OT: Origins of fatansy baseball

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Posted By: jay behrens

This was posted on the SABR elist. Thought this might be of interest to everyone here since I am pretty most of use play in at least one league.

<< The fantasy baseball we know today has its roots in NYC's publishing industry in the late 70s/early 80s. Okrent, who was working on The Ultimate Baseball Book, introduced his circle of friends to the idea, which grew from his college experience where one of his professors played a rudimentary fantasy game.

This circle included several well connected publishing executives and
established writers. Within a year, a second league formed and played the 1981 season. I was an editor at Bantam Books at the time and got a franchise in the AL league in 1982, and during the 1983 season I persuaded our publisher that there was a book in it -- the founding fathers were mostly writers and Okrent's "The year George Foster wasn't worth $39" was the perfect introduction.

Because of the well-connected nature of the authors and the fact that
fantasy baseball was spreading through the publishing/media community
(including a famous no-limit game at NBC), it was too easy to get people on the morning talk shows, news articles, magazine pieces etc. So the 1984 season dawned with nationwide awareness and a rule book (Rotisserie League Baseball) to go with it.

>From there, the idea spread and multiplied into its diverse forms as
different technologies were applied to it, and 'rotisserie' faded into a description of a subset of the game. Other games were "fantazied" as well -- a proposal for a football fantasy league book hit my desk a week after RLB was published.

F. X. "Midwife of Rotisserie League Baseball" Flinn
802-295-9362

P.S. I am to blame for the position "middle infielder." >>

Jay - who still owns his original copy of the book mentioned.

I saw weird stuff in that place last night. Weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff. And I want in.