I will tell this anecdote again. I have used it on this blog at least once. Maybe twice. Thrice.

It was the 2006 Olympics. At Torino. A gloomy, gray, soggy city trying to jumpstart its future after the Fiat plant closed up and left town. Actually, the media center was inside the old assembly line.

On a bus heading … somewhere. (Riding buses is a big part of any Olympic print reporter’s memories.) Next to me, across from me, ahead of me … a reporter from Colorado is talking to another journo. About boring concepts. Boring people.

And she announces a line that she apparently uses, with boring people, the substance of which I haven’t forgotten: “Two things in the world I don’t give a crap about: Your dreams and your fantasy baseball team.”

So, yes, I am aware of the intrinsic danger of anyone anywhere at any time being interested of a fantasy team, let alone mine.

But here are some truths that those of you outside the fantasy stat community should know. If you don’t already.

–This stuff matters. To many/most of us. For six months we will be staring at box scores, picking out “our” guys and celebrating/despairing. We don’t expect others to care. But if we manage to talk about it in tight, sharp sentences … can you pretend to care, just a little?

–This is good for anyone who thinks he/she is covering baseball. Or writing about it. Nothing like running a fantasy team (or 10 of them, for the zealots) to have a gut-level understanding of what a player is like, day by day. Guys you may have never seen play in person. You feel like you know then. “Four thousand? Well, of course; he always stinks in day games.”

–The leagues are a good way to keep old friends in contact. The 12 people in the Sun Baseball League, formed in 1983 when “Rotisserie” leagues were unknown outside Manhattan, have almost nothing in common anymore — aside that all of us worked at the same newspaper at some point. (Only two still do.) The camaraderie during the draft, which happened early today (in Abu Dhabi) or last night (in California) is intense.  Almost touching. Four of us weren’t even in the room. One of us wasn’t even in the country.

So, this is how into the SBL I am. I went to bed early, at 3, and got up at 6, in a mental state that brings to mind the term “zombie” … managed to get online and participate in the 28th draft — which began at 7 p.m. in California, the night before.

It went on for five hours. We divvied up 324 players. And now we go at it for six months to see who can read talent better than the other guys.

The entire draft was put online here by Dennis Pope. And he did it live. A good trick, while picking players.

The short of it: Albert Pujols back to No. 1 in the draft after falling to No. 4 a year ago — where I got him, and went on to win an excruciatingly tight championship series over Andrew Baggarly, the San Francisco Giants writer for the San Jose Mercury News.

Hanley Ramirez second, then Joe Mauer,  Chase Utley,  Ryan Braun, Alex Rodriguez, Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, Miguel Cabrera, David Wright, Evan Longoria, Ian Kinsler. That’s the first round.

I had the second pick and took Hanley. Because I know I’m supposed to. He does everything pretty well, but I don’t like that his steals are going away and his power hasn’t fully arrived, and I thought long and hard about taking A-Rod or Longoria, instead.

I will think more about this, rest assured, for the next six months. Especially if Hanley is anything but god-like.

And now we begin six months of complaining about our teams, mocking our own stupidity or cupidity, praising our competitors (hoping to “reverse-karma” them) and writing long (longer than this) rants about how rotten our luck/scouting talent is.

So, yes, we know you don’t care about our dreams either. But humor us. We promise to listen to your well-worn story of the swain who did you wrong or the teacher who didn’t like you, and even remark about it.