The History of Fantasy Baseball: A Nerd’s Tale
To say that fantasy baseball has developed a cult following would be an understatement. In fact, it’s more than that, frighteningly more than that if you think about it long enough, cults don’t generate billions of dollars.
Whereas player pools and teams have extended beyond the diamond and into sports venues around the globe for decades now, there’s no mistaking the fact that the phenomenon known as fanball originated with the sport of baseball first. Everything else came in various shades of second.
It’s all but impossible to gauge precisely how old the concept of living vicariously through professional athletes and bragging about rotisserie wins really is, but the industry as we know it certainly wouldn’t exist without the advent and evolution of the world wide web.
It’s difficult, sure, but important to consider the men and women who preceded the Yahoo.com fantasy baseball leagues of the world with pads of paper, customized scoring configurations and the latest newspaper sports section in hand.
And you thought World of Warcraft was bad.
It’s alleged* that in the early 1960s, an IBM employee from Akron, Ohio coded a computer-based baseball simulator that predicted the outcomes of hypothetical games given a series of randomly-generated statistics.
It’s that last part, of course, that differs from what we now know as the principle of fantasy baseball itself.
[php snippet=1]
From legends of early computer simulations to Strat-O-Matic card games featuring official statistics from Major League Baseball players in season’s past, the concept of “real-time stat tracking” was never fully-integrated into the concept of fantasy baseball until the internet (and more specifically the household web browser) allowed it in the late 1990s.
Sure there were always the committed few who calculated and commissioned their own leagues, histories of which are a dime a dozen online, but it mainstream this was not. From New Jersey’s Joe Blandino and company to Michigan’s Bob Sklar and Daniel Orkent, the accounts of early fantasy baseball are equally fascinating as they are relatable.
But more impressive than the originality of the game’s first leagues is the fact that fantasy sports have spread so wildly since the boom of the Yahoo and ESPN leagues of the 21st century (not to mention Commissioner.com which now makes up the CBS Sports fantasy engine and technically preceded both in 1997).
Today sports fans can play everything from fantasy golf to NASCAR, with customizable scoring options as far as the eye can see. Whether casually with friends or competitively for money, the various game modes in the industry are matched only by their users.
From teens on a softball team to executives on Wall Street and army veterans, it’s impossible to guess which two otherwise-unconnected strangers would match up in a public league on any given day.
When all is said and done, the “sport”/”game” is played by 30 million people in North America alone according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA). Needless to say, it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
What once was limited to Bill Jamesian thinkers with a passion for baseball and too much time on their hands has blossomed into a wide-scale industry worth $3-4 billion dollars (again, according to the FSTA).
Though society would have you think otherwise, the similarities between the evolution of fantasy sports and science fiction role playing games are hard to ignore. If Magic: The Gather and Dungeons & Dragons don’t qualify as chic outside a comic book store, then spending the millions of man hours** that businesses in North America surely lose to employees contemplating their daily pitching rotations certainly can’t be any cooler.
Of course along with the benefits of community and strategy come the downfalls of addiction. Look no further than Jed Latkin, as profiled in the 2010 documentary Fantasyland. The documentary, available on Hulu for those living in the United States, is based on a book written by Sam Walker four years prior.
To say that Latkin – forced by another member of the league to stop negotiating a Justin Verlander trade during the birth of his own twins – is any better than the countless gamers whose abuse of online RPGs have strained their marriages would be wrong.
The documentary is a light-hearted film about what most consider a light-hearted hobby, but it’s indicative of the various lengths different people will go in order to participate and thrive in their leagues.
But regardless of how they all act when they get there, it’s safe to say that everybody came for the same reason; it sure feels nice to lead the league in home runs, doesn’t it?
With fantasy baseball draft season sprung, it’s time to start taking a good long look at the leagues available and brace yourself; nerds are taking over the world.
*And by alleged I mean, by himself. On the strangest website ever. Regardless of its validity, the fact that it even exists speaks to how badly people want to know and be part of the story.
**This is speculated.. but shouldn’t you be working now anyway?
[php snippet=1]
