Daniel Okrent In Time Magazine

[Greg Ambrosius]

I enjoyed picking up this week's Time magazine and seeing the cover story of Detroit's history written by Daniel Okrent, one of the Founding Fathers of Rotisserie Baseball. Dan wrote the original rules for Rotisserie Baseball and pioneered the first Rotisserie league. From there the other journalists in that league spread the word about Rotisserie baseball and the rest is history.



I think Dan is one of the most interesting and successful journalists around that few people really know. He was a prominent member of the New York Times editorial board for years and managing editor of Life magazine. He's also a book author and a Pulitzer Prize nominee. Amazing.



I met Dan in 1994 when Good Morning America did a feature story on the Rotisserie baseball phenomenon. USA Today actually wrote a business story the day of Opening Day 1994 about how fantasy baseball was growing in popularity and they quoted me on the numbers and reasons why people were playing. Dan was quoted in the story and said he wished he had never invented this crazy game. The next day Good Morning America was calling both of us and flying me to appear with Dan and Charles Gibson.



Dan was great, telling Charles how he felt like the inventor of the atomic bomb and how he wished this would all stop. I was as energetic as could be, telling him this was just the tip of the iceberg and that this phenomenon would get bigger and bigger. Nobody even discussed fantasy football at that time because baseball was so big. But it was a fun segment and to this day I want to get back with Dan and interview him, Glenn Waggoner and some of the other Founding Fathers for a story.



Anyway, check out a few of these links on Daniel Okrent. He's very interesting:



http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/ ... -base.html



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Okrent



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 89868.html



http://www.thetakeaway.org/contributors/daniel-okrent/