For the love of fantasy baseball

I FREAKING LOVE FANTASY BASEBALL

I was introduced to fantasy baseball in 1989, I immediately freaking loved it.  For me, it was a totally immersive experience.  It changed the course of my life.  

I was pool shooting horse handicapping beer slinging computer games developer for the Prodigy Service from IBM.  I read Sport magazine, Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, The National and of course, Baseball Weekly.  I loved Baseball Weekly so much that after work on Wednesdays, I would hop on the train from White Plains  to Grand Central to get the Baseball Weekly a day before everyone else.  Let’s face it, it was a great excuse to party in New York City on hump day.  

When I heard about the Prodigy Rotisserie League (ProRot), I was curious.  My boss played and invited me to join his team. He mentored me on playing the great game.  ProRot was league #2 on Allstar Stats with both Mike Oliveto and Rich Pike playing in the league.  I would join them 12 years later, but seeing their passion and playing this game set the stage for the rest of my life.

When the project to develop an online baseball “simulation” game, Baseball Manager, came to Prodigy, I immediately volunteered.  It was a fantasy baseball game, but different from the Rotisserie style game I was playing.  It was a head-to-head daily game using real performances that correlated to your matchup.  For example, if your fantasy baseball opponent was starting Randy Johnson, a left-handed pitcher, against you, your hitters would use that night’s performance only if the starting pitcher in their real game was left-handed as well.  If your hitter faced a RHP in the real game, then the computer would randomly select a performance from the hitter that was against a left-handed pitcher.  There were many other complicated but brilliant mechanisms to make the fantasy baseball game more like a real baseball game.  

In 1995, I began the fight for fantasy sports at SportsLine USA (CBSsports.com).  I was now playing games via mail as well as both Baseball Manager and ProdRot.  After I won the battle in 1995 and we were set to launch fantasy games at SportsLine, the members of ProdRot ejected me from their league as a competitor to Allstar Stats.  The game was on! We had investments for everyone from Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan to IBM and we convinced the CEO that we wanted to own fantasy sports online. 

In 1998, I began playing in “so-called” expert leagues.  I was not an expert.  I was the GM of Fantasy Sports for CBSsports.com so we sponsored the LABR leagues broadcast and coverage which included a seat in LABR AL.  I was bad the first year.  I finished dead last. The next three years, I was in the top 5.  I worked hard and figured out a lot of things.  

It was in 2002, that it got to be a lot more fun.  I added to my management team, Glenn Colton who I had gone to college with and we stayed in touch on many of my trips to NYC to get the Baseball Weekly.  Now 13 years later, we both played fantasy baseball and joined forces.

Playing fantasy baseball with Glenn led to winning.  A lot of winning.  He was smart and conservative.  I ran the stats, impulsive (he called it aggressive) and watched all the games.  This led to us broadcasting on Sirius XM for 12 years and working at Fantasy Alarm together for ten.

So when I stopped broadcasting on SiriusXM in 2024, there was a deep void for me, and now it is time for me to get back into covering fantasy baseball.  Today is that day!!