With baseball season starting last week, my friends and I recently held our draft for the fourth season of our fantasy baseball league. I love being a participant and this year I am going to send a thank you card to my friend Michael who heads the league (Actually, we don’t refer to him as Michael anymore…he is known as “The Commish”). Not only does Michael, eh, the Commish, have to make sure all the rules and regulations as well as players selected in the draft are coordinated on the website, he also has to settle any issues or disputes that may occur during the six-month long season (in addition to managing his own team).
The great thing about having a team in a baseball fantasy league is being able to be the general manager of an actual team, so-to-speak, since the players selected are real players who play major league baseball and whose actual real-life stats are what drive the league and its results. And because there are so many games in the six-month season, the teams need to be managed on a daily basis. There’s always something to check on and/or study either online or in the daily newspaper to help make one’s team (mine is the Heights Yankees) hopefully finish at least in the playoffs if not in first place.
As the general manager, I decide who plays (from the players on my roster) based on which player is hot and also from studying specific matchups between certain batters and the pitchers they will be facing in that day’s real game. Matchups oftentimes make a difference as to whether the batter (or pitcher if he is on my roster) will have a big game or not. Trades, free agents to pick up, or deciding whether to keep injured players or not are all part of the responsibility and great fun of having a fantasy team. At the end of the season, the top teams compete in the playoffs at the end of which the final two teams play in a “World Series” to determine the eventual champion.
Having the opportunity to devote some of my time and exercise my love of baseball as a participant in something like this makes the baseball season so much more interesting. And the thank you card that I will be sending to the Commish will tell him exactly that.