It’s time to assemble your dream team
Posted on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
For all you sports fans who think you could do a better job than your baseball team’s general manager, your chance has arrived — at least in fantasy form. That’s right, fantasy baseball season is here.
Anyone who has seen an episode of ESPN’s "Baseball Tonight"and heard the chuckling analysts gush about the day’s great fantasy performers, or who has seen the multitude of advertisements for fantasy baseball at online sports Web sites, has at least heard about it. But what is this game requiring people to trace Tom Glavine’s WHIP, and what the heck is WHIP, anyway? (It’s Walk-plus-Hit per Innings Pitched, by the way).
Fantasy baseball has quite an interesting development as the outlet sport of choice for armchair GMs. It began as "tabletop"baseball when people would take statistics from players’ baseball cards and hold mock "seasons"based on past statistics.
The game took off when a magazine writer from New York named Daniel Okrent started a game with some of his friends (the "owners"). It was based on drafting a mock team of active players before the 1980 baseball season and basing the team’s success on the players’ statistics from the coming baseball season. Teams had to trace the stats of the players they drafted through the whole season, and the team whose players did the best overall in 12 categories would win the prize money from the contributions of each of the owners at the start of the season. The game earned the moniker"Rotisserie Baseball"from the restaurant where Okrent and his buddies met to start their revolutionary enterprise," La Rotisserie Francaise."
Okrent and his friends spread word of the new game during the year, and even more so during the 1981 baseball players ’ strike, when there was little else to write about in the sport. The game became very popular, even in a day and age when players had to rely on weekly box score reports from USA Today.
The game only increased in popularity with the proliferation of the Internet and easier access to real-time player stats. Fantasy fans could now play with people all over the world for free, for money or for prizes.
In general, the game is fairly simple. A group of players will enter a "league"together and draft players from major league rosters. There are usually minimum requirements for the number of starting pitchers, outfielders, catchers, etc. on each team. The team then uses the players’ stats to accumulate points. Some leagues let teams trade and sign different players through the year and some do not. Whichever team has the best stats wins the league.
Draft day can be quite hectic. Better players usually cost more "league money"to draft. So you have to ask yourself: "Do I feel lucky? Will Scott Rolen stay healthy for a whole season, or will his knee explode like so much putty? Is Pokey Reese worth a sixth-round pick? (The answer to that question is, of course, no.)
The stats used in the first rotisserie league were batting average, home runs, runs batted in (RBI), stolen bases, pitcher’s wins, saves and WHIP. While these stats were used because they were easily disseminated from box scores in newspapers, leagues today often use many different stats to determine winners, including such lesser-known statistics as slugging plus onbase percentage and relief pitcher"holds. "So you sabermetrics fans who think RBI is a horrible way to gauge a player’s real ability have places to play, too.
Getting into fantasy baseball is relatively easy. Novice free leagues are available from places such as CBSSportsline. com, ESPN. com and Yahoo Sports. Players can also find fantasy guides for better drafting and trading, advanced scouting reports and player analysis with fantasy numbers in mind. Anyone interested should look into getting started fairly quickly because most fantasy leagues hold the yearly draft right before opening day, if not sooner. So get ready for batter up in fantasy land, baseball fans, and remember to refrain from drafting any Chicago Cub pitcher, no matter how tempting.
• • • Wade Parsons is a Weekly Vista staff writer. He has a journalism degree from the University of Arkansas.
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