Fantasy baseball

Is there any other pastime that better represents how the internet has altered our lifestyles than the rise of fantasy sports leagues? (Probably, but that's not the point).

The simple fact is fantasy teams are something that would have been nearly impossible 15, even 10 year ago. I'm sure there were a few obsessive souls around, following stats religiously as they came out in their newspapers, feverishly jotting them down on graph paper and comparing the results. But I myself am unable to recall hearing anything about any sort of fantasy sports much before 2000, probably later than that. It just wouldn't have been worth the all the torturous number crunching for your average Joe to keep track of a few batters over the course of a week, much less a whole team. And what if your 3rd baseman went on the DL? How would you know who else was available, who was a good two-week replacement? Just not worth the time. But now ESPN will do all that for free, and I'm a member of a 10-team league with members spread all over the country.

Fact is, I'm rather surprised I am participating in a fantasy sports league at all; I'm always such a Luddite in doing things of this like this. For a few years I actively resisted repeated offers to join people's leagues. Some of it was resistance to new things, but also there was the fear of not having any idea of what I was doing. While I'm am something of a sports junkie, I've never really been a numbers person. Really, math in general just turns me off. Knowing what this batter has done against thats pitcher when there are men on 1st and two outs is fine for creating tension on the radio, but really mean very little to me personally. I glance only briefly at the box scores, if at all. Going to the games is a great fun for me, but the joy is seeing how things play out visually, the individual efforts of the athletes. I still remain woefully ignorant on silly things like rules and strategy.

Still, this season I finally caved into pressure from two of my workmates this year and joined a league. And at first, I was even worse than might be expected. Not knowing what the hell I was doing, I did nothing, and my scores from the early weeks show. Even now, when I ostensibly know what I'm doing, I have a grand record of 2-8. Ah well, it gives me something to do during shows and I'm looking on this as a training year. And at this rate, my final record could still be better than the one held by the Nats.