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.
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 lead to the current popularity of fantasy baseball.
Invented in the Air
Okrent told Vanity Fair he came up with an idea for a scoring system while on a flight from Hartford, Conn., to Austin, Texas. Once there, he told a group of friends about his idea, but no one was interested.
When he went back 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 Third 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, the popularity exploded.
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 of fantasy sports, with millions forming leagues online every year.
My dad started a league in 1979 near Santa Cruz, California. Standings were done for years with a calculator out of the Sunday paper.
Stats Baseball is currently still running in 2022 with 2 original owners…as well as some teams owned by their children and some grandchildren.
We play 2 seasons a year and are currently in our 87th season (only one in 2020). The one trophy has existed since 1980 and is passed from winner to winner line the Stanley Cup.
We are a year older than rotisserie…but they have ignored all communication attempts over the years. Our football league “the SFL” started in 1999 as well…after an earlier league folded after 2 seasons in 1996- 1998. And is perhaps the oldest IDP fantasy football league.