First Fantasy Baseball League: Fantasy Fever

On March thirty first, nineteen eighty the very first fantasy baseball league started. At the time, though it was called the Rotisserie League, based off of the restaurant in New York City called La Rotisseri Francis, where the founders of the league got together for lunch the first time they played the game. Here's the story behind how fantasy baseball all started and started the fantasy sports craze that we all love today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. Now, to understand how fantasy baseball really started, we have to go back. We have to look into one man, Dan Oakrint, who was a writer and editor and eventually became the first public editor for the New York Times. But before that, he was inventing a game that would later be known as the Rotisserie League and after that, Fantasy Baseball Now. He invented the game in nineteen seventy nine while on a plane. He had the idea to take the stats from the game and make it to where you were the GM of your own team. Taking a player's stats versus someone else's team and their players, and after the plane ride, he brought it to his friends at that famous restaurant La Rotisserie in New York City, and in developing the stats that he needed for these games, he also invented the famous stat that is used now in baseball all over the place, the whip for pitchers walks plus hits per innings pitched. I know that's a mouthful, but it's something that scouts and huge baseball analytic people really loved to this day. So after Dan presented his idea to his friends, who were mostly journalists as well, they all wanted to join in and they began that first league in nineteen eighty. Now this league was a little bit different than how fantasy baseball has ran to day, but the rules revolved around the four major batting stats and four major pitching stats and giving point values to each step. Now, the challenge here was this was the nineteen eighties, computers who were just starting to come into the homes, so most of the concepts were actually done by hands. So one of the people in the league would be designated as the statistician and they would get the box scores and make out the points to match for every game. This required a lot of time and effort. They say it took them about three to four hours a day to keep track of everything as they were going. So big challenge and required a big investment, but they all loved it and it really took off. And to join the very first league it cost two hundred and fifty dollars which would allowed the team owners as it were, the gms couldn't afford that, so they partnered up and you had two people running a team instead of just one, which actually made it easier throughout the season. They later went on to write the book, The Rotisserie League Baseball Book, which was a collection of rules, team history and other things the other baseball fans could take and make their own leagues out of. Sadly, this book was actually taken by bigger corporations and they changed the rules just the lough so they could be different and change the name instead of the Rotisserie to Fantasy that we all know today. And because they made that slight change and a few little tweaks to how they kept score, this allowed them to keep all the money for themselves and left Daniel Okrant and all his other league members out monetarily. That doesn't mean they were left without anything. They've been invited to many fantasy conventions and also been inducted into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame. Yet that recognition didn't lead to fame and glory. That wasn't why they started it. They started it for the love of the game and the enjoyment they had with each other. And that's really what it's all about. And you've probably heard the words of Roto when talking about fantasy sports, whether it's we websites like Rota World or just people you may follow on socials mentioned Roto. Well, this comes from rotisserie as an abbreviation, so now you know where that comes from. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. I hope you enjoyed. It means a lot that you're listening. Please go tell a friend all about this because that's the best way for us to continue to grow. And the more we grow, the more I can dedicate time to make each episode even better than I already have. And come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History.