It seems like just about everyone you know either plays or knows someone who plays fantasy football. Yes I am one of them. As a matter of fact I have been playing for the past 10 seasons. But what about fantasy baseball? Are there still millions of people who play fantasy baseball? I first started playing fantasy baseball back in 1988. It was quite different back then. There were no internet sites to “run” your leagues for you. You had to wait until the next morning to comb the box scores in the newspaper to find out how your “team” did.
When I first started playing we had to use a service that we would fax our weekly line-ups into, they would then calculate the results of our league on Monday and fax the results back to us. Our first league consisted of four of us that went to high school in North Carolina together plus four more guys from New York that we did not know. The service we used put us in a league together. We conducted our draft over the phone. There was much debate over who was worthy of the top pick. Should you select the home run slugger, like Jose Canseco or Darryl Strawberry or an all around player, like Ricky Henderson or Tim Raines?
Well I won that first season and a couple more times after that. Our league stayed together for five seasons. We even had “live” drafts a couple years when all of us would meet in Atlantic City for a weekend of fun and drafting. I also became great friends with one of the guys from New York and we still talk to this day. But for some reason our interest in the fantasy game just drifted away. Maybe because we started playing fantasy football and determined the baseball version was much more time consuming? Did our work and family life just get so busy that we didn’t have the time? Don’t get me wrong a couple of us and our sons have gotten together over the years and played a season or two. But it just wasn’t the same.
So what has happened to fantasy baseball? Is it the constant steroids story that has created disinterest? First it was Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, then Barry Bonds, then Roger Clemens and now Alex Rodriguez. Over and over all we hear about are steroids. Or maybe it’s the expansion factor. There are so many teams with so many middle relievers and fourth outfielders that you start to lose count. Or maybe it’s just the overall inefficient marketing of baseball. Take a survey today and ask who is your favorite athlete or who is the best athlete and you will get answers like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James and even Tiger Woods. I’m not even sure who the first baseball player named would be? Derek Jeter maybe?
Well I’m up for the challenge. I am going to do my part to recapture that love of the game. I have created a fantasy baseball league on cbssports.com and I am looking for nine others to fill out our ten team league. Can I find nine people out there to commit to actively playing in a competitive fantasy baseball league for this upcoming season? All you have to do is go to cbssports.com and click on free fantasy baseball, create a team name, go to join private league, search for league name The Buyline and enter the league password “bailout”. The on-line automated draft is set for April 1st.
Once the league is set, the real fun begins. We can debate who we should draft. Should we take the home run slugger, like Ryan Howard or Ryan Braun or the all around player like Hanley Ramirez or Jose Reyes? Who is the best starting pitcher CC Sabathia, Tim Linecum or Johann Santana? How about closer Francisco Rodriguez, Jonathan Papelbon or Mariano Rivera? Are you ready to Play Ball?!?!
The Buyline 