In 1980, a small group of New York baseball fanatics gathered in the La Rotisserie Francaise restaurant to formalize what is considered the first, official fantasy league.
The restaurant no longer exists, but the group’s creation — Rotisserie baseball — had the same effect on connoisseurs of the sport as French pastry has on a sweet tooth. It was irresistible.
Imagine, a pastime that finally let fans prove they are as smart as Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, or anyone else running a major league team. One simply drafts a roster of players from the ranks of active big leaguers using a few guidelines. Then, by accumulating points through the athletes’ actual performances, one competes in a fantasy league against like-minded “owners,” all of whom think they know baseball talent better than the other guy.
There is no way to get a truly definitive count on how many people are into Rotisserie leagues. Everyone probably knows at least one person who is.
Typically they’re obsessive types who spend inordinate amounts of time at their computer terminal, pore unendingly over newspaper box scores, subscribe to at least one baseball publication, occasionally can be seen reading a book by diamond analyst Bill James, and, in a crowded room of strangers, have been heard to mumble, “How in the world could Tino Martinez go hitless against Tom Candiotti?”
Seldom do they speak about their passion unless it’s to another participant, whereupon never, ever do they give away information that could be used against them. Oh, and don’t invite them to a social event two or three days before their preseason draft. They’ll be locked somewhere in a room, inspecting Major League rosters, scrutinizing final statistics from the previous year, and searching mightily for a can’t-miss rookie among last season’s minor leaguers.
The original players who met in La Rotisserie Francaise nearly 20 years ago had no idea what they would set in motion. Followers of other professional sports, from basketball and football to NASCAR racing and golf, have eagerly embraced the concept. Where it may go from here is anyone’s guess.
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“Am I embarrassed to have people know I do this?” repeated former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. His answer? A qualified “No.”
“I am sufficiently embarrassed only by (the degree of) my own involvement, which began when I started going outside to experts to get judgments on players, calling friends who work for the New York Times for input.
“Guys are betting illegally (with bookmakers) all over the United States these days, smoking marijuana, and trying to beat the government on taxes,” he said. “All we’re doing is playing Rotisserie baseball. No, I’m not embarrassed.”
Cuomo, an attorney in private practice in New York City, gets huge fees for appearances, but the $2,000 he and a partner won several years ago for finishing first in their Rotisserie Baseball League is the piece of outside income he is most excited about. (He was quick to say he reported the windfall to the IRS.)
“I’ve been playing for about 12 years now, and we’ve finished in the money the last four,” he said, noting that he is also considering joining a Rotisserie basketball league next season. A former pro baseball player at the minor league level, Cuomo said his hobby keeps him in touch with sports.
“This is as close as you can come to playing or participating in it in some other way,” he said. “It is a pale and poor substitute for actually playing and sometimes I resent it for that reason. There’s a paradox: You play because you enjoy it, but you resent it because it reminds you that you can’t play anymore. But it does keep you closer to the game.”
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The biggest boost to fantasy sports has been the Internet. “There was this hard core of players for a long time,” said Bill Meyer, founder of USA Stats, located near Baltimore. “And then the Internet came along and revolutionized everything.”
Fantasy owners no longer have to wait for the next day’s newspaper — or pester the real teams — to get details. Meyer’s USA Stats is one of a half-dozen or so major services in the U.S. that, for a fee, supply up-to-the-minute statistics for Rotisserie leagues. In addition, it will coordinate preseason drafting of rosters, compile standings, issue newsletters and handle most other administrative chores–such as arbiting disputes.
The 1990s have seen a variety of other aids for Rotisserie participants–Web sites, books, magazines and newspaper columns devoted exclusively to fantasy sports–with traditional sports publishers such as Baseball Weekly, USA Today and the Sporting News making large commitments. There also are companies that design customized logos and shirts for truly enthusiastic “owners.”
And this November, the fifth annual Fantasy Baseball Symposium, featuring experts on picking rosters, is scheduled for Phoenix. The highlight of this convention for really focused Rotisserie devotees is the opportunity to watch minor league prospects compete in Arizona Fall League games taking place at the same time.
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Assistant White Sox general manager Dan Evans, one of Major League Baseball’s top player-personnel execs, joined a fantasy league several years ago and put it to work for him in his job with the Sox.
“I drafted a bunch of unknown National Leaguers that I wanted to know more about and keep an eye on,” said Evans. “So this kept me in touch on a daily basis with their performances. It was sort of a goof-off league with no money involved, but it was fun.”
Evans, like a lot of baseball executives, can vividly recall the pre-Internet days when fantasy players bugged the front office for information.
“When you started getting calls from outsiders wanting to know when we’re re-activating a utility player from the injury list, you knew he or she was calling to find out for a Rotisserie team,” he said. “Some of these guys are obsessed. I’m sure a lot of them don’t go to sleep at night until they find out what their fifth outfielder did in a West Coast game.”
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You’re sitting in the United Center. The spectator next to you is definitely a Chicagoan and a Bulls fan, but inexplicably he goes berserk–jumping up and down and slapping high fives with a friend–every time Shaquille O’Neal of the Los Angeles Lakers makes a basket. The answer: He’s got O’Neal on his Rotisserie basketball team.
It’s possible to have this hobby and remain a fan of a particular team, but every Rotisserie participant will tell you the same thing: This is one pastime that definitely alters the way you watch a contest when someone on your roster is competing.
“Most people come to baseball games for pastoral reasons, but there are some getting so mired in their statistics that they miss a lot,” said Andy MacPhail, president of the Chicago Cubs. “That bothers me to some extent. But anytime people are at least in a baseball park, I can’t be too concerned about the reason. If they’re fans, the rest will fall in place. I think things like this do generate more overall interest.”
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John Huizinga, deputy dean for faculty at the University of Chicago, participated for a while in a fantasy baseball league based in Washington, D.C. Many of its participants worked for the Federal Reserve Board.
“My experience is that there are incredible side bets that go on among the players,” said Huizinga. “For me, winning is good, but if I had to pick between coming in second and have my arch rival come in first, I’d rather come in fourth and have him fifth.”
As a result of the rivalries, he says there is frequent “dumping” of players. This means trading a good player to another team simply to hurt a rival in front of you. “We’ve got all kinds of battles like this taking place.”
Now Huizinga has shifted to a basketball league known as the Greater Chicagoland Rotisserie Basketball Association, which includes faculty members from the U. of C. as well as Northwestern and Southern Methodist Universities. It is not unusual to find a big following for the pastime on campuses. In fact, the founders of Rotisserie sports first came up with the germ of the idea at the University of Michigan, where a professor got students interested in the concept.
But other fertile venues for fantasy sports are just about any large government office, police or sheriff’s department, law firm or newspaper office — though the Internet has facilitated nationwide link-ups and made propinquity irrelevant.
Perhaps the most competitive leagues are found in pro baseball itself, where reporters in the press box covering games often are just as consumed by their own fantasy teams as by the action on the field. The Philadelphia Phillies once issued a memo banning Rotisserie talk among employees during work.
Several years ago the director of a state racing and gaming commission was suspended for a week for, among other reasons, spending too much time on Rotisserie baseball. There are leagues flourishing in some prisons, where inmates have plenty of spare time to pursue the hobby.
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What’s new? Well, there’s Wall Street Baseball, which is a stock market fantasy game in which participants build a portfolio by buying and selling shares of athletes–and tracking their performances.
And the Louisville Courier-Journal has introduced the “Road to the Roses” fantasy challenge. In this, you select horses, jockeys and trainers several months before the Kentucky Derby. Points are accumulated for their success in graded stakes races leading up to the derby in May at Churchill Downs.
Steve Byrd of Skokie-based Stats Inc., which is a major force in the industry and conductor of the popular Bill James Fantasy Baseball Leagues, said college sports will be a source of interest in the future. His Stats firm also may begin organizing drafts and supplying data for soccer leagues, but here’s something sure to turn a few heads: Rotisserie professional wrestling.
“That sport is a fantasy in itself,” said Byrd. “I’m not sure how we’ll tackle it, but it’s something we’re working on.”
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Concept: Later this summer, a firm called CompuSportsWare will introduce Rotisserie Little League baseball, or RLLB. Names of 12-year-old baseball players, rated on their skills on the field as 10- and 11-year-olds, will be tossed into a national pool for a June 1 draft. Naturally, Little Leaguers from Taiwan will be excluded. The stats that the little shavers accumulate during their regular seasons will be fed weekly into a computer for RLLB participants.
Rotisserie based on 12-year-old baseball players? Naahh. I made it up. There is no RLLB or CompuSportsWare, but here’s what is spooky. Several fantasy sports addicts that were approached about the idea got enthused. One Internet service offered to start a Little League database.
Who are these people?
How many fans participate in fantasy sports leagues? The best guess is an estimated 3 million will take part in a Rotisserie sport to some degree this year, representing a national expenditure of approximately $100 million.
It is not unusual for several fans to collaborate as “owners” of one team. Getting an accurate count of participants is also complicated by the fact that some fans will own more than one team.
One Internet service said it has a customer entered in so many leagues that mailings are sent to a relative because he doesn’t want his wife to know how much time he’s spending on his hobby.
This much everyone agrees on: Baseball, with the huge variety of statistics it generates, remains at the core of the industry and has the most players.
Basketball and football are next in popularity, but golf–standings are determined by the finishes notched by one’s roster of pros and the money they win in PGA tournaments–is the fastest growing. CBS-TV, Fox Sports, ESPN and MSNBC have started leagues for the public to join.
