NFBC Champion Profile - Greg & Dale Morgan

[Tom Kessenich]

As charter members of the NFBC, Greg and Dale Morgan have chased fantasy immortality for over a decade. They’ve gotten tantalizingly close enough at times but never were able to embrace the championship that would make their dreams complete.

Until 2014.

In 2014, everything changed for the father-son team from Ohio. In 2014, they went from being highly respected NFBC players to national champions.

In their 11th season of NFBC competition, the Morgans did what only a select few had accomplished before – they won the NFBC Main Event.

“I felt relief after having been so close to the big carrot so many times and falling just short at the end,” Greg said. “I think my father was able to enjoy the ride more than I. When we reached the end I was finally able to exhale and enjoy it a little bit.”

For Dale, it was about more than just the splendor of a national fantasy championship.

“It felt like we had finally hit the lottery,” he said. “I was especially proud of Greg, who was the chief architect of our success.”

The title not only was the culmination of a season-long path to glory for the Morgan’s but on a personal level it was especially pleasing for Greg to have won the premier contest in the fantasy baseball industry with his father.

“Earlier in the year, my dad was diagnosed as having major blockage in a carotid artery,” he said. “Thankfully, he made it through surgery successfully and is now healthier than before the procedure. I felt doubly blessed not only to have him recover, but to be able to enjoy the magical ride to the top of the NFBC together.”

This was the Morgan’s second Main Event league title. They previously won a league title in 2006, finishing 10th overall that season.

In 2014, their winning total of 3,643 points was 86.7 percent of the available point total. That was certainly an impressive figure.

They took over the top spot in the Main Event in the latter portion of the season and held off all challengers to claim the $125,000 prize. That was the largest Main Event prize in NFBC history.

As is so often the case, the championship was fraught with some anxious moments as the season drew to a close.

“It was stressful,” Greg said. “There is pressure to make the right FAAB and lineup moves. When you make a bad move or bench/start the wrong player everything seems amplified. You yell at the TV more frequently, especially at official scorers and their perplexing decisions that destroy your calm.

“I remember vividly Max Scherzer giving up a ground ball hit at average speed that went right through Ian Kinsler’s legs. It was ruled a hit. I wanted a congressional investigation into this travesty but none materialized.”

The fantasy gods may not have been kind at that particular moment but the race toward the $125,000 prize did draw some unexpected interest in the Morgan households.

“Our wonderful and patient wives, who I am sure at times felt like fantasy baseball widows became very interested those final weeks,” Dale said. “They even were sitting down with us to watch the games and asking, ‘Is that guy on your team?’”

As is often the case, Greg said he left that Main Event draft confident in the team he and his father had drafted. Not only did he strongly believe in the team, he admits he had visions of the grand prize dancing in his head almost immediately.

“On Draft Day and throughout the season we had the title in mind and realistically believed that it could happen,” he said. “With 420 teams, that’s a realistic goal. It’s not like some of the Daily contest with 90,000-plus entrees where it’s more of a lotto ticket.

“Don’t get me wrong. If we had to place a bet back in April we’d bet on the fied. We are aware of the probabilities and the odds, but our goal on Draft Day is to win it all and if we fall short we fail to meet our goal.”

Interestingly, the team the Morgans constructed ran contrary to what their plan was going into the draft.

“We left the draft table with what we felt was the best offensive team we had ever drafted,” Greg said. “That wasn’t our strategy going in. We wanted more pitching but the draft flow in this league didn’t allow for that.

“As good as our offense was, I was extremely concerned with the lack of depth on our pitching staff. We were very vulnerable in pitching, in particular in ERA and WHIP. Fortunately, we were able to find enough pitchers through FAAB to patch the holes in our staff before our ERA and WHIP blew up.”

Offensively, though, the Morgans could not have asked for more than they compiled in this league.

“Our No. 1 priority was to draft Miguel Cabrera and Dee Gordon as two main cornerstones,” Greg said. “Everything else revolved around that. That took care of third base and middle infield, allowing us to truly take what the draft gave us instead of being limited by roster requirements, position scarcity or in some ways statistical scarcity.

“Once that foundation was laid, we took what the draft gave us. We really wanted to draft more pitchers in the early rounds than we did. At the same time, we weren’t going to get caught at the end of the run. Rather than take a lowered tiered pitcher, we kept piling up the offense and hoped we could fix our pitching problems later.”

Targeting Miggy wasn’t a difficult decision given his elite fantasy production. Gordon on the other hand? Well, let’s just say Dale wasn’t entirely convinced about pursuing him aggressively.

“I have to give all the credit to Greg for recognizing the potential in Dee Gordon and drafting him,” Dale said.
With a national championship comes great honor and recognition. But in the case of the NFBC’s Main Event, it also comes with a $125,000 grand prize.

And that means it will be time to decide just how to spend it.

“I wanted to go to Vegas and put it all on No. 7 but my wife didn’t like that idea, so we opted to pay off most of the rest of the mortgage instead,” Greg said.

His father’s plan is just as intelligent and practical.

“I’m going to put it towards retirement,” Dale said.

For the Morgans, not only was the Main Event championship the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of competition in the NFBC but it was the pinnacle of success for two men who have been playing fantasy baseball since the early 2000s.

“Our first venture into fantasy baseball was a CBS Sportsline online league which went down to the final day of the season and the final West Coast games,” Dale said. “Greg and I finished in first place on the strength of a late-inning two-run home run by the light-hitting second baseman Mark Loretta, who was having a career year.

“We called that team Sons of Thunder and have used that name every year since that first success. We joined the NFBC as charter members the next year and have since participated every year.”

And now they are national champions. The dream has been realized. The goal has been accomplished.