By A.J. Hayes
My name is Tony H. and I'm a fantasy baseball player.
There I said it.
Actually I haven't been an active participant in fantasy ball in more than a decade, but sometimes the urge to seek out "post-hype sleepers" and under-the-radar bargains in fantasy publications is so strong that I have to leave Barnes & Nobles immediately
Apparently, I will be a fantasy baseball player for life.
Evil?
It all started innocently enough back in 1993, when a co-worker introduced me to his in-house league. Figuring it was another way to put my absorption of all things baseball to use and earn some pocket cash at the same time, I showed up at the "draft" - held in a clandestine conference room on the Saturday morning before the start of the baseball season - with a rough idea of what I wanted my team to look like and three crisp twenties from the ATM.
I felt like a real big-league general manager at the draft, and the blueberry bagels weren't so bad either.
Being a Giants fan, my goal was to select as many San Francisco players as reasonably possible and then flesh out the rest of the squad with pre-inter-league play American Leaguers. That way, there would be no conflict of interest with my team and my team.
That first season I managed to land Barry Bonds to play the outfield and selected fellow -Giants Robby Thompson and Royce Clayton as my keystone combo. The rest of the squad was filled out with the likes of Joe Carter, Mo Vaughn, Lance Johnson and Paul O'Neill. I made one or two exceptions to my rule, selecting National League players such as catcher Joe Oliver, outfielder Bernard Gilkey and a couple of senior circuit pitchers including a youngish Curt Schilling and Steve Avery of the Braves.
When the season began I became ensconced in baseball like never before - raising in the early - pre-internet -- hours to scour the morning boxes and tabulate "my guys" total bases, their RBI output and stolen bases.
It made going to work a bit more fun, especially when I would pass one of my fellow fantasy players in the hall after Chuck Finley threw one of his league leading 13 complete games that season - that's a lot of extra points - or Tom Henke racked up another save.
But by mid-season, the fun turned into serious business. I blew a gasket when Felix Jose failed to live up to the hype with another 0-for-5 game and when Ben McDonald hit the skids after I inserted him back into my starting lineup.
The real life Giants meanwhile were having an amazing campaign in '93.
But I would felt a tinge of strained loyalty when the Giants took on Avery and his Atlanta team that was battling the Giants for the NL west lead. Secretly I pulled for the young Braves hurler. Heck, two out of three Giants wins that series wouldn't be so bad, I tried to convince myself.
That day I knew the real-life Giants had become my second favorite team, after my make-believe squad.
As it tuned out, both my team and the Giants fared pretty well in '93, but we both finished out of the money.
The Giants won a team record 103 games but finished in second place, one game behind Avery and his Atlanta Braves. My fantasy team generated more than 3,000 points, but finished third behind Geoff from the art department and Skip from accounting.
I was bummed... mainly about my fantasy team.
As the 1994 baseball season approached, I crammed like crazy for the big draft. I bought all the annuals and studied my notes to the last possible moment, ignoring the temping spread of Danish set out before me on draft day.
I totally changed my approach to selecting a squad. Sure, I would go after Giants, but I drew the line at sluggers Bonds and Matt Williams.
Why should I bother with the likes of the banjo-hitting Darren Lewis if doubles gobbler Larry Walker were available?
I drew the short straw and was forced to pick last, which enabled me take two players back-to-back. Bonds was gone, but I was able to nab Williams with my first pick.
Then I did something that immediately soured me on fantasy baseball forever.
I selected a Dodger. Look, I had no choice. One of the toughest positions to fill on a fantasy team is catcher, a weak offensive position in the pre-steroids era.
So I took Los Angeles slugging backstop Mike Piazza.
At the time there was no more hated Dodger in Giantsville. Not only was Piazza a great hitter and a Giant killer, but he was somehow related to Tommy Lasorda. Yuck.
But it was either Piazza or someone like Don Slaught. I had no choice.
After taking Piazza, I had crossed the dark line of fantasy baseball.
At that point I began taking other National Leaguers left and right, loading up on Tom Glavine, Bobby Bonilla, Craig Biggio and Dante Bichette. I even took two more Dodgers: Delino DeShields and Todd Worrell.
Initially I was pretty pleased with my maneuverings on draft day. But as I started for home the euphoria began to wear off.
By May, I was really bumming and wouldn't tabulate my daily scores until the last possible moment.
It started to dawn on me that I loved baseball for the team aspect of the sport. I rooted for Willie McCovey to bash the game winning hit as much as I did for 25th man Rob Andrews to set up the contest decider with a nifty, well-placed bunt.
Fantasy baseball was all about the individual. I realized fantasy baseball was eating away my horsehide-covered soul.
I wanted out of fantasy baseball. Then the baseball owners granted me an early pardon by ending the season with a lockout of the players who were threatening a strike.
The following spring, when baseball did return, Earle, the top fantasy pusher at my job, asked me more than once if I wanted back in. I came up with a number of excuses about time commitment, the cost, and the overall nerdiness of it all.
Finally I just blurted, 'hey, I want to root for a real team, not a fake one that included a Dodger.'
I recently asked Oakland A's pre-game show host Marty Lurie - a former avid fantasy player himself - about his opinion of fantasy baseball and he had this to say:
"Fantasy baseball has created thousands of new fans, and its pluses outweigh its minuses. But you can easily lose the beauty of the sport if you're into it. The on-field chess matches, the unfolding drama mean nothing if "your guy" doesn't get the save. I quit playing because I didn't want to be looking up at the scoreboard to see if Orel Hershiser got a win even though I had no allegiance to his team. Fantasy baseball puts your heart in a conflicted place, and that stinks."
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