Past Time

It's been a busy week, and the weekend will be almost as busy. Seems to be par for the course whenever it comes time for my fantasy baseball draft, which I'll be hosting here tomorrow morning. I'll be doing some late-night research because I have to head off to a pseudo bachelor party for a buddy in a little while.

But I came to the realization earlier this week that I've been playing fantasy baseball (or rotisserie baseball, as it was originally known) for 20 freakin' years. I also participate in fantasy football and hockey leagues, but baseball was the first. For you non-roto folks, this involves drafting a team of real players and then tracking their actual statistics through the season; the team with the most points wins. You act as a virtual general manager--trading, dropping and adding players throughout the season.

It was the spring of 1991 and I was working at the old Beverly/Peabody Times when I joined a league with three or four co-workers and a few other guys. I think they had been running the league, which was called Fenway Anyday, for a few years already. Unlike now, when everything is done online and stats can be tracked as they happen, we paid a stat service to track and compile statistics.

Each week, we'd receive a report via fax at the paper; we'd copy the report and distribute it to the various managers in the league. We didn't even have email back then, so trades would be conducted by phone. Of course, those of us who worked at the paper had somewhat of an unfair advantage because we were on PCs all day and had access to the AP sports wire, so we could stay abreast of all transactions as well as the latest box scores. We also had interoffice email in case we wanted to wheel and deal players.

We'd hold drafts in the paper's conference room on a Saturday or Sunday morning before the season started. In the early years, I was almost always hungover from the previous night's exploits. There was plenty of caffeine and food on hand to help us wake up. Most of us were single at the time, so we didn't have family obligations getting in the way.

I don't remember who I drafted that first season; I'd love to find an old stat report from back then and it's very possible I have one somewhere. This was back in the days when the best players were folks like Kirby Puckett, Cal Ripken, Roger Clemens, Robbie Alomar, Jose Canseco, etc. I only missed one draft; in 1996, my dad had died the day before the draft, so the guys did me a solid and drafted a team for me. And in 1994, the season ended abruptly in August because of a strike.

I never won that league; my best finish was third in 2000. That or the year after was my last with those guys. There had been a falling out among some of the mainstays and I ended up joining a league that a couple of other friends were in. That league, MUNTZ, remains intact today.

Baseball's the most difficult of the fantasy sports to manage. It's such a long season and there are so many players to keep track of. I've done well in hockey and football, but the best finish I've managed in baseball was last year's second-place outcome. A lot of it is luck, obviously; if you draft players who get injured early or just have bad seasons, your team may not be able to recover. The key is more in the drafting of so-called lesser lights or "sleepers" who you can get late in the draft and who step up and have big seasons.

The draft itself is a lot of fun. In some of the leagues I do, the players are scattered throughout the country so the draft takes place online. It's still fun, but you miss the in-person jibes and gamesmanship, although some of that is replicated through live chat functions. Nothing beats getting everybody in a room to draft, though.

Tomorrow, I have pick #9 out of 9 teams (although I'm also drafting for the guy in the #5 spot who can't make it). Wish me luck! Or don't. I'll still have fun.