THE OLDEST FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE STARTS ITS 32ND SEASON (COMMENT). David Quemere commented on my post about our “rotisserie league”, which I claim is the oldest fantasy baseball league in the country. (In the early years, fantasy leagues were called rotisserie leagues.) Of the 10 million or so current leagues, there may be some that are tied for first place, but there are none older. I loved hearing from another pioneering league. David Quemere’s league began in 1984 and has three of the original franchises. He remembers compiling stats by hand just as our league officials did. Nowadays, most players follow the drafting on a computer, but from the beginning we have had a large display board on which the draft picks are recorded, and we are maintaining the tradition. Mat Olkin, who ran the board for us for a couple years when he was in law school, has gone on to do sabermetric work for the Seattle Mariners and, as of 2010, the Toronto Blue Jays (see here). Pitchers and catchers are reporting, and we have drawn our draft postions.
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I love the display board, still. The in-person draft, the age of the league, and my memories of the league from a very young age give it a very special gravitas.
This will be the 3rd year of a league that I run for my friends, and perhaps one day we will have people invested enough to want to do an entirely live draft. Much more fun than online.
It is always interesting when you see the turning of a generation. There are now several children of the original members of this fantasy baseball league that either succeeded to the ownership of their parent’s team, or acquired a team of their own. Even more notable is that now we are looking to draft the sons of players that were fantasy studs for us years ago. I see Dee Gordon (Tom “Flash” Gordon’s son) and Dante Bichette Jr. when I look at prospect list. Nice to follow the gentle roll of time.
Our fantasy baseball league started in 1966 and we have not missed a year of drafting and owning a team yet. Our league consisted of 6 teams that first year. All of the original and most of later team owners worked at the same factory. We still have 4 of the original owners playing. Our league has consisted of 8 to 10 teams over the years. We have a copywright on a instruction book explaining how to start your fantasy league we published in 1975. I recall compiling all the league stats using The Sporting News. Over the years we have heard how someone played the first fantasy baseball in 1980 but I think our league can lay claim to be the oldest and original fantasy league.
I am in a Maryland Rotisserie league. It started in 1986 and is still going strong.
Have been in a an Al only Roto league since 91… started at Ohio University were we all went to college…… we currently have 12 teams, 7 of them origional…. still do an ” in person’ auction every year…. I realize we are by no means the oldest…..but having that many origionals still is rather impressive
since 1984…..the year the first book came out..stats done by hand when the sporting news arrived
Since 1981. Began in the dorms of Northwest Christian College. AL only. Still going strong. Our 38th consecutive draft will be on March 16, 2019, in Eugene, OR. Emerald Empire Stat League.
Our mixed 4 x 4 dynasty auction league, the Gasparilla Memorial Fantasy Baseball League began in 1990 in Tampa, Florida with ten teams. Originally named the Have-A-Tampa Cigar Fantasy League, the name was changed the second year when the long time Tampa celebration ‘Gasparilla’ (mock pirate invasion and parade) was terminated due to a membership racial issue.
The league has run continuously since 1990, and still has five of the original team owners in 2019! Two have died. a handful of others came and went. In the beginning, all the owners lived in Tampa, FL. Now they are scattered to Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater, Floral City, Land O’Lakes, gainesville, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Kentucky. All the owners return for the auction each year! We were one of the original subscribers to the stat site, Commissioner.com in its first (beta) year and continue to use the service of the CBS Sports site that bought them out in 2001.
Our league has tried to stay faithful to the original formats with the exception that it is a mixed and dynasty league. The only change we made to the traditional stat categories of BA, HR, RBI, SB, W, L, ERA, WHIP is that we changed the RBI category to RBI’s minus HR’s which increased the value of none HR’s prolific players who hit a lot of RBI’s.
We cherish our all night ‘bloodletting’ auctions and proclaim them as the best part of the season!. The first auction lasted 12 hours!
We’ve added a couple of wrinkles to the auction format which has enhanced our system, and made it more fun. Being a keeper league, we originally set a rule that you could only freeze a player for one additional year, but soon added an option to keep the player for a 3rd season to enable a team to preserve its ‘strategy’ and ‘flavor’. We call the twist ‘TOPPING’. Before the auction begins, each team must submit a list of their allowed number of players they want to freeze from the prior season. In addition, each team is allowed one TOPPING right of a player ‘frozen’ the past year, plus they may use the TOPPING mechanism to try to retain other previously frozen players. A number representing each player to be TOPPED is written on a piece of paper, and each owner draws a piece for each TOPPING option they wish to use, but DOES NOT reveal the players’ names. As an owner’s number comes up, they will reveal the name of one of the players they want to TOP. In the same way Indian Poker is played, the other owners will secretly write down the most they are willing to pay for that player and display them in unison. The current owner then has a right to TOP the highest offer by $1, and keep the player or let the highest bidder get him. The point: An owner may KEEP a player for a 3rd year, but must pay a premium to do so. Lots of strategy goes on as some owners just try to get others to spend as much of their money as possible before the regular auction begins during topping! An example: Last season I owned both Scherzer $37, and Kershaw $39, and plan to ‘Keep’ both. Additionally, I froze Felipe Vazquez, and JD Martinez. Closers are a premium in our league and often cost $20 to $30 to get a good one, and JD ended up the #1 ranked player last year. I am thinking about TOPPING the two of them so I can keep them for a 3rd year, however, considering how much I would have to spend for the SP’s I will be freezing, the other owners may bid outrageous amounts during TOPPING for Martinez, and Vasquez, just to force me to let them go, or bust my budget. On the other hand, I may just freeze Hader instead of Vaszquez for $7, and either peter Alonzo, or Nick Sensel for $1 instead of JD. Point is … the high prices thrown out during TOPPING may shape my whole strategy going into the auction. If Vasquez, and JD go for $25 and $35, the two of them along with the two SP’s I want to keep will cost me $136 of my $260 for only 4 players!
Surprisingly, even though all of the league’s owners are well educated, and competitive, one of the original owners has won the championship 12 times in 29 years! Second place is held by two other owners with only 3 cups apiece. The biggest difference is that the prolific winner is the only owner that does not use a computer to compile his preseason list, reports, cheat sheets, or during the auction. He has all of his plan written inside one manila folder. The rest of us have no idea how he does it. His secret (I think) is to buy quality (stars with high BA’s) players from a small pool in the auction, stocking up on good trade material (especially potential closers) during the Reserves draft portion of the auction (17 reserves), and then making unbelievable trades during mid-season with teams not in the running.
We have a a beautiful trophy that is updarted with the seasons history and passed to the champion to hold for a year. In addition, the trophy holds the Champions engraved pewter cup which he keeps.
We are entering our 35th consecutive year. The 8 team league Hunnewell League began in 1984 as noted in a previous email. Just letting you know there are three of the original owners , and now two franchises run by three of our children. Fresh blood to ensure this monster keeps going. We use 10 categories. The winner is the team with the most points compiled over the year. The trophy is the Golden Boy that has all the winners names on brass plates.
The Brockville Rotisserie Baseball League (Ontario, Canada) started with its first NL only season in 1984 after finding the Rotisserie League book in Florida that spring. This spring April 2019 we will hold our 36th consecutive draft. We still play primarily with the original 1984 rules except we added RUNS and K’s several years ago to make it 10 categories. Still NL only. Still 4 original owners and two other owners that have been in it since year two. From what I have researched we are the oldest continuous original NL Rotisserie Baseball League in Canada.
I am the only original member left of the still active Ray Oyler Rotisserie League in the Milwaukee, WI area. Back in 1984 we began with an AL auction in the back of an optometrist office on Capitol Drive and Teutonic Avenue. It was the office of one of our original members, Dr. Dave Klement. I recall that I was the big spender in this initial auction with a $43 bid on Rickey Henderson. Our #1 rookie pick was Roger Clemens followed by Tony Fernandez. The other picks are lost in the mists of time. We chose the AL since our local Milwaukee Brewers were AL. Later when the Brewers went to the NL we transitioned as well. Where are the other original owners. Unsure. I know that at least two are deceased. Eventually others left to be replaced by others. Lots of great memories over the years, which continue today. Too many to go into here. The traditional end of the year celebration of the Yoo-Hoo pour got out of hand after several years and was discontinued. Too bad. Some of us in the league now want it revived. Maybe…..