My favorite sport is baseball, but I’ve only been following it since 2001. Back in those halcyon high school days I used to hang out with my friends from the cool table on Friday afternoons, and we played Magic the Gathering, Risk, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. They also enjoyed baseball, and I remember my first experience watching full games being the Yankees vs. Diamondbacks World Series.
The following summer, my friends invited me to join a fantasy baseball league, and that’s where I truly began to love baseball. It was the competition that drove me to learn about the game; to this day I pore over statistics before draft day, and (having always been too stingy for StatTracker) manically refresh box scores throughout summer nights until the last game on the West Coast concludes. Fantasy, and the research it demands in order to become a good player, helps turn a casual fan who knows a few Yankees into a full-fledged fan of the sport, who can rattle off half-a-dozen players for every team in the MLB, and tell you the averages and ERAs of the top players.
So I’d like to propose the creation of a Fantasy World Cup league, so people could get excited about the World Cup and have a few horses in the race (aside from the U.S., which will be lucky to make it out of the group stage). The idea is simple (and inspired by a recent Bill Simmons podcast): 8-players. Snake draft for the 32 countries. The teams you draft are the teams you’re rooting for, and we can design some system of scoring for games won, goals scored, etc.
Josh and I will play, so we need 6 more. Who’s in?
I’ll play.
Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. In Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not just fantasy baseball, it’s a carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.
I’m getting the league back together, this year, and I fully expect you to participate, Mr. Yin.
I like this spirit of this World Cup Fantasy League, though I’m reticent to return to the days of early 80s Rotisserie baseball fantasy leagues where the scoring must be done manually. I’m tentatively interested, though.
This sounds interesting… Plus, I can’t imagine having to compute the points by hand being all that problematic. The trickier part by far is trying to come up with how to set up the scoring in the first place.
We have a sixth (Lauren R.). Two spots left.
I’m in.
I’ll do it.
P.S. Magic the gathering was absolutely the cool thing to at lunch, after school, on friday nights….right?
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i love watching the world cup on television coz i am a football addict “
in the next world cup, i would try to be so energetic and i would cheer all day for my favorite team “`
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