Moises Alou should be deleted from the Roto baseball universe

Every year, usually around late February or early March, when my annual leagues send out the preseason e-mails regarding any possible rule changes, I tend to ignore most of these aforementioned e-mails. The reason for this is two-fold. First, this is crunch-time in my fantasy basketball and hockey leagues (yes, plural) and in my push for the playoffs, the part of my brain that is utilized for fantasy sports is too consumed trying to remember if Eric Belanger is a backup center for the Sacramento Kings or the third-line center for the Los Angeles Kings. Second, and more importantly, nothing ever really comes from these e-mails, aside from requests for the league entry fee to be raised/lowered or maybe one or two thinly veiled, poorly worded cheap shots at those who finished in the lower third of the standings the previous year. Well, next year, when these e-mails come around, not only will I pay attention to them, I'm even going to go as far as to make a brash suggestion. My e-mail will be one sentence long and will state "Please delete Moises Alou from the player pool". Now, clearly, my motivations here are purely self-serving. The other owners in my league(s) will certainly veto this suggestion if not simply for the fact that I'm the jackass owner who not only gets stuck with him every year, but also ends up a paying a price for him as if I believe he were going to actively participate in 150-160 games that year. For some reason, year in and year out, Moises Alou makes me stubbornly optimistic. He always tears through April and May. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me at the moment but I'm pretty sure his combined career average April and May numbers look similar to this: .478 BA, 23 HRs, 60 RBI, 48 runs scored, maybe a steal or two for good measure. Ok, maybe I embellished those two steals, but you get the point. And for some reason, on draft day, when I'm looking to fill my last outfield spot, and I realize Alou's name hasn't been called out yet, inside I get unjustifiably giddy, like I just accidentally stumbled upon a Mickey Mantle rookie card and the cure for Alzheimer's in the same sitting. "Wow, he's still available AND I can probably get him for a buck or two." Of course, I'm never the only owner with this idea, and a buck or two always turns into a bidding war that doesn't end until I get stuck with him at $10 or $15 bucks. Early on, the price seems warranted. I give off the appearance that I knew what I was doing. I start to feel like "This is the year he puts it all together and stays healthy". I start to get that assuring feeling the Magglio Ordonez owners are getting this year, you know the same feeling Nomar owners had up to about 36 hours ago. That is until June or so, when the heat and humidity turns Alou's bones into pudding. This year though is exceptionally frustrating for me and my fellow Alou-aholics. He's been on and off the DL for the last two months. When he is active, he sits out games so you have no choice but to bench him. When he starts to look healthy again, he'll play on the weekend and it appears to be a safe play for the upcoming week, so I activate him only to have him sit out five of the games that week. This has happened more than once this year. The Giants even went as far as using him simply as a pinch-hitting decoy this last weekend. By this time, his value is next to nothing and it's too late for me to do anything about it except to either stash him on my bench or trade him in a salary dump, which is exactly what I did in one of my leagues. Even with all this said, I still haven't learned. The owner to whom I traded Alou dropped him in order to clear cap space. And of course I put in a bid for several dollars on him, at the expense of dropping one of my cheap prospects on a three year contract. So while the other owner's make smart pickups, good Ol' Moises will most likely be back on my roster by tomorrow night. And I just know that if I am outbid, he will certainly have an outstanding healthy second half for someone else. In some ways, owning Moises Alou is like having a whiny, mediocre looking girlfriend who drains your bank account and stinks up the bathroom. You don't want anything to do with her anymore, but you fear dumping her will cause her get her act together and she'll end up hooking up with some douche bag that voluntarily tucks in his Polo shirts and drives a convertible. So this is the blabbering, ranting lunatic I've become. I hope at least you Kerry Wood fans can empathize.