While I’m in sports mode, I’m delighted to report that the Akademgorodok Stakhanovites have been resurrected for the 2003 Fantasy Baseball season. Afficianados will remember that they first appeared in a sandbox.com tournament in 2000, where they were roundly beaten by, among others, the London Underground and the Bellevue Baristas. Next year they’ll be in a completely different competition, whose rules I barely understand, up against, among others, the Dalston Ground-Rule Doubles and the Docklands Hound Dawgs. They will lose, of course: ex-Soviet Fantasy Baseball franchises are still in a very bad way. (I’m always tempted to call a Fantasy Baseball team the Boston Red Brigades, but this time around I think I’m going to stick with the Stakhanovites).