Ben Franklin Project: John Kampf — B.C. wasn’t easy

May 20, 2010

By: News-Herald Staff

John Kampf
JKampf@News-Herald.com

You did what?
My buddy could not believe what he had just heard. I had just explained how fantasy baseball worked when I first started playing the game back in 1990, and he questioned my sanity.
Not being a fantasy sports participant, my buddy shook his head in disbelief as I chronicled what fantasy sports was B.C.
Before Computers.
It entailed a stack of newspapers, the bible of fantasy baseball — i.e. Baseball Weekly — a stack of roster sheets and a handful of pencils.
Not to mention patience and time.
“There’s no way I would have done that,” he said. “You’re crazy.”
He thought he missed something, so he asked me about my weekly regimen again — just to make sure he had it straight.
I told him how I wrote out roster sheets for each of the 16 teams in the league in which I acted as league commissioner. By looking up the box scores in The News-Herald — the only paper at the time that published expanded box scores — I tabulated the runs, hits, runs batted in, home runs and stolen bases for every hitter, as well as the wins, losses, strikeouts, ERA and saves for every pitcher.
Nineteen players (nine position players and 10 pitchers) per team, multiplied by 16 teams made for 304 players to be checked daily.
It was do that or pick up a Baseball Weekly on Thursday morning and do the previous week’s stats in one day.
My buddy was speechless. He just shook his head in disbelief.
But that’s what fantasy sports were before computers — a lot of work and numbers crunching.
Fantasy baseball — or more specifically Rotisserie League Baseball — sounded its first heartbeat in 1980 when Daniel Okrent came up with the idea and named the product after the New York City restaurant — La Rotisserie Française — where they met for lunch and played the game.
Thirty years later, the product and game is off the charts in popularity, not to mention a product of evolution.
Whereas statistics were all kept by hand for years, leagues are now driven by computers and online stat services that provide up-to-date standings and statistics at any time of the day seven days a week.
But the younger generation doesn’t know what it used to be like.
Dan Murphy, son of late former News-Herald sports editor Jim Murphy, wrote in and remembered fondly the days in which he would help his father keep track of his league’s statistics.
“We would go to the store first thing after church (on Sunday) to review each player’s stat line for that week to make sure we didn’t miss a game,” Murphy said. “I can remember reading him off numbers as he meticulously made sure everything was correct before he made copies of the standings for everyone in the league.”
Up-to-date statistics weren’t available.
For instance, most leagues — including the one I ran — concluded after the completion of Sunday’s games. If I had kept up with the statistics throughout the week, league members would get their standings in the mail maybe by Wednesday.
Remember, these were the days before e-mail.
If I hadn’t kept up with the stats day by day, it was usually Friday that league members received their results from the previous week because I’d have to wait for Baseball Weekly to hit the news stands.
The following week was halfway over by the time some teams received the previous week’s stats.
Today’s fantasy baseball junkies could never live with that system, let alone revert back to it.
“I hated (calculated handwritten statistics), but loved fantasy baseball, so I did it anyway,” wrote Jayson Aponte, of Ashtabula, who said technology has further fed his addiction. “Now, I cannot even go an hour without checking my team.”
Today’s fantasy baseball addicts have it easy. They have online drafts that take a fraction of time compared to in-person drafts, they purchase reasonably priced stat packages that calculate their team’s statistics as they happen, and can make roster moves the very moment ESPN’s Baseball Tonight tells them of a hot rookie being called up from the minor leagues or a closer losing his job.
Unlike the days in which I instructed teams in my league to call me with waiver-wire pickups, with the player being rewarded to the first person who left the message on my time-stamped answering machine.
“It used to be a lot more time-consuming,” said Jerry Hites, a teacher, coach and athletic director at Fairport, and a fantasy baseball participant for more than two decades. “But if you wanted to play, you didn’t have a choice. If you wanted to play, it was a very long process.”
“I can’t imagine not being in a fantasy league,” said longtime fantasy baseball player Scott Francis, a teacher and coach at Kirtland. “I never thought about it being an addiction… but with a comment like that, it must be.”
An addiction that now — thanks to computers — is much easier to feed.

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