It's baseball season eve, and away from the splendor and green grass of Wrigley and Fenway and Jacobs, well before the dog days of summer, leagues gather. They're drafting players - real players - to wage war in their name for the next twenty-six weeks. These are not the people who make big business baseball decisions, these are members of the not-so-secret society of rotisserie baseball players. For them, the game isn't enough. They must BE the game. People obsessed with baseball in "Dungeons and Dragons"-like fashion? Baseball reduced to numbers? No doubt, these are obsessives after my own heart. I must take part in the grown-up children's game known as rotisserie.
Rotisserie. The word can mean tasty chicken. But to an increasing population of sports fans, it is a way to spend six months of their spare time immersing themselves in their sport of choice. It's not just a hobby, it's a commitment. The basic gist behind rotisserie sports (not to be confused with "fantasy" sports) is easy. Up to twelve people form a league. Sometime before the respective sport's opening day, the league assembles to draft players. Using an imaginary salary cap of $260, every player necessary (say, every National League player, or every American League player, or all players from both leagues) is auctioned off to the highest bidder. When all the roster spots are filled, the draft is over. Weeks or even months before the draft, rotisserie owners prepare by reading scouting reports, examining statistical trends, paying attention to spring training games. Magazines and books line the shelves: Street and Smiths, the Sporting News, Baseball Weekly and dozens more provide the dirt on every last player.
Our league uses only the National League players, thereby cutting down the amount of research necessary. I, of course, do very little. The six hours spent Internet surfing the night before evolved into me just reading about my favorite players. I convince myself that no one else will notice the little players, like Arizona's Travis Lee - despite the fact that he hit .300 and thirty homeruns. I enter the draft confident that I've already got my eleven opponents snowed. Victory will be mine.
And then the first name to be auctioned is thrown out: Odalis Perez. "Odalis Perez?" I think. "Who the hell is that?" As I scramble to figure it out (turns out he's a so-so Atlanta Braves pitching prospect), bidders rapidly throw out numbers. "$1." "$2." Before I even find out what position he plays, he's sold. The draft is on. I'm already lost.
Once the rosters are set and the sports season begins play, competition is based on statistics. In rotisserie baseball, the sum of your hitters' homeruns, RBIs and stolen bases are tallied, along with the team batting average. For pitchers, wins and saves are tallied along with the team's earned run average and ratio or WHIP (walks plus hits divided by innings pitched). Your team is then ranked against your fellow owners, and, over the course of the season, the team with the aggregate statistics determines the winner. It is the greatest test of the La-Z-Boy manager, the chance for the Monday morning quarterback to put some money where his mouth is.
The term "rostisserie" (roto for short) hails from the hobby's genesis. The first rotisserie baseball league (the Rotisserie League Baseball Association) was founded in 1980 by Dan Okrent, one-time managing editor of Life Magazine. Okrent and eleven other players turned love of baseball into the ultimate statistical challenge. (Two other members of the original RLBA, Glen Waggoner and Robert Sklar, have made a career out of the hobby, publishing a yearly how-to-win-your-league guide titled "Rotisserie League Baseball.") The name rotisserie hails from the league's original meeting place, the since-departed Le Rotisserie Francais restaurant in Manhattan.
Fantasy sports differ slightly. Instead of using the official rules of rotisserie baseball (penned by Mr. Okrent himself), fantasy rules vary from league to league (think: customized rotisserie). The options are virtually infinite, but remain essentially apples-to-oranges.
The draft is not quick. Twelve people, twenty-three roster spots each. Bidding gets torrential for the blue-chip players: Atlanta's Greg Maddux, San Diego's Trevor Hoffman, New York's Mike Piazza. All are coveted. All are expensive. The trick to the draft, a friendly rival reveals, is to pick some good players, but to be patient and acquire above-average players for cheap prices. If you spend too much of your imaginary $260 on Maddux and Glavine and Sosa, you won't have everyday players in other roster spots.
I nod my head, and don't listen. I'm drafting like a fan, not a General Manager. Maddux comes up, I pay a lot. Raul Mondesi comes up, I pay a lot. Within two hours, I have four superstars, but less than half my money. Nineteen roster spots left, dwindling money, and four hours to go. My head hurts.
Since 1980, the hobby has spread to America's other pastimes. A jaunt around the Internet reveals endless rotisserie football, basketball, hockey and golf leagues. The hobby has even spread into the television world. The website virtualprimetime.com offers TV rotisserie, using television shows and their ratings instead of sports players and their statistics.
Although an exact count of nationwide participants is impossible since rotisserie leagues are generally privately run, estimates for baseball alone range between six and fifteen million participants yearly. In most leagues, the statistical tracking is done by a stat service, nowadays a website where owners are able to view daily progress reports and updates. Most leagues have sign-up fees which pay the cost of the statistics providers (between $50-150), and most offer a cash prize to the winner and runner-up.
Five hours into the draft, I'm not thinking about real money. I'm thinking about a second baseman and a catcher. I have neither. A perusal of the remaining players tells me there are no more everyday players in either position. I have hardly any money. I end up drafting the Cubs' Tyler Houston. Fan favorite? Sure. Good player? No. Suddenly I'm praying for a tear in Benito Santiago's ACL. Screw the Cubs, I need at-bats.
The arrival of the Internet has brought with it a leap forward in fantasy sports, and businesses are cashing in. STATS, Inc., a Morton Grove company founded seventeen years ago as a software provider for professional sports teams, has flourished as a wizard of numbers.
In addition to providing statistics everywhere - from AP's daily boxscores to the backs of trading cards - STATS, Inc., also operates as a stat provider for private fantasy and rotisserie leagues, has its own fantasy baseball game, "Bill James Fantasy Baseball," and operates America Online's "Grandstand" game.
"Fantasy sports have exploded on the Web," notes STATS' Vice President of Fantasy Sports Steve Byrd. "In the past, a league commissioner would have to go through the daily boxscores and do the statistics manually. But it's such an information- and transaction-intensive hobby, it's easier to pay a service to do it."
Byrd goes on to note that on STATS' website, football fantasy games are more popular; opposed to baseball, they're mostly cash prize games. He also reveals that, thanks to that sport's rising popularity, NASCAR fantasy games are in the works.
More than seven hours after the opening bid, the draft ends. From now on, rotisserie is a matter of tracking my players, maybe pulling a trade or two, watching the waiver wire for previously unknown players having a good year. My roster has gaping holes. Still no everyday catcher, everyday second baseman, no real closer. I'm hoping for injuries to decimate my opponents, to give my team a chance. In twenty-six weeks, I know I will not be the winner. But for the first time ever, I have a reason to care about a Dodgers-Diamondbacks game. Montreal is worth watching. Go (gulp!) Braves. I know every player. I'm going to lose, but I don't care.
(Dave Chamberlain)
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.