Auction Draft: A 5-hour saga

Everyone knew it would be long.

But this long?

In the 24th or 25th year of the Observer's fantasy baseball draft (the record-keeping is a little sketchy), the league decided to make a drastic change in the way it did things.

It decided to try an auction draft.

This was my sixth season drafting with my co-horts, most of them good for rich baseball knowledge and plenty of snarky comments. But the drafts are usually good for 3 hours of agony and second-guessing, give or take an extra late-round bathroom break.

But five rounds into a 25-round draft and most of us knew we were in trouble. And not because we just blew our budget buying two overpriced first basemen, Ryan Howard ($40) and Mark Teixeira ($30) and a good but not great SP in Carlos Zambrano ($23).

The first 50 picks took 90 minutes, putting us on a pace to finish at 2:30 a.m.

"We gotta speed this up," was uttered by several owners who started doing the math, backtracking how many hours of sleep were in store before the kids got up, or the early flight was leaving.

But the bidding drama was too intense to think about time.

There were the classic showdowns. Grady Sizemore, usually a low $30 player, reached the high $30s with poker faces and pregnant pauses filling the smoke-filled draft room. Finally, when the owner, an outspoken Indians apologist, swallowed hard and hesitantly gave a $40 bid, the room both moaned and cheered.

Jake Peavy, last year's NL Cy Young winner, went for $38 to yours truly - who after two starts is suddenly feeling much better about his investment than that night, when Johan Santana went for the same $38 price tag.

For the record, A-Rod was the highest paid player at $46 and Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Matt Holliday and Howard were all in the $40-plus club.

But somewhere around the 11th or 12th round, the housing market crashed.

It was as if owners, almost simultaneously, realized that they were broke. Some owners could only spend an average of $2 per player the rest of the night, some $4.

The foreclosure deals started flying off the board, and they weren't all fixer-uppers.

Carlos Pena was about to go for $11, so on principle, I jumped in and put in a $12 bid and won the Rays 1B. Jim Thome went for $6. Three of my late-round targets - Oliver Perez, Carlos Gomez and Johnny Cueto - all went for $3 apiece, as I sat helpless with only $2 max left to spend on a player.

Even Carlos Delgado went for a buck.

I finished the draft, gladly taking Michael Bourn for $2 and Dustin McGowan for $1 and calling it a night.

But not before the stroke of midnight. In fact, it was closer to 12:30 when things wrapped up, as we quickly scoured our lineups, reliving the agony and ecstasy of what was probably the best draft many of us had ever been a part of.

Sure, I suffered the next day or two, crossing the (Mountain) Dew line a little earlier than usual.

But for true baseball fans who enjoy the journey of the fantasy baseball season far more than the destination of a championship, consider switching to an auction draft next year in your league.

The only thing you have to lose is a few hours of sleep.