Fantasy Baseball: It's Not Just For Geeks Anymore

Here comes the baseball season.

Baseball's a sport that verges on irrelevancy. Its owners and players are identically loathsome. Despite recent promises from Dictator-For-Life Bud Selig to the contrary, a lockout or labor stoppage looms larger than David Wells' gut. In Major League Baseball, the word "competition" means "line up and get your ass cracked by the Yankees."

Face it: with the sport's economics the way they are now, baseball translates to "the Yankees and everyone else." Sure, New York might lose the seventh game of the World Series (are you, like me, still a little giddy?), but it's essentially impossible to keep them under 100 wins.

All right, I'm not breaking any new ground here. On its face, baseball blows. But there is a way to make the Grand Olde Game fun again. Join a fantasy league.

Yeah, I know. Rotisserie is for chickens and stat-geeks. I used to feel the same way. Back when baseball was balanced, I viewed roto-heads with disdain. Treating a ball game like a stock quote was heresy. Truly great players can't be measured only by statistics. What about the unselfishness of the sacrifice? What about taking the extra base? Hell, what about defense?

However, in the modern world, the only way you'll witness an exciting pennant race is by creating your own. Think about it: the NFL's great because the teams spend the same money. The smartest, most agile teams win; plus, going into any season, the lion's share of teams might win the Super Bowl (excepting, of course, the Lions). What MLB needs is a little bit of player redistribution, right? Well, in a fantasy league, that's what you'll do. Either via an auction or a traditional straight-up draft, pick players from different teams, and assemble the squad whose stats will wind up best.

And the best part about fantasy baseball? You can play for money. Join a league with some gambling-friendly chums, spend the season trash-talking, and clean up in October. Even better, some leagues use head-to-head play, where your team squares off against someone else's, usually over the course of a week. Voila! You've got head-to-head action to tide you over during the summer, while you wait for football to start up again. (My only advice when it comes to joining a league is: stick to leagues that use exclusively AL or NL players; mixed-leagues are like P. Diddy videos: too much crap going on to make the thing fun.)

So go join a league. I recommend Yahoo's free fantasy baseball service, though sites like Sportsline and ESPN have leagues, too. And if you don't have enough baseball friends, find a Public League, and berate its participants into gambling with you. Pretty soon you'll be playing Steinbrenner to someone else's David Glass. And as Big George well knows, it's good to be the Steinbrenner.

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#baseball #handicapping #fantasy

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