I'm talking about another time-consuming activity I'm about to take up. It's called the Great American Fantasy League, and what it is is 26 baseball nuts, all of us members of SABR*, each the manager of a fantasy league team made up of the all-time greats for that franchise. I will manage the Texas Rangers, and I already know that it will be as fruitless trying to win my division (7 teams) with the very best the Rangers ever had, as it seems to be with the real Rangers. Just as in real life, pitching is 75 percent of winning, and since 1961, when the expansion Washington Senators which became the Texas Rangers in 1971, the franchise has had pretty crappy pitching, although scoring runs was never a problem. (I've got a long history going all the way back to when I was in grade school of playing board and computer baseball games: APBA board and computer version, Diamond Mind computer baseball, and another game my brothers and a neighbor kid named Frank Vicari whose name I don't remember. But I do remember designing and drawing ballparks and uniforms and putting out a "newspaper" with game write-ups and stats. (Used to type them up in columns on a typewriter via hunt-and-peck.) Crazy!
I'll know a lot more about the game after I'm "trained" over the phone by playing a couple of games with tutor. You need this kind of help because, as you might expect, accuracy and realism are fundamental. So the game is based on a lot of math, and it's got a whole bunch--a very big bunch--of contingencies built into it. Games take about 2-3 hours to play, and of course, you have to keep full records which are sent to the league headquarters where they're compiled into reams of statistics. The schedule is 162 games, played one game per week. I'm taking over the team after 66 games, and guess what? The Rangers have the worst record in the league. You have to be a baseball nut to understand what a fun thing this is going to be. I fear I have to plead guilty on this count. Crazy again!
*Society for American Baseball Research
4 comments:
I used to spend hours devising baseball games and leagues and parks...and entire histories.
Did you ever read "The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop." by RObert Coover?
I think I'll try to find it and give it another read. It was a long time ago.
As a matter of fact, I just read Universal Baseball Association last year, and it's here on my shelf, along with a whole slew of other baseball tomes. I'm surrounded by books, but only a very few are fiction. A couple of shelves of poetry and maybe a shelf's worth of fiction, and that's all. The rest is history, science, current events, biography, and chess.
In re, baseball in our youth, you sound like you were as crazy as I. Always knew you were a quality guy. ;-)
Ditto and likewise and right back at ya!
That baseball of youth was myth-making at its best!
Joseph Campbell should have included it in his studies on myth: the Myth of the Hero and Shibe Park !!
Even now, it thrills me with a primal joy.
Shibe Park, indeed! If you are a Phils fan, I'm sure you view the last couple of years with a good deal of satisfaction. I pull (passionately) for the Rangers, so baseball season is one long drawn out agony most of the time. However, I and my ever-hopeful sons are pumped about the coming season. Seriously. Looks like the Rangers may have the kind of pitching they need to prevail. 83 days till opening day.
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