Fantasyland

Along with most of my fellow Back-Bloggers, I play fantasy baseball, as Stan introduced us to the meta-game a few years ago. It's an addicting game where you basically just try to pick players who will deliver the best stats, thus making you a sort of virtual general manager of your team. Actual baseball skills are meaningless; fantasy sports tests your analytical abilities. Also there's a whole lot of luck involved (Last season was especially disappointing for me in that regard, but I'll hold off on whining). Fantasyland by Sam Walker makes for an interesting introduction to fantasy baseball as Sam, a long-time baseball writer who managed to avoid any sort of fantasy sports for his entire career, decides to dive head-first into the most competitive league there is- Tout Wars. I've honestly never heard of Tout Wars, but Walker explains it as basically the most important one out there- fantasy experts and writers are invited to compete in 12-team AL-only and 13-team NL-only leagues. The year is 2004 and Sam talks his way into the AL Tout Wars league. Along with tons of backstory on the history of fantasy baseball (which is unsurprisingly boring) we follow along with Sam's team throughout the season as he tries to prove that someone without any analytical skills can still succeed by other means- in Sam's case, working closely with baseball players on a daily basis. He has chats with David Ortiz, Jose Guillen and Mariano Rivera about what they can do to improve his team, and somehow he manages to get answers that aren't "I don't care; please leave me alone." Now earlier I said that this book makes for a fun introduction to fantasy sports, but at someone with a few years of play under my belt it just becomes hard to get too invested. Walker does a good job of pumping up the drama and trying to make things interesting, but after playing for a few years you start to realize his 'drastic actions' are really par for the course. I mean, after one particularly bad week he talks about swallowing his pride and coming to a harrowing conclusion- it's time to make a trade. Except in some leagues, trades happen all the time. I feel like my league had six of them in one day before. There are a few interesting moments as the season winds down, particularly a protest outside Angel Stadium demanding to 'Free Jose Guillen' from his team-ordered suspension, but it's tough to take the drama too seriously. Honestly most of the tension for me came from whether Walker would lose a bet and have to eat an entire stick of butter at the end of the season. Does he? Find out in... Fantasyland!