFS tournament lineups while getting roasted by the chat for my poor decisions—and I stumbled upon this song within the Streamyard software.

It must have been a particularly rough slate because I ended up poking around in the settings for some soothing music to help calm me down and the provocatively titled track “Feeding The Ducks” immediately jumped out to me. You can listen to here if you are so inclined.

The inexplicably titled background track ended up becoming a staple on those shows and then eventually bled over into my Best Ball Breakfast streams, where I’ve settled on a regular cadence of playing it during my second draft.

It’s become such a fixture of BBB that the chat gets legitimately angry at me when I forget to turn it on:

Meanwhile, the other part of the audience feels deeply alienated with all of this confounding duck talk:

Eventually The Duck (still yet to be named) has become a character on the show, kind of like how people say “New York City” is a “character” in movies like When Harry Met Sally or Taxi Driver:

Although, like with any meteoric rise, there has been pushback to the duck’s new-found prominence on the show:

Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

Things really came to a head the other day when I made the tough decision to axe the ducks music on the Wednesday Best Ball Breakfast drafts I do with Shawn Siegele.

The audio from those drafts goes on the Rotoviz podcast feed and their terrific producer Colm Kelly asked about the audio I was sending over:

While seemingly a straightforward, innocent question, I read between the lines. The ducks were muddying up the feed, splashing all over Shawn’s words.

I made the tough decision to pivot the feeding of the ducks from the second draft to the first draft slot that I do with Pat Kerrane, the defending Best Ball Mania champ.

Although the ducks were apparently not happy with the shift—it ended up being the worst team I’ve drafted all year.

What I’ve realized in writing this all out—a terrific use of my time, surely—is that these duck songs are powerful and I am fully at their mercy.

Praise the laird, praise the ducks.

📺 BBM4 Drafts: #65 Best Ball After Dark w/ Dwain, #66 & #67 Best Ball Breakfast, #68 & #69 Splash Play, #70 w/ Kerrane, #71 w/ Siegele, #72 Ship Chasing (w/ RotoPat), #73 LOLz

💡 Best Ball Tips. #28: The Best Playoff Schedule.

🐬 Updates on Dalvin Cook and DeAndre Hopkins. When will this end? Also wrote up a QB sleeper I like over at Fantasy Life.

🎡 The Jason Moore Randomizer. Hard to hear him go after my beloved Nuggets like that. He also tried to get me to play pickleball, smh. Great performance, though:

👿 I found a new draft nemesis. Meet TheChosenOne.

🤔 Does stacking matter? Hosted another Best Ball Data roundtable with Mike Leone and the crew at Fantasy Data Pros. Also, check out Lou’s thread on TD regression candidates:

🥊 Are you on team Bateman or Flowers? Choose your fighter.

🍺 Best Ball After Dark with Adam Levitan. Caught up with Levitan about what he’s been up to lately, including a big tennis prop bet in Vegas. Also discussed playing the social media game, the rise of best ball, whether the DFS ecosystem is flat-lining, and some of their upcoming plans at ETR.

I figure if we are having a music theme for this newsletter I’ll share two of my favorite albums currently.

This Jam City album has been a go-to for me while working out or driving at night. Super fun blend of electronic, dance, funk, and hip hop. Reminds me a bit of Jai Paul, another UK producer/DJ I dig.

Favorite track: “Wild n Sweet”

It’s been almost a decade since Youth Lagoon last released an album, but it was worth the wait. Very simple, satisfying pop music. Love throwing this on while writing. Reminds me of the recent Helado Negro releases that I love.

Favorite track: “Rabbit”

Very excited about this new Weekly Winners format on Underdog Fantasy. Same best ball format (don’t forget it’s half point PPR), just with flat weekly payouts. I’m going to hop in a bunch of these over the weekend and will be excited to discuss strategy next week.

On Monday I’ll be drafting my 75th Best Ball Mania IV team, marking the half way point of my stream challenge. EZ from the Deposit Kingdom discord will be joining me for the 2nd draft to co-pilot with his correlation spreadsheet:

Enjoy your 4th of July weekend. Don’t forget to draft some RBs and also remember that pickleball is out here killing people.

Need more newslettering? Fantasy Life newsletter drops every weekday: