Fantasy Baseball

I've decided to take this blog in a new direction. A happier direction.

My favorite hobby is fantasy baseball. I am in three leagues ... one of which is the basic rotisserie variety in which players accumulate points based on their statistics. For example, two points for a double, three points for a triple, etc. At the end of the regular season, the team whose players have accumulated the most points wins the title. The members of this league are mostly old, old friends of mine and the league require very little maintenance during the year.

The other two leagues I am a member of were created by Vaughn Nuest and a few friends of his back in the late 1980s. I was fortunate to be invited to join the BRASS (Bloomington Rotisserie and Strat-O-Matic Society) in the year 2000 and last year the beloved Cream City Pirates won the title.

BRASS is an entirely different experience than regular rotisserie fantasy baseball. First, BRASS utilizes the grandfather of all fantasy baseball simulation games, Strat-o-Matic. Hal Richman drew up his first Strat-O-Matic player cards in 1948, at age 11, and turned it into a business by age 25. Essentially, the performance of every individual player from a previous season is number crunched. Game are played one at bat at a time, with results garnered by shaking multiple dice and then looking at either batter or pitcher cards. Not only are hitting and pitching results recorded, but defense ratings, run and steal ratings, catcher arms, outfield arms ... even the ability to hold a runner on base. The game truly is a remarkable recreation of our national past time.

I'm hoping this will turn into a blog where members of the leagues I'm in can submit columns or simply comment about stuff I write. It will also be a place where the I, as news editor for the BRASS League will place the monthly updates.

Some remodeling of the site has already begun ... removal of blogs I formerly linked to, and the addition of many new links.