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Subject: Why is Fantasy Baseball all the rage
Posted by: blue hen
- [331038201] Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 01:22
Eric Karabell himself weighs in |
| 1 | Tree
ID: 40141166
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 07:12
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not exactly a great piece of literature, but definitely interesting - it's something i've been saying for years.
i must have been 12 years old when i first read the book on Rotisserie baseball by Wulf and all those other guys. teams with crazy names that they invented that seemed so silly, but man, these guys (and one gal) were having fun!
i couldnt get my friends interested at all. they thought it was lame. and geeky. no one understood me when i said things like "yea, now not only can we root for the Rangers, but we can root for Steve Garvey, Dave Parker, and Gorman Thomas!""
i think every one thought i had 8 heads at that point.
but i pressed on. in college, i got my buddy's on my dorm room floor to play Microleague baseball on my computer. we sat down and had a draft day, and i was in heaven. i still remember this kid named Eric (Brasher, maybe?), late in the first round screaming "Jimmy Key!!! OH yea baby!!!" as he drafted the guy would go on to have a decent career with a strong won-loss record, but never a 20-win season.
but it still wasn't quite the same. it was a computer simululation based on real stats from the previous season, not what the players were doing right now.
then, sometime after college, the heavens opened, and USA Today has something called the Diamond Challenge or something. for my admission fee, i'd get a book where i could track stats daily. i got to draft my team on a national scope, keeping within a salary cap. and it rocked, and i had a blast, but it wasn't quite what i was looking for, because i was playing with strangers, and not friends.
then the internet came along, and i discovered SmallWorld (now TSN). i wish i could remember how i stumbled upon it, but i did, and it was even closer to what i wanted. i made "friends", joined leagues with them, and had a great time.
but still, to paraphrase U2, i still hadn't found what i was looking for, mainly because no matter what i did, i was still chained to the whims of a world of people i didn't know, who were much more stupid than me because why on earth would they dump Andy Fox in the midst of a seven-game hitting streak!
and then, finally, last year, i discovered Yahoo. i don't know why i hadn't tried their roto games before, but i think it may have been that i felt that Smallworld/TSN was like my first lover. I had lost my virginity to her, and I couldn't find it in my heart to break it off.
But once i did try Yahoo, for me, it was like a fine dry-aged steak compared to a wilty McDonald's burger.
it was everything i'd been looking for. competitiveness. playing with friends. and decisions i made affected ME, not 10,000 random strangers, and vice-versa.
Sad to say, but i pushed TSN out of the moving car door, and never looked back as the rear wheels crushed her body. I'd found my holy grail after over 20 years of searching, and there's no way i was abandoning my beloved Yahoo now.
Well, unless something better comes along... ;o)
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| 2 | Mike D
Sustainer
ID: 41831612
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 08:00
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Tree, get off the couch, the next person is waiting in the lobby.
BH, I forwarded the link to my wife. Maybe it will help. Maybe not.
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| 3 | blue hen
Leader
ID: 710321114
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 11:06
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Wow, Tree. Wow.
Yeah, Smallworld was like a drug, that's for sure. I feel a little silly that I wasn't the first one in my circle of friends to discover it. But I took it a lot farther than any of them did.
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| 4 | ukula
ID: 20831621
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 11:14
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Tree - try taking a walk outside at least once a week.
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| 5 | Tree
Donor
ID: 599393013
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 11:19
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Wow, Tree. Wow. what are you wowwing about?
try taking a walk outside at least once a week.
LOL..i am an avid outdoors person. i'm a hippie boy. love nature. all that.
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| 6 | blue hen
Leader
ID: 710321114
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 18:40
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Just wow. That's a great story. Seriously. We all have stories like that, but you verbalized it well.
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| 7 | Sore Thumb
Donor
ID: 571049813
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 19:34
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"i still hadn't found what i was looking for, mainly because no matter what i did, i was still chained to the whims of a world of people i didn't know, who were much more stupid than me"
if they had a Fantasy Grammar league, you would come in last.
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| 8 | Tree
ID: 40141166
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 20:32
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if they had a Fantasy Grammar league, you would come in last.
*YOU* write an essay at 7 a.m. before finishing one cup of coffee, mr. bunghole nitpicker.
thanks for the compliment BH. once upon a time ago i was a sportswriter, but when i couldn't get a gig at ESPN, i gave up the dream.. ;o)
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| 9 | Sore Thumb
Donor
ID: 571049813
Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 20:34
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haha. just being bored at work. nothing personal.
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| 10 | Mosquitoes
ID: 381361816
Wed, Feb 18, 2004, 17:42
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Well, what I am looking for is a pure keeper league. I have played smallworld/TSN for several years. I also played Sandbox one year. What I really want is a league that allowes you to keep all or most of your players from one year to the next. I know Sandbox allowes you to carry over 4 players but that is not enough to really develop a team.
Does anyone know of a place like this?
Thanks
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| 11 | GolfFreak
Sustainer
ID: 1730209
Wed, Feb 18, 2004, 18:04
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Tree
That was a good read.
Thanks for sharing.
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| 12 | JeffG
Sustainer
ID: 1584348
Thu, Feb 19, 2004, 09:24
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Tree - Your account was a good read. Thanks for putting in the time to put that together. The ESPN.com essay was more of an article to those who don't get the love or allure of fantasy baseball.
Nearly 20 years ago, after college, I joined the work force. Within a few months, one of the senior officers of the company knew of my passion for baseball and tried to get me into his rotisserie league to fill an opening, and play with people he has been playing with for years from his home town, who basically would just meet once a year for their draft. I did not get it and passed on his invitation, although he tried to get me in the next couple of seasons. This was the early 80's. Back then, they did everything manually, add/drop or trade transactions once a week based on a waiver priority like a mini-draft. They had a different person from the league, each two weeks rotating as 'commissioner' responsible for assembling the stats from newspaper boxscores and filling everything in on graph paper, and then photocopying and mailing the stats to each of the other players. It looked like so much work, I could not imagine there was fun involved. I did not get it.
Then about 5 or 6 years, a different friend hooked my up with the smallworld game (which eventually led me to this site). I played it and was hooked on fantasy baseball. A couple of years later, me and collegues in my office tried the roto game on Yahoo, and our league is now in it's fourth season. Don't play smallworld anymore. Now, I get it.
That old collegue had retired about 5 years ago. A few years ago, I emailed him telling him of my found interest in rotisserie. He was not surprised. He and most of his original gang, still play, now on Yahoo, which helps because not everyone lives nearby anymore. A few have dropped out and a couple new people joined their group. They had evolved with rotisserie baseball, from the pencil and graph paper world, to subscribing with the stats services who would run your league, compile the statistics, and fax them, to the game it now is today. Amazingly, little else has changed and their game pretty much is played the way it was back then.
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| 13 | biliruben
ID: 5061711
Thu, Feb 19, 2004, 09:46
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I started with football. I remember the ritual, in 1990, of counting up with a pencil all your 1/2 sacks and tackles from the USA Today on Monday morning. Football didn't require quite the obsession that baseball did to do manually. We didn't delve into baseball until we could buy the downloadable stats a couple years later.
Now I pretty much only do keeper leagues of the major sports. Not too many keepers, though, or else the draft is boring.
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| 14 | blue hen
Leader
ID: 710321114
Thu, Feb 19, 2004, 11:59
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I first played a game on the Prodigy service, which was actually bigger than AOL at the time. The Prodigy game used last night's stats, or if the player didn't play last night, it used one of his "unused" games from earlier in the season. So you actually had to set your lineups and conserve your backup games, especially with pitching. I'll never forget the night Mark Gubicza threw a shutout in real life, and I had him pitching. What a thrill!
I had Edgar Martinez on that team, and we're talking 1992 here. That's the proudest acquisition on the entire team.
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| 15 | Bob Sacamano
ID: 13113514
Fri, Feb 20, 2004, 02:26
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I havent played in a league in almost 3 seasons but I still count the SWP every time i see the little ESPNEWS ticker.
That is an addiction my friends
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| 16 | C1-NRB
ID: 42171116
Fri, Feb 20, 2004, 09:43
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I'm right there with you, Bob.
I haven't participated competitively since SW/TSN went pay-for-play but I still calculate points in my head out of habit.
Will I ever get this monkey off my back?
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| 17 | Mikel
ID: 25040239
Fri, Feb 20, 2004, 10:33
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Wow, it's Bob Sacamano. Haven't seen that name in a long time. Hey man.
and yes, Counting SWP is an addiction. Over the summer I calculated SWP for the softball team I was on. I was averaging 20+/game!
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| 18 | Valkyrie
ID: 32055122
Fri, Feb 20, 2004, 14:46
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Mosquitoes- I think if you start your own SBX league on Sandbox you can customize it to keep as many players as you want. Of course you would have to recruit your own managers who want to play in a league like that and it is a pay site.
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| 19 | Bob Sacamano
ID: 13113514
Fri, Feb 20, 2004, 14:47
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I don't think any of us will ever stop calculating SWP. It just goes to show us the effect that fantasy baseball has had on our lives.
We all need professional help
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