Fantasy baseball leagues catching on like wildfire

Spencer Patterson

Monday, March 25, 2002 | 9:39 a.m.

Fantasy baseball draft tips

With the start of the Major League Baseball season less than a week away, here's some auction-league fantasy baseball advice from Greg Ambrosius, editor for Fantasy Sports Magazine.

When Ron Lorilla started playing rotisserie baseball back in the 1980s, he remembers the strange looks he'd get from other people when he mentioned his fantasy version of the national pastime.

"No one else knew what it was," said Lorilla, a member of the California Bay area-based Willie Mays league. "We never knew if anyone else was doing this as a hobby."

Fifteen years later, Lorilla hardly needs to look far to find evidence of fantasy baseball's widespread popularity. With the Internet providing access to leagues and statistical up-to-the-minute player information, surveys estimate that as many as 30 million Americans now play fantasy sports, most of them baseball or football.

On Friday and Saturday, some of the most avid participants gathered at the Boardwalk Casino for the first National Fantasy Baseball Conference. Lorilla's league, among others, held its annual draft at the event.

"When we first got involved, this was a closet industry," said Greg Ambrosius, editor of Fantasy Sports Magazine since 1989 and the organizer of the weekend conference. "We felt it would be the next boom in sports."

For the uninitiated, fantasy baseball is a game in which "owners" draft actual Major League Baseball players and compete with one another on the basis of those players' statistics over the course of a full season.

In the 1980s, just filling a 10 or 12-member league could pose quite a challenge. Keeping league statistics and standings was often even tougher, with many leagues opting to hire a specialized service to mail or fax weekly reports.

These days, the Internet fills those needs for most participants.

Don't know anyone else interested in fantasy baseball? No problem. You can find thousands of public leagues to join online, ranging from casual to competitive, American League or National League, traditional category-style to head-to-head.

For the last several years, companies such as Yahoo and Sandbox have provided free hosting services for public and private leagues, with 24-hour access to updated standings and statistics.

"The Internet has helped us grow immensely," Ambrosius said. "It's easier to keep your statistics, join multiple leagues and now they are offering real-time standings -- standings that change even as the games are being played each day.

"The technology has helped simplify our industry, and it's made it more intense."

Dave Hersh, general manager for fantasy sports at Sportsline.com, said the recent upswing in popularity of fantasy football also has helped fantasy baseball gain new participants.

"It's definitely taken the mainstream by storm," Hersh said. "To some degree, I'm the typical fantasy player these days. I mostly play football, but I got pulled into a (baseball) league by some friends and I enjoy it."

Though Ambrosius and Hersh have taken part in fantasy industry conventions over the years, the weekend event was the first intended to attract fantasy owners. And while the total draw ended up below Ambrosius' goal of 200-300 fantasy players, he said it should grow in future years.

"We live on the Internet and we know our customers through their e-mails, but I felt we should meet them face to face," Ambrosius said. "This is just the start of something -- a great first step for our industry."

In the future, Ambrosius said participants can expect further technological advancements, including interactive television products that keep track of a fantasy team's performance alongside the screen while his owner watches a game.

For now, though, Lorilla and his league mates are just happy to be involved in something they never knew would evolve this far, this fast.

"It gives us a chance to get together, and that's why we do it," Lorilla said. "We get together because of the sense of camaraderie."