On Thursday, I will partake in the annual Fantasy Baseball Draft for my work league. Given the fact that nearly 37 million employees manage a fantasy team, it is no surprise that my office has one as well.

There really isn’t a reason to shy away from the office fantasy baseball pool. It’s a chance to stay in tune with your co-workers, convince an office enemy that Joe Nathan is expecting his best year ever, and potentially earn some cash (but not at Fidelity). Even better, if your manager is in the league, you at least get the opportunity to eliminate the “How about this weather?!” small talk with important discussions such as your first draft pick.

Von Kaiser can already begin the office discussions. In his work league draft on Tuesday, the first pick was Joe Mauer. As of March 8, Mauer’s ADP (average draft position) was 13.2 in ESPN.com drafts. Couchmanagers.com has him at 14.2. Not surprising, considering there are usually a few inexperienced co-workers in office leagues that are coerced into playing just to get 10 or 12 teams.

Despite office fantasy baseball’s myriad of benefits, there is just one major problem I have with my office’s league.

There is no time limit during the draft.

That’s right. My draft starts at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday without a time limit between draft picks. So let me break it down for you, if one person has a meeting and does not want to auto-select the highest pick, we wait. If four people need to run out and grab lunch, we wait. If Bob needs to make an important phone call, we wait. In other words, it is extremely painful.

Imagine waiting 30 minutes in Round 1 only to find the person selecting Albert Pujols. No need for me to imagine: It happened last year.

This one day of the year turns out to be one of the most difficult. It is a balance of both trying to pick the best team without dramatically impacting your career. My monitor is unprotected, leaving me vulnerable to non-participating upper management that are walking around the office. I’m almost positive they are aware that Yahoo! does not have anything to do with my job. Oh well, I’m willing to take a deduction on my year end review to spend the extra time deciding if Carlos Quentin will help get me to the championship this year or place me in fantasy ruins.

At what point do I make sacrifices for the betterment of the team? For example, it’s in the middle-rounds and Andrew McCutchen is within an arm’s reach. A co-worker, not involved in the league, comes by my desk and asks a question. During this time, McCutchen is grabbed by someone else, and now I’m flustered as to who to pick next. Is it fair for me to take my anger out on this innocent co-worker? I believe the answer is yes.

So while you are drafting after hours with your co-workers, please remember that there a few employees in a marathon fantasy baseball draft that will most likely last 7 hours on Thursday. It’s long, painful, and discouraging, but at least there’s a league.

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