The Origins of Fantasy Baseball

[West]

Your right Ive hijacked the thread and I apologize. Let me leave with this statement --played in same h2h league for 7yrs this will be our 8th . I have replaced one owner for inactivity one for incompetence. How many roto leagues can say that? Oh thats right you "like" deadbeats so you can win , I prefer real competition --and our winners get between 900 and 1200 dollars for winning depending on seeding.

i play in a 12 team keeper roto league. We have had the same 12 owners for the past 7 years.

Get that small sample size out of here

[Sticky Spice]

carter - I think I know part of what the problem is. You need to find a (preferably established) league with a group of like-minded guys that are for the most part all buddies or at least friendly acquaintances. You definitely need a league with an in-person auction draft. This will feed a lot of your cravings for social baseball-related interaction and pseudo-intellectual behavior. Even if that's the only day of the year they get together, but even better if they have other social events. Maybe a newsletter, but group emails or an active message board will scratch your itch.

Established leagues like this are hard to find. You really have to search and you have to be willing to look at a wide area - maybe even an overnighter for the draft. Maybe be prepared to spend more than you would normally. Classifieds are inundated with online leagues with online drafts with owners that are all strangers to one another. I would search by locations you are willing to go to. Then I would search other fantasy site classifieds. The best resource you might have is just like when you are looking for a job - networking. You never know when your sister-in-law's co-worker's husband is in a league.

I've been in a 20-team mixed league since 1991 that's like what I'm describing and I would just be lost without it. That league is irreplaceable. The friendships, the history, all the inside jokes from the history - we spend as much time laughing on draft day as we do auctioning.

So I don't think it's your league settings, it's your league setting, if you get what I'm saying. Good luck - maybe even plug your location into this thread and strike gold

[AKhomebrewer]

I began playing in '89 after a co-worker turned me on to a copy of Okrent and Waggoner's 'Rotisserie League Baseball' (pub. 1984). Apparently there were other forms of 'fantasy' being played earlier but they and their cohorts were credited with 'inventing' the rotisserie version.

The fun in those days, as Sticky Spice mentioned, was communing with like-minded souls in a face-to-face auction draft, which took hours. Then waiting for the weekly USA Today cumulative stats page to show up each Wednesday (NL-only, as we drew only 10 owners for that inaugural season), and painstakingly crunching the numbers with pencil and calculator. (We 'discovered' Excel in season three ... it was a Godsend). We didn't have a transactions limit, but there was a $1 fee per team per trade or add/drop, which went into the prize pot.

This was straight 5x5 roto, right from the book. I never even conceived of H2H until some years later when invited into a different league that was using the format. Heck, even my first foray into fantasy football ('91) was a straight points league.

I now play in two leagues each season - a 14-team H2H made up of "real-life" people now entering its ninth season, and as high a caliber "virtual" roto league as I can find (Cafe Challenge League the past three years). Both formats are worthwhile ... the owners you surround yourself with are the key.