June 24, 2024 • 33 mins
We have a conversation with Larry Schechter, fantasy legend and author of the new book, The History of Fantasy Sports. We talk about how the history of fantasy baseball is more complex than you might think, some of the people and personalities that led us to where the game is today, and where it might go in the future.
You can find Larry's book at all of the usual online purveyors, though if you'd like to support local bookstores you can order it here: https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=larry+schechter.
Flags Fly Forever is a Baseball Prospectus podcast. For more fantasy baseball information, visit baseballprospectus.com and click on "Fantasy" or visit our Twitter feed @baseballpro.
You can find Flags Fly Forever on Twitter @FlagsFlyBP. The hosts of Flags Fly Forever are Mike Gianella(@mikegianella.bsky.social) and Jon Hegglund(@jonhegglund.bsky.social). The producer of Flags Fly Forever is Jon Hegglund.
Special thanks to the awesome and generous Petite League for permission to use their track "Mets" for the intro and break music. Find their sweet lo-fi indie-pop sounds at petiteleague.com.
You can find Larry's book at all of the usual online purveyors, though if you'd like to support local bookstores you can order it here: https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=larry+schechter.
Flags Fly Forever is a Baseball Prospectus podcast. For more fantasy baseball information, visit baseballprospectus.com and click on "Fantasy" or visit our Twitter feed @baseballpro.
You can find Flags Fly Forever on Twitter @FlagsFlyBP. The hosts of Flags Fly Forever are Mike Gianella(@mikegianella.bsky.social) and Jon Hegglund(@jonhegglund.bsky.social). The producer of Flags Fly Forever is Jon Hegglund.
Special thanks to the awesome and generous Petite League for permission to use their track "Mets" for the intro and break music. Find their sweet lo-fi indie-pop sounds at petiteleague.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:20):
Welcome to episode three twelve of FlagsFly Forever, a Baseball Perspective Fantasy Baseball
podcast. This is a very specialepisode because on the show tonight, in
addition to John Haglund, we havea guest, we have Larry Scheckter,
who if you've listened to this podcast, if you play fantasy baseball, you
certainly know who that is. WelcomeLarry to our show. Thanks glad to
(00:44):
be here. And Larry's here tonightbecause he's written a book and we're here
to talk about that book tonight.The book is called The History of Fantasy
Sports and the Stories of the peoplewho made it happen. Larry previously had
written Winning Fantasy Baseball, which wasa strategy book. The subheeditor of that
(01:07):
with secret strategies of a nine timenational champion, and this book is a
little bit different Larry. So,so this book you certainly talk about fantasy
baseball, but it's a lot moreabout the history of sports. What amazed
me is that it's really goes backa long way in time like that.
That surprised me. Yeah, Imean this, this book is nothing like
(01:29):
my first book. This this bookis not about me. It's not about
my opinions. This is about thehistory of fantasy sports that covers everything from
as you just said, going backyears and years ago through how you games
appeared like Stratumatic and APPA, andbefore that there were board games, and
(01:52):
then you know, it evolved intolike primitive versions of what we now call
fantasy sports and the creation of youknow, fantasy baseball, fantasy football,
which led to magazines and books andnews services and stat services, serious XM
radio, Baseball prospectus, and youknow what we have now, which is
(02:15):
this massive, worldwide, multi billiondollar industry with millions and millions of people
playing all different kinds of games allover the world. Yeah, so,
you know, I don't know aboutyou. I remember I started with Stratomatic.
I stumbled onto it at a garagesale. It was an incomplete set.
(02:38):
It was like this was like inthe late seventies, early eighties.
It was a seventy one nineteen seventyone set that had writing on the advanced
side. But I played and playedand played and played. Yeah, I'm
kind of curious, like where didyou actually get your start, like with
either fantasy sports or tabletop sports.Was it with fantasy baseball? Ors was
it similar to me, we hadlike a childhood experience. No. I
(03:02):
played APPA baseball and foot and footballwhen I was a teenager, so that
was my start. And then youknow, at some point, probably after
I got out of high school orsomething, I probably never played app again
and didn't do anything until I wasyou know, until I heard about fantasy
(03:24):
baseball when I was looking. Iwas about thirty two when I heard an
ad on the radio. I wasdriving around Boston one day and I heard
an ado the radio, which wasfor a fantasy baseball league, and we
did a I signed up. Wedid a draft on a conference call,
which is kind of a high techway of doing it back in nineteen ninety.
(03:46):
Yeah. I was going to say, you were ahead of your time.
I think the first draft I didwas in high school and it was
in person. And you know somethingabout that is that and this is this?
You know you mentioned this, youknow, being a big industry now
and it's all centralized, I thinkfor a lot of us, and this
was true for me, like Iand you get into this in the book,
you know, I discovered it throughthe original book, you know,
(04:10):
the the Dan Oakrant book, andI stumbled onto it in a bookstore,
and you know, it was oneof those things where the second I found
I was like, oh my gosh, like I don't know how I'm going
to do this, Like I'm ahigh schooler, but I have to do
this, Like I have to figureout how to how to play this game.
And I think that's one of themost amazing and interesting things about your
book is that so many people,and the people you discussed are not just
(04:32):
players like they want up being entrepreneurs. It was a very similar experience,
wasn't it. Like like some ofthe some of the people we think of
now, like you know, GlennAmbrosius and of Gregen Broth, Greg Ambrosus,
Glenn Colet, and Rick Wolf,all of them like kind of came
into this in a similar way.Yeah. I mean you go back to,
(04:53):
you know, the book that youmentioned. So Dan Oakrint is the
guy who's credited with inventing fantasy baseball, which was originally called rotissory baseball.
Now, the thing is there's athere's like a myth that he magically came
up with this idea on a planeride from Connecticut to Texas. That's not
true at all. He didn't magicallycome up with the idea, there's a
(05:15):
whole lot more to the story.And I spent eighteen months researching and researching
and researching everything I could find aboutfantasy sports. I interviewed dozens and dozens
of people, and mostly on Zoom. I interviewed Dan Oakrint extensively, and
I still did a lot of theblanks that were missing. So I'm telling
(05:36):
them. You know, the chapterin the book about the origins of Fantasy
Baseball tells the entire story from beforeOprint how it actually all happened. But
Okrant, you know, definitely getscredit for inventing like the modern version of
what we have now is an auctionformat. It's the current auction format played
(05:57):
by most people at Wars Labor andmost other people. Well, you know,
it's kind of like the same aswhat Oakrant came up with for the
most part. And the thing thatOakrant did that really made the difference is
Okrant was in a writer, andyou know, he was a writer,
and all his buddies were writers andeditors at magazines, et cetera. So
(06:18):
because of what they did, theygot articles published, and that's how people
found out about it, and that'swhy it really spread and the book that
you just referenced was the original RodsHistory Baseball Book from Bantam Books, which
I think was eight and it wasnineteen eighty four if I remember correctly.
(06:39):
Yeah, lots of people bought thatbook. I mean you were not alone.
Like fifty thousand copies of that weresold, and you know, thousands
and thousands of people got that bookand they were like, wow, this
is great and they immediately started leagueswith their friends. Matthew Barry was one
of the people that started because ofthat book. And yeah, and that
(07:00):
was, you know, one ofthe really big events. Yeah, and
that book, you know, itspawned a lot of different things, like
the next book that I was exposedto because you know, I was looking
for other information and you know,in the mid eighties, it was just
that book. And then you knowPeter Goldenbach put together and you know,
it's funny I at this point,like I know Peter, I know Ox
(07:21):
Patten, I've I've been to theirauction, you know, and now they
do it on zoom. But youknow, at the time when when I
was a high school that was thenext book I saw, which was how
to Win at Retisserie Baseball and Ifeel like that book and Alex Evaluations and
you talk about this in your book, that really was the next step where
it went from. The original bookhad had humor, it was funny,
(07:43):
it told you how to how toplay the game. But really the title
Goldbox Book really did do what itsaid, which is okay, and we've
evolved far from that, but itwas the first book to say, okay,
this is how you actually can winat this game. That you know,
Dan oakridn't you know, if hedidn't invent at least see affected right
exactly, and that you know,the kind of one interesting thing there was
(08:05):
going back when he wrote the book. You know, he wasn't good at
roche history baseball. He didn't know, he didn't know how to win.
But what he did is he interviewedsome of the people that were good.
And you know, one of thethings that I realized when I when I
started researching this book, one ofthe things I realized very early on was
I could just kind of write whathappened, the facts and the figures and
(08:28):
when, when and what, andI would like tell the entire story,
but it would come off as avery boring research paper. And what I
realized. But what was happening isI was researching. I was finding out
fascinating things about people that were involvedthat I read about or when I talked
(08:48):
to people. And so the subtitleof the book is, as you mentioned,
the subtitle is the stories of thepeople who made it happen. And
that's what really makes this book fascinating. If I can, you know,
brag about it a little bit,because it's not that it's not that I
did anything fantastic, it's the informationand the stories that I found out are
(09:11):
They're fascinating, they're inspirational, they'refunny, you know, they're pretty amazing.
And as I would find out thesethings, I was like, oh
my god, this book is goingto be freaking great because these things I'm
finding out. So that that's whatkind of really makes the book an easy
read. And you know, theinitial reviews it came out six weeks ago,
the initial reviews have been fantastic.If it's available now on Amazon and
(09:35):
Barnes and Noble ebook and paperback.You know, if you go to Amazon
and you look at the reviews onthere, I mean you'll see it's like
it's really good. Yeah, youhave actually that's that's right of the page.
Up. You've got a four pointseven right now of five stars,
which is which is excellent. Yeah, it's a well a few books.
So what you're like, without givingaway too much in the book, is
(09:56):
there a story you know that sinceyou're you know, public, you know,
promoting it on here, is therea story in particular that really jumps
out You're like, yeah, thiswas something that blew my mind. You
know, I couldn't believe that thiswas the case. I know there were
a couple like that for me,but I want to hear like one from
you, Larry. Yeah, wellthere, I mean, there are a
lot of them. I mean,you know, you could, like,
(10:18):
you know, pick pick a pagenumber and I'll go to it and find
something on that page, you know, because there's just like so many of
them. But you know, oneone that I like, one that I
like is where Oh my god,I can't think of this person's name now.
One of the first stat services.This this man and woman. I
(10:39):
can't believe. I can't remember theirname off the top of my head.
They started one of the first statsservices. They were, you know,
they're married, and what they hadto do back then is the USA Today
would come out on Tuesday, andthat's where you got the American League stats.
And Wednesday, the USA Today wouldpublish the National League and that's where
you got those steps. And thiswoman went into labor on Tuesday morning,
(11:05):
but that did not stop them fromgetting the stats center. So like between
contractions, she would read off statsfrom the USA Today and her husband would
enter them into the computer, andthen she'd get to have a contraction coming
on. She's like, okay,hold on, hold on, hold on.
She wait for the contraction, thepass, and then they keep going
and they got all the stats centeredby like early afternoon, and their daughter
(11:28):
was born later that afternoon. Andnow thirty five years later, the daughter
that was born that day plays fantasyfootball in a league with her dad.
That's that's incredible. Yeah, Andthat's another thing too, Like we're at
this point now. I joke aboutthis, but you know, I've been
writing about fantasy sports for twenty years. I started off my own blog.
(11:52):
I wound up at Baseball Prospectus,and I was writing about four by four,
like the old school, you know, first game. And I have
people come to me now and say, oh, yeah, like that that's
cool. I play that with mydad, Like that's my dad's league.
Uh, you know, the gameitself has just evolved, like so you
know, like like you're right,Larry, it's it's a lot of people
still play five by five. Butthere's points leagues. You know, there's
(12:15):
different formats, there's ot new andit really is something like how it's blossomed
and how so many people have youknow, put a different spin on what
was the original set of rules?Right, and I know, you know
we're talking here on baseball perspective,so there's an emphasis on baseball. But
you know for all of fantasy sports, I mean, you got you got
fantasy I did a ride, yougot fantasy everything. You know, cricket.
(12:39):
There are two hundred two hundred millionpeople play fantasy cricket in India.
More people play fantasy cricket in Indiathan play fantasy sports in North America.
You know, my my book,my book covers is the book covers everything
that stat services, news services,the first websites, you know, daily
sports, the worldwide expansion, experts, leagues. You know, it's got
(13:03):
everything. And you know, goingback one of one of the other stories
that you know, he said,one of my favorite stories, you know,
one of I mean, there's there'sseveral that stand out, but you
know, it was like probably theprobably maybe one of one of the best
is a guy that was in aan Apple league got ALS. He'd been
in this Apple League for many,many years and he was diagnosed with ALS.
(13:28):
And when he got that, itlooked like he was going to have
to drop out of the league.But his wife said, well, said
listen, if you want to keepplaying, I'll do whatever I have to
do so you can keep playing.So his wife would go to the games
with him, and she she'd likeroll the dice and he'd tell her what
to do. And it went onlike this for a while, and he
(13:52):
kept his condition kept deteriorating to thepoint where he see, if let me
make sure get this right. Itgot to a point where he could no
longer speak and communicate it through aneye reader and computer body gestures and his
wife could read his lips. Andin twenty eighteen, his team came from
(14:13):
two runs behind in extra innings towin his first World Series ever after thirty
nine years in the league, andhe burst out crying, yeah, I
remember that from you know that stuckwith me. I actually heard you talking
about that on jeff Erickson podcast whenyou were talking about the book. But
that story like stuck with me,and then when I read it in the
(14:37):
book, I was like, Wow, that's just amazing and that's something you
really cover, which is there.There's certainly a lot of information in the
book about you know, different leagues, Like you've got something toward the back,
there's like daily Fantasy Sports. There'sall the expert or analyst leagues.
But that's always I think the thingthat gets lost. I think a lot
of people in John, you andI've talked about this, like a lot
(14:58):
of people think, oh, youknow, fantasy sports is just about winning
money, or fantasy sports is justabout winning your league, even if you're
not playing for big money. ButI really do believe it's about the connections
that we make with other people.Yeah, and that's you know, as
it turned out, this has covereda lot in the book. It's like,
(15:18):
you know, what fantasy sports hasdone is you've got fathers and sons
playing mothers and daughters. You gotyou got NFFC drafts in Vegas or you
know, w COF drafts in Vegas, where you got a You got a
plumber sitting next to a fortune fivehundred company ceo and they're talking like they're
(15:39):
best buddies. Yeah. And there'sa guy, Mark Mark Marianni, who
I interviewed in the book. Hewas he was with Turner Sports and CBS
Sports and when he first found outabout fantasy football was he was working a
job and he was invited to joina fantasy football league for his company.
And he realized if he joined,is this league, he can call his
(16:02):
boss's bosses boss in the fancy officein Manhattan, and the boss's boss's boss
will pick up the phone and talkto him, where ordinarily, if he
wasn't in the fantasity football league,the guy would never take his phone call.
Oh, and you know it's it'sfunny. I had lesser experiences at
(16:22):
that, but at jobs I hadwhere people found out like I was a
fantasy expert. You know, somesome director called me into his office and
was like, wait, is thisyou? And that's back when we had
the pictures Larry like in labor andyou know, in sports weekly, and
it's somebody who he joked years laterit wasn't true, but it's somebody who
never would have talked to me ina million years otherwise. So I find
that I find that very relatable.Yeah, and Mark Mike Mike Marini,
(16:48):
he wrote a fantastic review on Amazon, and if you go to Amazon you
read the regroup of Mike Marianni,you're going to buy the book. I
mean, he went one of theone of the things that a yes,
you're in a very long reveal.But one of the things he said is
what sets this book apart is itsability to bridge the gap between historical data
and the human elements of the fantasysports community. Checkter brings to life the
(17:12):
pioneers, the landmark moments, andthe underlying strategies that have defined the genre.
And so must read the captures theessence of fantasy sports with the reverence
and death it deserves. Yeah,so I know you don't really cover this
so much in the book, butsince you've been involved for a long time,
(17:32):
Like, what what do you thinkin terms of like where we've been
and I think, particularly like wherewe're headed, I see some upsides and
downsides to fantasy. I think onething I do like about your book is
that I feel like the history oftengets lost, like I feel like every
year, you know, April comesand we just completely forget that. Every
(17:55):
year, you know, things happenin April that are unusual, like and
for two or three three weeks,and and what I think i'd like to
see, and you know, thishas been kind of my soapbox for years.
I'd like to see more institutional knowledgethan we have. Now. Do
you think that's something that's possible ordo you think we're kind of just stuck
with the model. We have institutionalknowledge in terms of what much since that
(18:18):
sure? What you mean? Well? In social knowledge in terms of you
know, for example, every yearthere's surprises in April, and every year
people rushed to write about, Oh, this guy's this guy's a big surprise.
You know that this player you didthis, this player did that.
Right. That's one example. Imean there's several examples like that, where
like, like valuation is another example. Like I think there's a handful of
(18:38):
people I like to think on oneof them. You know, there's Alex
Patten, there's the Cohen, there'syou, But I think a lot of
people don't really have a handle onvaluation very well. And again, it
just seems that like as there's otherindustries or businesses where that institutional knowledge exists,
and I don't see it as muchin the fantasy community. I don't
know if you agree or disagree,or you know, if it's something you
(19:00):
think could possibly be improved upon.I don't really know. I mean,
honestly, I don't really have agood answer to that question. I think,
you know, a lot of thingsare pretty well developed at this point,
and it's hard to say where we'regoing from here, you know,
(19:22):
at the you know, like atthe end of the book, I wrote
an epilogue and I really I actuallysaid, like, you know, where
we're going to be kind or twentyyears from now, I don't know,
you know, I wouldn't go yeah. Well, I mean it's funny is
if you think about where we weretwenty years ago, I would not have
you know, anticipated where we're rightexactly right? Yeah, And well people,
(19:45):
that's goodhead. Well, I wasjust gonna say, I think it's
something that always comes up. Andyou know, before the show, John
and I were talking, I said, I don't want to talk about football,
but it's tough because that's the thingyou always hear. I don't want
to mentioned it was but I wasout of a minor league game a couple
of nights ago when I was withsomebody you know in the industry, and
(20:06):
this is always his thing where he'slike, everybody wants football, you know,
nobody's really interested in baseball. Ijust don't think that's true. I
think there's always going to be aplace for baseball, even if it's not
like the a number one fantasy sport. Oh, I totally agree. Absolutely,
there's baseball, you know, butit's and it's absolutely not as big
as football. Football. Football overtookit and I think it was the eighties
(20:30):
and popularity and football is going toit is king, it's always going to
be king. But that doesn't meanbaseball is going away. You know,
million millions of people play baseball andthey're still going to Yeah, and you
know, some people play basketball,some people play hockey, lots you know,
there's millions of people play cricket.There's lots of people who play soccer,
(20:52):
you know, especially in like Europeand South America. Yeah, I
mean my thing with that, Ifeel the same way I feel about regular
baseball that I do about fantasy baseball. Yes, as someone who writes about
it as interested. I wanted tosurvive, but I also have a hard
time worrying about an industry that makesthe money and the income that it bakes
(21:14):
it. It just seems like there'sa lot of you know, what people
would call concern trolling about a verylucrative business. Yeah, I don't see.
You know, baseball's not going away, and fantasy baseball's not going away.
Yeah, John, did you haveany anything you wanted to add?
I just wanted to say when youwere talking earlier about you know, bringing
(21:40):
in so many different stories and influenceson the history of fantasy sports. I
really do think that's the strongest elementof this book, is to show you
all of the different currents and notjust you know, located in Dan o'krint
or whomever. But I'm curious,Larry, if you see a particular inflection
(22:02):
point, like an event in thehistory of fantasy sports that put it put
it on the course that it thatit, you know, eventually ended up
today. Is there a kind ofmoment where it could have gone in a
different direction, It could have remaineda hobby and not developed into the business
(22:25):
that it is now. Well,there were there were a couple of points
where it could have been severely damaged. One was in my faid I should
like, I wish I had abetter memory. I should have this book
memorized. But the Major League BaseballAdvanced Media took over the rights for licensing
(22:48):
fantasy games from the Players Association,and they tried, they tried to shut
down almost all the companies in thefantasy industry and stopped giving them like businesses,
and CVM Sports had to sue them, and it was kind of like
a David versus Goliath thing. Itwas like CVM this, you know,
relatively small company fighting Major League Baseballwith all their powerful attorneys and connections in
(23:15):
Washington. And if Major League Baseballhad won, then a lot of businesses
in fantasy would have been shut down, and then it would have also killed
all the ancillary businesses too, Likeif if the fantasy games got a lot
of them shut down, then yourmagazines and stat services and everything we're going
to suffer right along with it.But CVM, you know, miraculously won
(23:40):
the lawsuit. This was about,you know, the player's right to publicity
and saying that you know, acompany like CDM had to pay a licensing
fee in order to use the player'sstats, and CDM and other companies were
paying licensing fees even though it wasnever clear if they had to. But
when basically Baseball Advanced Media threatened toshut him down, instead said, well,
(24:03):
they said, we're not going torenew your license. We're not going
to give your license. We're goingto shut you down. At that point,
they either had to shut down orthey had to sue. So they
sued to try to, you know, establish the fact that you don't have
to pay to use player statistics.And they won and it was you know,
(24:23):
that was a huge event. Ifthey had lost, you know,
we wouldn't have what we have today. And that was you know, one
of the many fascinating things was,you know, I spoke at length with
Rudy Telscher, the attorney for CDM, and it was pretty amazing the stuff,
you know that I found out fromhim to send the book. Yeah,
(24:45):
you know what. One thing thatjust kind of like always strikes me
is like I feel this way lessthan I used to. But it felt
for years like fantasy baseball was kindof the ugly step child where every other
people look down on fantasy like peoplein this traditional media, people in the
prospect media. I could rattle itall off, but it really feels to
(25:07):
me that fantasy drove a lot ofthis. Like I love Baseball America,
but I don't think Baseball America growsthe way it does, you know in
the eighties and nineties without fantasy baseball, there's just really a lot of ancillary
areas of baseball that don't grow andexpand as much if you don't have people
following the sport that way. Andthat's why that story when I read it,
(25:30):
like I was somewhat familiar with thatstory, Like you filled in a
lot of gaps, Larry that Iwasn't aware of, But I was really
like, Wow, it's just amazingto me that baseball should be able to
see this. And I think youmentioned the book that you know, the
NFL was savvyer about this at leasteventually then you know, major League Baseball
was, But baseball should be ableto see this. It did. Often
(25:52):
they don't or they're like, wow, whatever, this is just this thing
over the side, we'll just ignoreit. Yeah, Well, the Major
League, the Major League Sports andPlayers associations were very resistant to fantasy.
You know, they they thought,you know, it's going to ruin the
game. And it took them along time, like, way too long
(26:12):
to figure out that it was actuallyhelping them. That the people who played
fantasy were watching more games, werebuying the TV packages, and they were
buying more jerseys and everything. Andit just took them a long time to
figure out that it wasn't hurting them, was actually helping them. And what
you were just referring to is ClayWalker, who was the head of the
(26:33):
Players Association. Yeah, he's theguy. He's the guy that was kind
of ahead of his time compared tothe other players associations realizing like, guys,
this is a good thing for us. Yeah. That's another thing I
noticed or learned from reading the bookis on the other side, I wasn't
aware to the extent to which FantasyFantasy, the early days of fantasy baseball
(27:00):
in particular, we're actually driving theanalytics that were used, you know,
in front offices in the game itself. And of course, I know,
you know, build my sort ofintroduction to this, you know, this
sort of statistical side of baseball wasthrough Bill James abstracts back in the in
the eighties. But then I youknow, I got, I got big
(27:22):
air quotes here, too cool foryou know, baseball stats. And I
didn't actually start playing fantasy till aboutkind of fifteen years later in the late
nineties. But yeah, the theI found it really interesting when you talked
about how, you know, teamsthemselves would use metrics and ideas that were
(27:44):
also are being developed for fantasy games. So I don't know if you want
to talk a little bit more aboutthat and that kind of relationship between you
know, advanced stats that organizations useand how fantasy baseball had had an on
those. Yeah, well, youknow Bill Bill James started obviously, you
(28:07):
know, with his advanced stats,and he wasn't really a fantasy person.
He was, you know, writingabout general baseball, but people picked up
on some of what he was doingand applied it to fantasy. And you
know, Ron Chandler came along andreally was he was probably the guy who
really started incorporating you know, fantasyinformation with with advanced analytics and realizing that
(28:33):
there's a big market there and andthen you know, it grew from there
and you know, you got fangrafs, you got baseball perspectives. Aaron Shatz
is the guy who kind of didthis for football. He's kind of like
the Bill James football stats mm hmand yeah, and then you know,
you got a little bit of thisfor you know, hockey and basketball.
(28:56):
Like you know, like hockey,there's like an expected expected goals advanced stat,
you know, and and and thenthe the you know, the real
teams picked up on all this.You know, Major League baseball front offices
started buying Ron Chandler's book and youknow, looking at these stats, and
(29:18):
you know that's the movie Moneyball isall about this. And Chandler eventually went
to work for the Cardinals for abit, right, yeah, he consulted
with them for a year. Right, do you, Larry, do you
play any other do you of courseyou play fantasy baseball. Do you do
any other fantasy sports? I dofancy baseball and fancy football. I used
(29:41):
to also do fantasy basketball, butI stopped. Okay, I actually stopped
when I decided to write my firstbook. Is when I stopped playing fancy
basketball because I knew I needed tocut something out to have time to write
the book. So I thought,Okay, I'm gonna take a year off
from fans basketball. And I did, and I wrote the book, you
(30:03):
know, and I never went back, you know, I didn't. I
didn't miss it that much. Forme, fancy basketball was like it was
like fun for a couple of months, but then once I would get into
like baseball prep and then baseball drafts, like the last month or two of
the fancy basketball season was kind ofmore of a pain than a than you
know, which, But I don'tknow if I if I was if I
(30:26):
just retired and had nothing else todo and stop playing golf and whatnot and
whatnot, you know, I playedfancy basketball again. Yeah, So Larry,
just before we go, can canyou tell us where where to find
the book? You know you mentionedit, but just can you tell our
listeners once again? Please? Yeah, And I'll mention two other quick things
(30:47):
that I didn't mention. One isthat all this information in the book is
stuff people don't know. I meanPaul Charchian, for example, he was
the f STA president from two thousandand nine to twenty twenty. You know,
he's been in this industry his entirecareer, and he said there's like
all kinds of things in this bookhe had never heard about. And another
(31:10):
thing I want to want to mentionis anybody who loves fantasy sports is going
to love this book for sure.And I know it's easy to say that
and people say all the time,Oh, you're going to love this book.
I really really mean it. Ifyou love fantasy sports, you will
love this book like no frickin kidding. And where it is it's currently it's
on Amazon and Barnes and Noble paperbackand ebook, and it's also available through
(31:33):
most other outlets like if you likeBooks a Million or some other store.
If you go online, they probablyhave it available. Okay, well,
Larry, thank you so much fortaking the time to talk with us tonight.
It was great having you on.Thanks a lot, guys, Thank
(32:15):
you for listening to episode three twelveof Flies Fly Forever, a Baseball Perspective
Fantasy Baseball podcast. Thank you toour guest Larry Scheckter and John as always.
Thank you to you so for MikeJill and John Haglund. Thank you
very much for you, Thank you. We should just close out with a
lot of thank yous. We'll beback in your ears soon. The Bay and
Welcome to episode three twelve of FlagsFly Forever, a Baseball Perspective Fantasy Baseball
podcast. This is a very specialepisode because on the show tonight, in
addition to John Haglund, we havea guest, we have Larry Scheckter,
who if you've listened to this podcast, if you play fantasy baseball, you
certainly know who that is. WelcomeLarry to our show. Thanks glad to
(00:44):
be here. And Larry's here tonightbecause he's written a book and we're here
to talk about that book tonight.The book is called The History of Fantasy
Sports and the Stories of the peoplewho made it happen. Larry previously had
written Winning Fantasy Baseball, which wasa strategy book. The subheeditor of that
(01:07):
with secret strategies of a nine timenational champion, and this book is a
little bit different Larry. So,so this book you certainly talk about fantasy
baseball, but it's a lot moreabout the history of sports. What amazed
me is that it's really goes backa long way in time like that.
That surprised me. Yeah, Imean this, this book is nothing like
(01:29):
my first book. This this bookis not about me. It's not about
my opinions. This is about thehistory of fantasy sports that covers everything from
as you just said, going backyears and years ago through how you games
appeared like Stratumatic and APPA, andbefore that there were board games, and
(01:52):
then you know, it evolved intolike primitive versions of what we now call
fantasy sports and the creation of youknow, fantasy baseball, fantasy football,
which led to magazines and books andnews services and stat services, serious XM
radio, Baseball prospectus, and youknow what we have now, which is
(02:15):
this massive, worldwide, multi billiondollar industry with millions and millions of people
playing all different kinds of games allover the world. Yeah, so,
you know, I don't know aboutyou. I remember I started with Stratomatic.
I stumbled onto it at a garagesale. It was an incomplete set.
(02:38):
It was like this was like inthe late seventies, early eighties.
It was a seventy one nineteen seventyone set that had writing on the advanced
side. But I played and playedand played and played. Yeah, I'm
kind of curious, like where didyou actually get your start, like with
either fantasy sports or tabletop sports.Was it with fantasy baseball? Ors was
it similar to me, we hadlike a childhood experience. No. I
(03:02):
played APPA baseball and foot and footballwhen I was a teenager, so that
was my start. And then youknow, at some point, probably after
I got out of high school orsomething, I probably never played app again
and didn't do anything until I wasyou know, until I heard about fantasy
(03:24):
baseball when I was looking. Iwas about thirty two when I heard an
ad on the radio. I wasdriving around Boston one day and I heard
an ado the radio, which wasfor a fantasy baseball league, and we
did a I signed up. Wedid a draft on a conference call,
which is kind of a high techway of doing it back in nineteen ninety.
(03:46):
Yeah. I was going to say, you were ahead of your time.
I think the first draft I didwas in high school and it was
in person. And you know somethingabout that is that and this is this?
You know you mentioned this, youknow, being a big industry now
and it's all centralized, I thinkfor a lot of us, and this
was true for me, like Iand you get into this in the book,
you know, I discovered it throughthe original book, you know,
(04:10):
the the Dan Oakrant book, andI stumbled onto it in a bookstore,
and you know, it was oneof those things where the second I found
I was like, oh my gosh, like I don't know how I'm going
to do this, Like I'm ahigh schooler, but I have to do
this, Like I have to figureout how to how to play this game.
And I think that's one of themost amazing and interesting things about your
book is that so many people,and the people you discussed are not just
(04:32):
players like they want up being entrepreneurs. It was a very similar experience,
wasn't it. Like like some ofthe some of the people we think of
now, like you know, GlennAmbrosius and of Gregen Broth, Greg Ambrosus,
Glenn Colet, and Rick Wolf,all of them like kind of came
into this in a similar way.Yeah. I mean you go back to,
(04:53):
you know, the book that youmentioned. So Dan Oakrint is the
guy who's credited with inventing fantasy baseball, which was originally called rotissory baseball.
Now, the thing is there's athere's like a myth that he magically came
up with this idea on a planeride from Connecticut to Texas. That's not
true at all. He didn't magicallycome up with the idea, there's a
(05:15):
whole lot more to the story.And I spent eighteen months researching and researching
and researching everything I could find aboutfantasy sports. I interviewed dozens and dozens
of people, and mostly on Zoom. I interviewed Dan Oakrint extensively, and
I still did a lot of theblanks that were missing. So I'm telling
(05:36):
them. You know, the chapterin the book about the origins of Fantasy
Baseball tells the entire story from beforeOprint how it actually all happened. But
Okrant, you know, definitely getscredit for inventing like the modern version of
what we have now is an auctionformat. It's the current auction format played
(05:57):
by most people at Wars Labor andmost other people. Well, you know,
it's kind of like the same aswhat Oakrant came up with for the
most part. And the thing thatOakrant did that really made the difference is
Okrant was in a writer, andyou know, he was a writer,
and all his buddies were writers andeditors at magazines, et cetera. So
(06:18):
because of what they did, theygot articles published, and that's how people
found out about it, and that'swhy it really spread and the book that
you just referenced was the original RodsHistory Baseball Book from Bantam Books, which
I think was eight and it wasnineteen eighty four if I remember correctly.
(06:39):
Yeah, lots of people bought thatbook. I mean you were not alone.
Like fifty thousand copies of that weresold, and you know, thousands
and thousands of people got that bookand they were like, wow, this
is great and they immediately started leagueswith their friends. Matthew Barry was one
of the people that started because ofthat book. And yeah, and that
(07:00):
was, you know, one ofthe really big events. Yeah, and
that book, you know, itspawned a lot of different things, like
the next book that I was exposedto because you know, I was looking
for other information and you know,in the mid eighties, it was just
that book. And then you knowPeter Goldenbach put together and you know,
it's funny I at this point,like I know Peter, I know Ox
(07:21):
Patten, I've I've been to theirauction, you know, and now they
do it on zoom. But youknow, at the time when when I
was a high school that was thenext book I saw, which was how
to Win at Retisserie Baseball and Ifeel like that book and Alex Evaluations and
you talk about this in your book, that really was the next step where
it went from. The original bookhad had humor, it was funny,
(07:43):
it told you how to how toplay the game. But really the title
Goldbox Book really did do what itsaid, which is okay, and we've
evolved far from that, but itwas the first book to say, okay,
this is how you actually can winat this game. That you know,
Dan oakridn't you know, if hedidn't invent at least see affected right
exactly, and that you know,the kind of one interesting thing there was
(08:05):
going back when he wrote the book. You know, he wasn't good at
roche history baseball. He didn't know, he didn't know how to win.
But what he did is he interviewedsome of the people that were good.
And you know, one of thethings that I realized when I when I
started researching this book, one ofthe things I realized very early on was
I could just kind of write whathappened, the facts and the figures and
(08:28):
when, when and what, andI would like tell the entire story,
but it would come off as avery boring research paper. And what I
realized. But what was happening isI was researching. I was finding out
fascinating things about people that were involvedthat I read about or when I talked
(08:48):
to people. And so the subtitleof the book is, as you mentioned,
the subtitle is the stories of thepeople who made it happen. And
that's what really makes this book fascinating. If I can, you know,
brag about it a little bit,because it's not that it's not that I
did anything fantastic, it's the informationand the stories that I found out are
(09:11):
They're fascinating, they're inspirational, they'refunny, you know, they're pretty amazing.
And as I would find out thesethings, I was like, oh
my god, this book is goingto be freaking great because these things I'm
finding out. So that that's whatkind of really makes the book an easy
read. And you know, theinitial reviews it came out six weeks ago,
the initial reviews have been fantastic.If it's available now on Amazon and
(09:35):
Barnes and Noble ebook and paperback.You know, if you go to Amazon
and you look at the reviews onthere, I mean you'll see it's like
it's really good. Yeah, youhave actually that's that's right of the page.
Up. You've got a four pointseven right now of five stars,
which is which is excellent. Yeah, it's a well a few books.
So what you're like, without givingaway too much in the book, is
(09:56):
there a story you know that sinceyou're you know, public, you know,
promoting it on here, is therea story in particular that really jumps
out You're like, yeah, thiswas something that blew my mind. You
know, I couldn't believe that thiswas the case. I know there were
a couple like that for me,but I want to hear like one from
you, Larry. Yeah, wellthere, I mean, there are a
lot of them. I mean,you know, you could, like,
(10:18):
you know, pick pick a pagenumber and I'll go to it and find
something on that page, you know, because there's just like so many of
them. But you know, oneone that I like, one that I
like is where Oh my god,I can't think of this person's name now.
One of the first stat services.This this man and woman. I
(10:39):
can't believe. I can't remember theirname off the top of my head.
They started one of the first statsservices. They were, you know,
they're married, and what they hadto do back then is the USA Today
would come out on Tuesday, andthat's where you got the American League stats.
And Wednesday, the USA Today wouldpublish the National League and that's where
you got those steps. And thiswoman went into labor on Tuesday morning,
(11:05):
but that did not stop them fromgetting the stats center. So like between
contractions, she would read off statsfrom the USA Today and her husband would
enter them into the computer, andthen she'd get to have a contraction coming
on. She's like, okay,hold on, hold on, hold on.
She wait for the contraction, thepass, and then they keep going
and they got all the stats centeredby like early afternoon, and their daughter
(11:28):
was born later that afternoon. Andnow thirty five years later, the daughter
that was born that day plays fantasyfootball in a league with her dad.
That's that's incredible. Yeah, Andthat's another thing too, Like we're at
this point now. I joke aboutthis, but you know, I've been
writing about fantasy sports for twenty years. I started off my own blog.
(11:52):
I wound up at Baseball Prospectus,and I was writing about four by four,
like the old school, you know, first game. And I have
people come to me now and say, oh, yeah, like that that's
cool. I play that with mydad, Like that's my dad's league.
Uh, you know, the gameitself has just evolved, like so you
know, like like you're right,Larry, it's it's a lot of people
still play five by five. Butthere's points leagues. You know, there's
(12:15):
different formats, there's ot new andit really is something like how it's blossomed
and how so many people have youknow, put a different spin on what
was the original set of rules?Right, and I know, you know
we're talking here on baseball perspective,so there's an emphasis on baseball. But
you know for all of fantasy sports, I mean, you got you got
fantasy I did a ride, yougot fantasy everything. You know, cricket.
(12:39):
There are two hundred two hundred millionpeople play fantasy cricket in India.
More people play fantasy cricket in Indiathan play fantasy sports in North America.
You know, my my book,my book covers is the book covers everything
that stat services, news services,the first websites, you know, daily
sports, the worldwide expansion, experts, leagues. You know, it's got
(13:03):
everything. And you know, goingback one of one of the other stories
that you know, he said,one of my favorite stories, you know,
one of I mean, there's there'sseveral that stand out, but you
know, it was like probably theprobably maybe one of one of the best
is a guy that was in aan Apple league got ALS. He'd been
in this Apple League for many,many years and he was diagnosed with ALS.
(13:28):
And when he got that, itlooked like he was going to have
to drop out of the league.But his wife said, well, said
listen, if you want to keepplaying, I'll do whatever I have to
do so you can keep playing.So his wife would go to the games
with him, and she she'd likeroll the dice and he'd tell her what
to do. And it went onlike this for a while, and he
(13:52):
kept his condition kept deteriorating to thepoint where he see, if let me
make sure get this right. Itgot to a point where he could no
longer speak and communicate it through aneye reader and computer body gestures and his
wife could read his lips. Andin twenty eighteen, his team came from
(14:13):
two runs behind in extra innings towin his first World Series ever after thirty
nine years in the league, andhe burst out crying, yeah, I
remember that from you know that stuckwith me. I actually heard you talking
about that on jeff Erickson podcast whenyou were talking about the book. But
that story like stuck with me,and then when I read it in the
(14:37):
book, I was like, Wow, that's just amazing and that's something you
really cover, which is there.There's certainly a lot of information in the
book about you know, different leagues, Like you've got something toward the back,
there's like daily Fantasy Sports. There'sall the expert or analyst leagues.
But that's always I think the thingthat gets lost. I think a lot
of people in John, you andI've talked about this, like a lot
(14:58):
of people think, oh, youknow, fantasy sports is just about winning
money, or fantasy sports is justabout winning your league, even if you're
not playing for big money. ButI really do believe it's about the connections
that we make with other people.Yeah, and that's you know, as
it turned out, this has covereda lot in the book. It's like,
(15:18):
you know, what fantasy sports hasdone is you've got fathers and sons
playing mothers and daughters. You gotyou got NFFC drafts in Vegas or you
know, w COF drafts in Vegas, where you got a You got a
plumber sitting next to a fortune fivehundred company ceo and they're talking like they're
(15:39):
best buddies. Yeah. And there'sa guy, Mark Mark Marianni, who
I interviewed in the book. Hewas he was with Turner Sports and CBS
Sports and when he first found outabout fantasy football was he was working a
job and he was invited to joina fantasy football league for his company.
And he realized if he joined,is this league, he can call his
(16:02):
boss's bosses boss in the fancy officein Manhattan, and the boss's boss's boss
will pick up the phone and talkto him, where ordinarily, if he
wasn't in the fantasity football league,the guy would never take his phone call.
Oh, and you know it's it'sfunny. I had lesser experiences at
(16:22):
that, but at jobs I hadwhere people found out like I was a
fantasy expert. You know, somesome director called me into his office and
was like, wait, is thisyou? And that's back when we had
the pictures Larry like in labor andyou know, in sports weekly, and
it's somebody who he joked years laterit wasn't true, but it's somebody who
never would have talked to me ina million years otherwise. So I find
that I find that very relatable.Yeah, and Mark Mike Mike Marini,
(16:48):
he wrote a fantastic review on Amazon, and if you go to Amazon you
read the regroup of Mike Marianni,you're going to buy the book. I
mean, he went one of theone of the things that a yes,
you're in a very long reveal.But one of the things he said is
what sets this book apart is itsability to bridge the gap between historical data
and the human elements of the fantasysports community. Checkter brings to life the
(17:12):
pioneers, the landmark moments, andthe underlying strategies that have defined the genre.
And so must read the captures theessence of fantasy sports with the reverence
and death it deserves. Yeah,so I know you don't really cover this
so much in the book, butsince you've been involved for a long time,
(17:32):
Like, what what do you thinkin terms of like where we've been
and I think, particularly like wherewe're headed, I see some upsides and
downsides to fantasy. I think onething I do like about your book is
that I feel like the history oftengets lost, like I feel like every
year, you know, April comesand we just completely forget that. Every
(17:55):
year, you know, things happenin April that are unusual, like and
for two or three three weeks,and and what I think i'd like to
see, and you know, thishas been kind of my soapbox for years.
I'd like to see more institutional knowledgethan we have. Now. Do
you think that's something that's possible ordo you think we're kind of just stuck
with the model. We have institutionalknowledge in terms of what much since that
(18:18):
sure? What you mean? Well? In social knowledge in terms of you
know, for example, every yearthere's surprises in April, and every year
people rushed to write about, Oh, this guy's this guy's a big surprise.
You know that this player you didthis, this player did that.
Right. That's one example. Imean there's several examples like that, where
like, like valuation is another example. Like I think there's a handful of
(18:38):
people I like to think on oneof them. You know, there's Alex
Patten, there's the Cohen, there'syou, But I think a lot of
people don't really have a handle onvaluation very well. And again, it
just seems that like as there's otherindustries or businesses where that institutional knowledge exists,
and I don't see it as muchin the fantasy community. I don't
know if you agree or disagree,or you know, if it's something you
(19:00):
think could possibly be improved upon.I don't really know. I mean,
honestly, I don't really have agood answer to that question. I think,
you know, a lot of thingsare pretty well developed at this point,
and it's hard to say where we'regoing from here, you know,
(19:22):
at the you know, like atthe end of the book, I wrote
an epilogue and I really I actuallysaid, like, you know, where
we're going to be kind or twentyyears from now, I don't know,
you know, I wouldn't go yeah. Well, I mean it's funny is
if you think about where we weretwenty years ago, I would not have
you know, anticipated where we're rightexactly right? Yeah, And well people,
(19:45):
that's goodhead. Well, I wasjust gonna say, I think it's
something that always comes up. Andyou know, before the show, John
and I were talking, I said, I don't want to talk about football,
but it's tough because that's the thingyou always hear. I don't want
to mentioned it was but I wasout of a minor league game a couple
of nights ago when I was withsomebody you know in the industry, and
(20:06):
this is always his thing where he'slike, everybody wants football, you know,
nobody's really interested in baseball. Ijust don't think that's true. I
think there's always going to be aplace for baseball, even if it's not
like the a number one fantasy sport. Oh, I totally agree. Absolutely,
there's baseball, you know, butit's and it's absolutely not as big
as football. Football. Football overtookit and I think it was the eighties
(20:30):
and popularity and football is going toit is king, it's always going to
be king. But that doesn't meanbaseball is going away. You know,
million millions of people play baseball andthey're still going to Yeah, and you
know, some people play basketball,some people play hockey, lots you know,
there's millions of people play cricket.There's lots of people who play soccer,
(20:52):
you know, especially in like Europeand South America. Yeah, I
mean my thing with that, Ifeel the same way I feel about regular
baseball that I do about fantasy baseball. Yes, as someone who writes about
it as interested. I wanted tosurvive, but I also have a hard
time worrying about an industry that makesthe money and the income that it bakes
(21:14):
it. It just seems like there'sa lot of you know, what people
would call concern trolling about a verylucrative business. Yeah, I don't see.
You know, baseball's not going away, and fantasy baseball's not going away.
Yeah, John, did you haveany anything you wanted to add?
I just wanted to say when youwere talking earlier about you know, bringing
(21:40):
in so many different stories and influenceson the history of fantasy sports. I
really do think that's the strongest elementof this book, is to show you
all of the different currents and notjust you know, located in Dan o'krint
or whomever. But I'm curious,Larry, if you see a particular inflection
(22:02):
point, like an event in thehistory of fantasy sports that put it put
it on the course that it thatit, you know, eventually ended up
today. Is there a kind ofmoment where it could have gone in a
different direction, It could have remaineda hobby and not developed into the business
(22:25):
that it is now. Well,there were there were a couple of points
where it could have been severely damaged. One was in my faid I should
like, I wish I had abetter memory. I should have this book
memorized. But the Major League BaseballAdvanced Media took over the rights for licensing
(22:48):
fantasy games from the Players Association,and they tried, they tried to shut
down almost all the companies in thefantasy industry and stopped giving them like businesses,
and CVM Sports had to sue them, and it was kind of like
a David versus Goliath thing. Itwas like CVM this, you know,
relatively small company fighting Major League Baseballwith all their powerful attorneys and connections in
(23:15):
Washington. And if Major League Baseballhad won, then a lot of businesses
in fantasy would have been shut down, and then it would have also killed
all the ancillary businesses too, Likeif if the fantasy games got a lot
of them shut down, then yourmagazines and stat services and everything we're going
to suffer right along with it.But CVM, you know, miraculously won
(23:40):
the lawsuit. This was about,you know, the player's right to publicity
and saying that you know, acompany like CDM had to pay a licensing
fee in order to use the player'sstats, and CDM and other companies were
paying licensing fees even though it wasnever clear if they had to. But
when basically Baseball Advanced Media threatened toshut him down, instead said, well,
(24:03):
they said, we're not going torenew your license. We're not going
to give your license. We're goingto shut you down. At that point,
they either had to shut down orthey had to sue. So they
sued to try to, you know, establish the fact that you don't have
to pay to use player statistics.And they won and it was you know,
(24:23):
that was a huge event. Ifthey had lost, you know,
we wouldn't have what we have today. And that was you know, one
of the many fascinating things was,you know, I spoke at length with
Rudy Telscher, the attorney for CDM, and it was pretty amazing the stuff,
you know that I found out fromhim to send the book. Yeah,
(24:45):
you know what. One thing thatjust kind of like always strikes me
is like I feel this way lessthan I used to. But it felt
for years like fantasy baseball was kindof the ugly step child where every other
people look down on fantasy like peoplein this traditional media, people in the
prospect media. I could rattle itall off, but it really feels to
(25:07):
me that fantasy drove a lot ofthis. Like I love Baseball America,
but I don't think Baseball America growsthe way it does, you know in
the eighties and nineties without fantasy baseball, there's just really a lot of ancillary
areas of baseball that don't grow andexpand as much if you don't have people
following the sport that way. Andthat's why that story when I read it,
(25:30):
like I was somewhat familiar with thatstory, Like you filled in a
lot of gaps, Larry that Iwasn't aware of, But I was really
like, Wow, it's just amazingto me that baseball should be able to
see this. And I think youmentioned the book that you know, the
NFL was savvyer about this at leasteventually then you know, major League Baseball
was, But baseball should be ableto see this. It did. Often
(25:52):
they don't or they're like, wow, whatever, this is just this thing
over the side, we'll just ignoreit. Yeah, Well, the Major
League, the Major League Sports andPlayers associations were very resistant to fantasy.
You know, they they thought,you know, it's going to ruin the
game. And it took them along time, like, way too long
(26:12):
to figure out that it was actuallyhelping them. That the people who played
fantasy were watching more games, werebuying the TV packages, and they were
buying more jerseys and everything. Andit just took them a long time to
figure out that it wasn't hurting them, was actually helping them. And what
you were just referring to is ClayWalker, who was the head of the
(26:33):
Players Association. Yeah, he's theguy. He's the guy that was kind
of ahead of his time compared tothe other players associations realizing like, guys,
this is a good thing for us. Yeah. That's another thing I
noticed or learned from reading the bookis on the other side, I wasn't
aware to the extent to which FantasyFantasy, the early days of fantasy baseball
(27:00):
in particular, we're actually driving theanalytics that were used, you know,
in front offices in the game itself. And of course, I know,
you know, build my sort ofintroduction to this, you know, this
sort of statistical side of baseball wasthrough Bill James abstracts back in the in
the eighties. But then I youknow, I got, I got big
(27:22):
air quotes here, too cool foryou know, baseball stats. And I
didn't actually start playing fantasy till aboutkind of fifteen years later in the late
nineties. But yeah, the theI found it really interesting when you talked
about how, you know, teamsthemselves would use metrics and ideas that were
(27:44):
also are being developed for fantasy games. So I don't know if you want
to talk a little bit more aboutthat and that kind of relationship between you
know, advanced stats that organizations useand how fantasy baseball had had an on
those. Yeah, well, youknow Bill Bill James started obviously, you
(28:07):
know, with his advanced stats,and he wasn't really a fantasy person.
He was, you know, writingabout general baseball, but people picked up
on some of what he was doingand applied it to fantasy. And you
know, Ron Chandler came along andreally was he was probably the guy who
really started incorporating you know, fantasyinformation with with advanced analytics and realizing that
(28:33):
there's a big market there and andthen you know, it grew from there
and you know, you got fangrafs, you got baseball perspectives. Aaron Shatz
is the guy who kind of didthis for football. He's kind of like
the Bill James football stats mm hmand yeah, and then you know,
you got a little bit of thisfor you know, hockey and basketball.
(28:56):
Like you know, like hockey,there's like an expected expected goals advanced stat,
you know, and and and thenthe the you know, the real
teams picked up on all this.You know, Major League baseball front offices
started buying Ron Chandler's book and youknow, looking at these stats, and
(29:18):
you know that's the movie Moneyball isall about this. And Chandler eventually went
to work for the Cardinals for abit, right, yeah, he consulted
with them for a year. Right, do you, Larry, do you
play any other do you of courseyou play fantasy baseball. Do you do
any other fantasy sports? I dofancy baseball and fancy football. I used
(29:41):
to also do fantasy basketball, butI stopped. Okay, I actually stopped
when I decided to write my firstbook. Is when I stopped playing fancy
basketball because I knew I needed tocut something out to have time to write
the book. So I thought,Okay, I'm gonna take a year off
from fans basketball. And I did, and I wrote the book, you
(30:03):
know, and I never went back, you know, I didn't. I
didn't miss it that much. Forme, fancy basketball was like it was
like fun for a couple of months, but then once I would get into
like baseball prep and then baseball drafts, like the last month or two of
the fancy basketball season was kind ofmore of a pain than a than you
know, which, But I don'tknow if I if I was if I
(30:26):
just retired and had nothing else todo and stop playing golf and whatnot and
whatnot, you know, I playedfancy basketball again. Yeah, So Larry,
just before we go, can canyou tell us where where to find
the book? You know you mentionedit, but just can you tell our
listeners once again? Please? Yeah, And I'll mention two other quick things
(30:47):
that I didn't mention. One isthat all this information in the book is
stuff people don't know. I meanPaul Charchian, for example, he was
the f STA president from two thousandand nine to twenty twenty. You know,
he's been in this industry his entirecareer, and he said there's like
all kinds of things in this bookhe had never heard about. And another
(31:10):
thing I want to want to mentionis anybody who loves fantasy sports is going
to love this book for sure.And I know it's easy to say that
and people say all the time,Oh, you're going to love this book.
I really really mean it. Ifyou love fantasy sports, you will
love this book like no frickin kidding. And where it is it's currently it's
on Amazon and Barnes and Noble paperbackand ebook, and it's also available through
(31:33):
most other outlets like if you likeBooks a Million or some other store.
If you go online, they probablyhave it available. Okay, well,
Larry, thank you so much fortaking the time to talk with us tonight.
It was great having you on.Thanks a lot, guys, Thank
(32:15):
you for listening to episode three twelveof Flies Fly Forever, a Baseball Perspective
Fantasy Baseball podcast. Thank you toour guest Larry Scheckter and John as always.
Thank you to you so for MikeJill and John Haglund. Thank you
very much for you, Thank you. We should just close out with a
lot of thank yous. We'll beback in your ears soon. The Bay and
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