I’ve been learning more about fantasy baseball lately, trying to wrap my brain around how, if at all, fantasy team ownership changes a fan’s approach to the game.

Take the aforementioned outing against the Mets, which I attended.  Whether you were there like I was or watching from the comfort of your home (or gym — whatever your preference), if you’re just a regular run-of-the-mill fan, the things you’re apt to remember about that game are the agita; the feeling of dread when Frost-Tip popped up with two outs in the 9th; the overwhelming shock and delight at watching Luis Castillo bungle the play, handing the Yankees the game; and the injustice of K-Rod having earned a blown save — his first as a Met — on a little league-type error.

On the contrary, if you’re a fantasy player, you score an error for Castillo (though, it’s hard to imagine who would draft him) and a blown save for K-Rod. You grumble, but at the end of the season, these just factor into each of your respective players stats for the year.

In yesterday’s somewhat more dignified outing against the Mets, Yankees fans will recall our awe and glee at besting Santana.  Johan Santana –the Finnish Gift from God, for the love of all things holy.  They will also remember the thrill of the nine-run fourth inning, including two-run dingers from both Robbie and Upper-deki.

Fantasy players will mark down a loss for Johan, cursing the game’s effect on his ERA and WHIP.  If Cano or Matsui happen to play for your team, you get to add last night’s home runs and RBIs to their tally, adjust their batting averages, and feel a little bit cocky about your vision as an owner.   Again, at the end of the day, or the season, rather, it will all boil down to the effect of this game on each player’s statistics for the year.  The game itself won’t much have mattered.

That said, while the manner of the win or loss seems important when you’re watching as a die-hard fan for any given team, the reality in fantasy ultimately isn’t so terribly dissimilar from the reality in baseball.  While the emphasis may be different, the focus in fantasy on individual players rather than a team allegiance, the stats mattering more than the wins and losses, there is a common thread. Unreasonable though it may seem to anyone who was watching both Friday’s and Sunday’s games, each boil down to the same one letter — W.  This refers back to something I’ve said before: It doesn’t matter how you play the game, it’s if you win or lose. In a pennant race, a 15-run rout means the same thing as a W that was less earned than given to us by Luis Castillo.  For fantasy players it all comes down to the points you earn in your four, five, or sixteen categories — whatever the case may be. Period.  For baseball fans, all that really matters is your W-L ratio.  Period.

On the flip side, despite the fact that it’s all about the numbers, fantasy does not necessarily preclude players from investing in the drama.  Sure, whatever way you slice it, they’re thinking about the stats.  However, at the end of a season, if a fantasy owner was to lose his league by an incredibly slim margin, he might look back on the coulda shoulda woulda outing that turned to be the difference.  If the closer for your fantasy team is K-Rod, it would be all but impossible not to look back to Friday’s game and moan about the blown save, how it unduly effected your season.   Similarly, Mets fans are apt to look back on that game and grouse about what coulda shoulda woulda been if, as it turns out, their playoff run comes down to a single game.

One fantasy player commented astutely that being an owner was not so terribly different from being an agent.  Your focus is not so much on the performance of an individual team but more on the performances of your various players.  One thing is certain in both cases, though, when you win, if you win, all that’s going to matter to you is that you won.  Period.  There’s apt to be little reflection on the games where you got lucky on a bad call or an error or a lousy outing from the opposing team’s starting pitcher.  On the other hand, when you lose, if you lose, there tends to be a lot more of that kind of reflection.  A lot more contemplation of the bad games, the close calls, the injuries, the ways things should have gone.

In theory, it may not matter how you played the game, but it sure as hell feels like it when you don’t end up the winner.  People can say what they will about the fundamental differences between fantasy and real baseball, but this is a truth universal to both.

In this latest installment of, “Beefing With The Stars,” Jose Reyes said of the Phillies, “I don’t know why they worry so much about the New York Mets.  They are the ones to win the World Series, not us, and we don’t say nothing about them. We just say congratulations to the Phillies.”

Congratulations-and sleep with one eye open.

Reyes also finds it pretty annoying that the Phils have made fun of him in the past for getting too excited about his big hits, commenting, “I’m not the only one when I hit a home run I’m pimping.”

I mean, seriously.  That’s like the oldest adage of all time.

All this comes on the heels of an ongoing war of words involving Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Beltran, Cole Hamels and, most recently, K-Rod.  And by a war of words I basically mean that they all just keep going back and forth saying that their team is the “team to beat.”

Yeah, I know.  In your face, other team.

Unlike the rest of the players involved, Hamels has been slightly more creative with his mud-slinging, referring to the Mets as “choke artists” this past winter.

What a delightfully tacky comment coming from the World Series MVP.

But it wouldn’t be the first time Hamels displayed delightful tackiness.  There was also that time he married his wife, former Survivor contestant Heidi Strobel-the one who stripped for Oreos.  And peanut butter, if that makes a difference.

But Strobel isn’t just a girl who’s willing to show a little leg for an Oreo.  She’s also a humanitarian.  In a recent interview with SI, she talked about her plans to adopt Ethiopian AIDS orphans-as many as she could get her hands on:

“We’re in the process of adopting an AIDS orphan from Ethiopia. Maybe two. I’m so pumped. I’d adopt six if I could. When I was five years old-I grew up in a very rural town in Missouri, and I had never even seen a black person-they asked us to draw a picture of ourselves in the future, and I drew myself holding hands with a line of tiny black stick figures. I’ve always wanted this.”

And with a mother with that kind of racial awareness, how could an Ethiopian AIDS orphan not end up with a strong sense of identity?

But the fact that Hamels and his wife are so fun to hate only adds to the mirth.  What can I say? I’m just a sucker for a good old-fashioned rivalry.  So, leaving aside all the weird black stick figure stuff, I say bring it on.