Letters to the Editor
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Mixed allegeances
I've been playing fantasy sports for a few years now, and I've found that the most bizarre aspect of it is how it mixes your alliegeances between teams. You start rooting for utterly bizarre scenarios.
For example, I'm a big Red Sox fan. However, if the Red Sox are up over the Yankees 4-2, I'll find myself rooting for Gary Sheffield to hit the solo home run.
Similarly, even if the Sox are losing and David Ortiz is up with the bases loaded and one out, I'll be rooting for him to strike out so that Manny can drive in the runs.
Fantasy Baseball is a whacky sickness, that's for sure.
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I HATE Fantasy Sports!
Every year, my friends drag me into their fantasy football pool. Every year I give it my best effort, even though I clearly have far too much of a life to compete. Every year they increase the amount of money required to join their league because not enough people care. I'm tired of the whole business. I'm sorry I can't stay up until 2AM when the rosters open again to pick up Samkon Gado. All it rewards is people who obsess over injury lists and pick up stars' backups first. And it is such a complete waste of time! Am I somehow dumber than my friend that Kansas City decided to play-action to Tony Gonzales instead of hand-off to Larry Johnson on 3rd and Goal from the 1? Who the fuck cares? I mean, really, who the fuck cares?
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Of course they increase enjoyment
Without some stake in the outcome of the game, sport spectating quickly becomes rather boring. Yes, there is a certain level of appreciation that can be found in watching athletes perform at elete levels, but in my experience the fundamental thrill that makes sports worth following comes from participating (albeit in a vicarius manner) in the competition. Having an established favorite team to root for can produce this result in a sport I don't care for (that is why it was fun to watch my school's soccer team), and not caring about either team can do the opposite even when I really like the sport. Playing fantasy provides a reason to care about almost every game, even those that are otherwise blowouts and boring. The score could be 49-0, but I garantee that if my wide-out makes an otherwise meaningless touchdown on the last play of the game I'm going to at least grimace, make a fist, pump it and say "yes" (something usually reserved for a Dallas TD).
Jeff in Texas
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Fantasy is best suited for the half-hearted sports fan
I tried Rotissiere one year and hated it. I was rooting for guys I didn't want to and against my team on occassion. I can tolerate that in the NCAA tourney, but not in baseball. Yes, it did make me pay attention to players I might not have noticed but I hated that too. If I didn't happen to know who Seattle's left fielder was based on my normal near obsessive interest in the game, I didn't want to be paying attention to him because he was in the fantasy league. And if someone else knew who that player, and every other, player was just because he was in a fantasy league it seemed like that person was just using baseball as a vehicle to fulfill another more subtle need, such as gambling.
I could see that if someone liked baseball but it wasn't really important to them that fantasy might be interesting as a hobby, but I don't think it's well-suited for people who came to love baseball becasue they just love the game.
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I used to make fun of it
But now I enjoy.
As an Eagles fan living in NY without Direct TV, a fantasy match-up can make the late season Bills-Jets game I'm forced to watch tolerable.
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Cognitive dissonance
I participated in fantasy baseball and football from about 1995 to 2005, sometimes in multiple leagues at one time. I follow both baseball and football anyway, fairly closely, focusing on one or maybe two teams in each league.
Here's the moment at which I decided to stop playing fantasy baseball.
I'm an A's fan. (The Brewers are my N.L. team and original true love -- I've been a fan since growing up in Milwaukee -- but now I live in Oakland.) Toward the end of the season in 2003, I was at an A's-Rangers game. Hank Blalock came to the plate against Keith Foulke in the ninth inning. Both were on my fantasy squad. Cognitive dissonance ensued. I found myself rooting for Blalock to get a single, in order to preserve Foulke's save and to increase Blalock's batting average. Turns out Blalock didn't get a hit and Foulke didn't get the save, though he did get the win on some extra-inning heroics, which salvaged an otherwise miserable fantasy day.
I realized right then that I hated being in that situation, rooting for some unlikely event to happen so that both my fantasy team and the A's could do well. I would much rather appreciate the subtleties and beauty of the game, and root for my team, as purely as I possibly can. (If the players can't be pure these days, at least the fans can strive to be.) Mixed loyalties ruined the fan experience for me. So no more. (Okay, I slipped and had teams in 2004 and 2005, but I didn't really like it.)
I don't play fantasy football anymore for slightly different reasons. Since I'm less interested in football than baseball, it's actually a burden to accumulate the knowledge I would need to have in order to have a winning fantasy team. And there's hardly any payoff -- only 16 games, only one set of games a week. Fantasy football, even more than fantasy baseball, is to me a waste of time.
It's not easy to avoid playing fantasy sports -- there's social pressure from friends and co-workers to play, and I enjoy the camaraderie and the trash talking. Since they ruin my enjoyment of actual sports, though, I'm done with fantasy sports.
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Avoiding Fantasy Disconnect
I am a Red Sox fan, and have been playing fantasy baseball with the same group of guys for about five years. One year I started Roger Clemens, then with the Yankees, in Fenway Park. I even went to the game. He got shelled, and I was ecstatic, yet my fantasy team lost for the week. Since then, I have made every effort to not include Yankee players on my fantasy teams. Our league allows for up to six keepers, and any Yankee worthy of being a keeper has been traded. I no longer have to worry about rooting for Gary Sheffield or Randy Johnson.