warning Hi, we've moved to USCANNENBERGMEDIA.COM. Visit us there!

Neon Tommy - Annenberg digital news

Four Decades Of Fantasy Baseball And Counting

Sean Burch |
May 6, 2015 | 7:07 p.m. PDT

Contributor

A worn out baseball (Schyler / Wikipedia)
A worn out baseball (Schyler / Wikipedia)
Another season of baseball is underway, and with it, another season of fantasy baseball season. But for the millions of Americans playing, this fantasy is very real.

This is certainty the case for the 13 teams in the Sons of Lampost league (named after the pizza parlor chain), which is  beginning its 27th year. And while the SOL group began in 1989, the original league dates back even further, with several of the original members having played continually together since 1982 – making it the longest running fantasy league on the West Coast. The two-dozen members in the league gather each Spring on the eve of baseball season to draft their fantasy squads.

“It’s the best day of the year. You get to talk shit and see what’s going on in the guy’s lives,” said Brett Fauria, a member since the start of the 1982 original league.

Fauria was fresh out of Edison High School in Huntington Beach, CA., at the time it started, and had worked at a Lampost pizza while in school (every original member either had some connection to the pizza chain, whether as owners, workers, or friends of workers).  A self-described “baseball nut,” the then-new idea of a having a fantasy baseball team and choosing his own players was too appealing for him to pass up.

Here’s how it works: 

Each fantasy team (usually comprised of one or two “owners”) drafts real baseball players to their “imaginary” club. Those player’s statistics, such as home runs and batting average, accrue as the season progresses and attributed to their fantasy clubs. There are about 10 to 15 teams in a normal fantasy “league,” which is often a mix of friends, family, and business partners. The squads with the best statistical performances – just like in the major leagues – end up at the top of the standings. For instance, If your team has five players who hit thirty home runs in a given season and the rest of the teams in your league average two players that do the same, you are poised to finish at the top of the standings. The fantasy element is that you can have players from several different real teams, such as Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates, play together on your squad. It gives the fantasy player an opportunity to create their own team and imitate a professional general manager – the person responsible for assembling the rosters for major league clubs.

The genesis of modern fantasy baseball dates back to 1980, when Daniel Okrent, a journalist, former New York Times editor, and passionate baseball follower, came up with the idea of having him and his friends select real professional players for their fantasy teams, track their performances for the upcoming season, and see which team owner had predicted which players would have the best seasons. Since being introduced by Okrent, the popularity of fantasy baseball (and fantasy sports in general) has skyrocketed. The industry is expected to generate $2 billion in revenue in licensing fees for professional sports leagues and the websites that host fantasy leagues by 2017, according to Forbes.com. Fantasy analysis is now a staple on sites such as ESPN.com. Today, more than 33 million Americans play fantasy sports each year, according to Bloomberg Business.

And the fantasy owners normally have more than bragging rights at stake. The members of the SOL league pay $500 each season to see which team can outsmart the others. This money is used to award the top few teams cash prizes at the end of the baseball season.

SEE ALSO: Playing For Bigger Possibilities: How ACEing Autism Changes Lives Through Tennis

In the SOL league,  each team has a fake budget to spend on assembling their clubs during the draft. The league has been using a $300 per team since its inception, which is used to fill out a roster of 14 hitting players and eight pitchers. When it comes to assembling teams, think of it like an episode of Storage Wars: just like the more appealing lockers cost more money for the bidders, so do the top players in a fantasy auction draft.

The draft is an opportunity for the fantasy teams to start fresh and pick new players for their teams for the upcoming season, as well as get in some good natured ribbing with the guys (and one woman) they’ve been playing with for decades.

“It’s the best day of the year. You get to talk shit and see what’s going on in the guy’s lives,” said Brett Fauria, a member since the start of the 1982 original league.

Fauria was fresh out of Edison High School in Huntington Beach, CA., at the time it started, and had worked at a Lampost pizza while in school (every original member either had some connection to the pizza chain, whether as owners, workers, or friends of workers).  A self-described “baseball nut,” the then-new idea of a having a fantasy baseball team and choosing his own players was too appealing for him to pass up.

The draft auction starts at 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning on the eve of the season, and runs for at least eight hours. One member of the league offers to act as auctioneer, and members of the league nominate real players to bid on. Generally, the top-tier players that will perform well in several stat categories are nominated first and cost more,  and are followed by the lower-tier players as the draft runs on.

Similar to how a Ferrari costs more than a Hyundai, the best players in real life cost much more in fantasy dollars than average professional players. For example, Mike Trout of the LA Angels is the reigning American League Most Valuable Player and widely regarded as the best hitter in baseball, is nominated early in the draft. Owners usually spend about $40 for top-talent, but Trout is in a class of his own. 

The bidding quickly escalates for the star outfielder. $47. $48. $49 and settles. 

“Good buy. That’s a couple bucks cheaper than I expected,” muttered Eric Haller, the youngest member of the league. The 24-year-old was a childhood friend of Fauria’s daughter, and joined the league after another member passed away. 

The auction component of fantasy allows the team owners to acquire any real player  they wish, as long as they can make the math work within their designated budget. This is where a bit of strategy comes in for creating your own team: fantasy owners are free to spend their budget however they wish, whether it’s spending on several top-line pitchers, or focusing on excellent hitters instead. In essence, fantasy owners are imitating major league general managers on a much smaller and personal scale.  

“I really believe in the auction,” said Jim Petrossi,  “Auction is the only true way to gauge value. Every player has a value and we have an opportunity to say what we think that is during the draft.” 

Petrossi has been doing this for a while. The Chicago native is another founding member of the league, and owner of the Lampost shop that hosts the draft every year (you can find him in his trademark spot: sitting right behind the bar on his stool, with a view of the entire room).  A lifelong baseball fan, Petrossi agreed with Fauria about what makes the yearly draft special. 

“I get to see the guys again. The older you become, the further you get removed from that [group of friends] you had,” said Petrossi.  “Some of these guys, like my cousins, I’ve known all my life…fantasy is that one thing you cling to as a 58-year-old, it’s that 10-year-old keeping stats for his team.” 

Much like how Major League Baseball has a commissioner to oversee the teams and regulate trades, fantasy leagues also have their own person in charge to manage transactions between members, and maintain league fairness. In the early days of fantasy baseball for leagues like SOL, commissioners had to manually calculate each team’s score by sifting through newspapers and adding up the stats from the real players and attributing them to their respective fantasy teams. 

Before the internet helped make the game ubiquitous, running a fantasy league as competitive as SOL was nothing short of a part-time job for the commissioner. Larry Israelson, an accountant by trade, held the title for a majority of the league’s history. Before scores and statistics were easily available online, Israelson would run through the results from the previous night in newspapers (usually USA Today had the best collection of stats), adjust the league standings and send a daily fax to all of the members, giving them an update on the league’s standings.  

“The first several years I was in it, Larry is faxing the stats every day to my office,” said Dean Valeriano, the current commissioner and a member of SOL for more than 25 years. “It would print on the old roll up fax paper, and I would be like ‘Larry, you have the stats up yet?’ It was like that daily for six months!” 

Since serving as commissioner was such a daily grind, the league waived the standard $500 yearly dues and even paid for a phone line at one point because teams were on the phone so much with him. 

“How many Larry Israelsons were out there to put it together like that? Who’s gonna go in the newspaper everyday and keep track of 12-13 teams for an entire season?,” said Fauria when recounting the formative years of the league. “The only reason we were successful is because of Larry. He was the glue.”  

But for all the busywork the job entailed, Israelson was simply happy to be part of a league like this. 

“I’ve always been as long as I can remember, a huge baseball fan, and it just became another level of enjoyment, where I can pretend I was a decision maker,” said Israelson. “And luckily I found a lot of like-minded people that [also love fantasy baseball].” 

If Israelson is the glue that keeps SOL together, one team in particular is the one keeping others up at night, striving to assemble the best team possible.  

Bill Neiman and Larry Witzer, two successful entertainment accountants and co-owners of “Say Hey” have dominated SOL since joining in the early 1990s. Just like the inspiration for their fantasy team name – Willie “The Say Hey Kid” Mays of their favorite professional team, the San Francisco Giants – these two tower over their competition. The SOL Championship trophy, which has a plaque commemorating each season’s winner, has their name written 10 times on the side. Their success drives the other teams mad. 

“Hardest part is watching Say Hey win every fucking year,” laughed Valeriano, who brought the two accountants into the league after meeting in a Hollywood softball league.  “Talk about analytics and all the numbers GMs use, they know everything. You don’t win 10 in 19 years and it’s by chance. Beating them any year is an accomplishment because they’re wired to win it!” 

Still, as the championship trophy glistens with the latest Say Hey championship plaque in the corner of the pizza shop, hope springs eternal for all of the teams in the league, just like in the majors. For the members who have been doing this for decades, the rush of being able to craft their personal team keeps bringing them back. 

“For six months out of the year, you feel like a real General Manager,” said Fauria. “It’s pretty fun playing with the guys, but the best part for me is, it lets you run a team.” 

Reach Contributor Sean Burch here.



 

Buzz

Craig Gillespie directed this true story about "the most daring rescue mission in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard.”

Watch USC Annenberg Media's live State of the Union recap and analysis here.