Is Fantasy Baseball a Good Idea?
Does the Individual Nature of Fantasy Baseball Help or Hurt the Game
This article explores the writer's opinions about the value of Fantasy Baseball in particular and fantasy sports in general for the sport itself.
Is Fantasy baseball (feel free to insert your favorite sport here) good for the game of baseball? Surely there can be some redeeming value for the game hidden in the web of individuals that make up thousands of leagues and hundreds of thousands of team owners on websites all over the planet. Of course, there is the value of competition among friends and strangers as well as the bragging rights that go along with being your league champion. But that’s more of a value for the individual and not the sport itself.
The league benefits from more people paying attention to the individual players of the games. Papers and websites benefit from more people checking the box scores on a daily, hourly, or minute-by-minute basis. The players themselves might benefit from the added exposure they might receive because they are having a great “fantasy” year. ESPN and FSN benefit because they have something else to fill the time with that will produce revenue instead of “infomercials”. But is it good for the game of baseball itself?
Baseball has been the “great American pastime” long before the advent of 24/7 sports television or the invention of the internet. The lure of baseball was the relaxed pace, the open skies, the smell of the grass and the hot dogs, the taste of peanuts and beer. Baseball has always been a great excuse to relax for two to four hours and enjoy the conversations of the ballpark. The ballpark was the place to go on warm spring days to entertain clients, meet your buddies, and catch up on the latest news of those season ticket holders near you who you had not seen since the last home stand.
A new generation of fans has emerged since the strike and the record-breaking barrage that brought the game back from the brink of extinction. These fans have been weaned on the highlight, the crawl, and the box score. Some of them have never even been to the ballpark where their fantasy stud plays and yet they consider themselves fans of the game. Many fans these days are more impressed with the trappings of the ballpark than what actually happens on the field. Luxury suites, digital video displays, swimming pools, and high dollar restaurants have become the norm at new stadiums across the country. These things might be nice creature comforts but seem to go hand in hand with the individual nature of the fantasy baseball fan.
Will the game suffer because the two-hole hitter doesn’t want to bunt because it doesn’t show up in the fantasy league or more importantly for the player in the stats when it comes time for contract talks? Will the desire to “put up great numbers” become more important than the number of wins the team gets each year? Does it matter more to you that your “team” makes the post season or that the one guy on the team who is your clean up hitter on your fantasy team hit thirty home runs?
Fantasy baseball may only be a mirror of the trend in our society towards more individualism but it certainly moves the fan further away from the roots of the team aspect of the game itself. Baseball is a game that involves individual competition that leads to team success, yet it is impossible to succeed without a concerted team effort. Baseball is an intricate dance of personalities that make up a team being balanced and maintained by a manager who must be part counselor, disciplinarian, encourager, and instructor. Fantasy baseball has a place in our society, but for many who love the game itself, our hope is that the place is way beyond the fences in deep right field.
