Fantasy baseball has its roots in board games and “tabletop baseball” games that use real-world statistics to simulate running your own team. But modern-style fantasy play is credited to Daniel Okrent, a magazine editor who developed a scoring system and formed the first league with friends in New York City in 1980.

          They named the league the Rotisserie League, after the restaurant where they often met, La Rotisserie Francaise in Manhattan. Others followed suit, and the leagues later became known as “fantasy baseball.” It’s since become a phenomenon for sports fans in almost every sport.

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Early Days of Fantasy Baseball

          Interest in having the experience of running your own baseball team began in the mid-20th century. Perhaps the strangest of these earlier stories is the writer Jack Kerouac, who developed his own fantasy league that he played throughout much of his adult life. Kerouac invented teams, players, and statistics, according to his collected papers at the New York Public Library. Teams included the Boston Fords, the New York Chevvies, the Philadelphia Pontiacs, and the St. Louis Cadillacs.

          Early board games allowed players to build their own teams and leagues, competing against each other using statistics from previous years. But it was the Rotisserie League that led to the current popularity of fantasy baseball. Okrent told Vanity Fair he came up with an idea for a scoring system while on a flight from Hartford, Conn., to Austin, Texas. There, he told a group of friends about his idea, but no one was interested. When he returned to New York City a few weeks later, another group of friends – most of the members of the media – were immediately interested. They talked about it a few times at the now-gone La Rotisserie Francaise restaurant. They finally agreed to play the game “at a bar on 3rd Avenue,” Okrent said.

          They held the first draft in April 1980. Okrent can’t remember who he had on this team, but he remembers that the first player picked was Mike Schmidt, who cost $26 (they used an auction rather than a draft). Once the internet began, its popularity exploded.

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Today's Game

          Traditional fantasy leagues allowed people to pick entirely new teams each year. The creation of Dynasty Leagues (sometimes known as Keeper Leagues) took the game to new heights. Now, owners can decide how much of a team to turn over and how much to keep, all with an eye on staying under a salary cap.

          A game such as Diamond Mind allows players to pick baseball teams from any era. The realistic play includes ballparks tailored for every team from every year. When players from different eras face one another, statistics are adjusted for the era in which they played. This type of engrossing,

in-depth detail has made the game more popular than ever. The number of fantasy players for all sports has risen from 500,000 in 1988 to more than 59 million currently.

          Baseball continues to be one of the most popular fantasy sports, with millions forming leagues online every year.

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Source: https://imaginesports.com/news/who-invented-fantasy-baseball

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The B.A.D. League

          The BAD (Belknap Alumni Draft ) League, now in its 45th year, is one of the longest-continuous-running fantasy baseball leagues in the world. Started in the spring of 1981 by four YMCA Camp Belknap leaders (Bob Cole, John Friborg, Tom Giggi & Jeff Ross), they formed the B.A.D League, one of the earliest fantasy leagues in America.  An idea originally hatched from the minds of John and Bob, the first year of the B.A.D League was a very simple concept using only a single starting team.  There were no names for the teams at that time. All-Star third basemen Mike Schmidt was the first player ever selected for the league,

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The Challenge

          The B.A.D League would like to challenge any baseball fantasy leagues in the world that are older than our league. We have been in existence for 45 years with the same four original personnel and have only added individual teams over the years with a connection to Camp Belknap. Can any groups top this?  Let us know at: rahutch@gmail.com