Wow, what an article in the Wall Street Journal. You can't BUY this kind of coverage. Here's the story:
By NANDO DIFINO
My World Series is in late March. In fact, there are about 10 of them, all at once. The World Championship of Fantasy Baseball, the League of Alternate Baseball Reality and Tout Wars all draft or have their auctions in late March. Then there are the home leagues I join with friends and college buddies and the casual advisory roles I take for pals looking to have an extra set of eyes on their team. This year, I sat in on three drafts where I wasn't even playing.
[fantasy0403] Michele Monteleone for The Wall Street Journal
A participant in the New York wing of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship ponders his options.
People ask how many leagues I'm in. Last year it was 14, this year 12. Many involve some of fantasy's great minds. But 2010 was the first year I dared participate in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship.
The NFBC is where the best of the best come to play. It takes place in five cities — St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Atlantic City and Las Vegas — over the course of two weekends. There's no qualifying event one must win in order to partake. You just have to be willing to open your pocket. Most participants pay $1,250 to enter, with cash prizes awarded to the individual league winners and a six-figure grand prize to a winner among all 435 participants in what's called the Main Event.
I set up at the NFBC draft Saturday at Caesar's Club at the Mets' Citi Field. The club had seven sets of 15 teams, each drafting in the one room overlooking the stadium's parking lot. Sprinkled throughout were some of the nation's most well-known fantasy experts: Ron Shandler, Cory Schwartz, Mike Siano, Todd Zola, Lawr Michaels and J.P. Kastner among them. The competition here was tough, but I was only playing for charity. I feared more for my friends participating at the same time in Las Vegas.
About a week before the draft, all NFBC players are e-mailed a list of their competitors and their randomized draft order. In the process of pre-draft preparation, my friends had e-mailed anything and everything related to the big day to me — ranking lists, expert analysis, mock drafts, and strategy related to the NFBC's no-trades policy (to prevent collusion). Two weeks before they were about to depart for Vegas, I received a forwarded e-mail with the draft order and leaguemates for their entry, Team Gobots.
They were ecstatic. They hadn't pulled a recognizable fantasy expert in their league. But one name jumped out at me as scarier than any expert: Clark Olson. Dr. Olson is a Washington state-based computer scientist and professor by day, but a fantasy monster by night. He has won ESPN's Uber Challenge twice. In other words, he's twice survived a year-long death march that scores a user points in every fantasy game on ESPN.com. It's a marathon that requires knowledge of every sport and every nuance of the fantasy game. And Dr. Olson wasn't just lucky in those two years he won: He's finished in the top five for eight years in a row. He also won the grand prize as the top player in ESPN fantasy baseball in 2006. And Dr. Olson won a celebrity fantasy basketball league with his part-time partner, the rock star Meat Loaf.
Team Gobots struggled with the weight of this challenge.
"Oh," was all my friends could dejectedly muster. "Has he played NFBC, though?"
"He's won it twice." I said. "But at least you avoided the pig farmer."
"Who?"
Lindy Hinkleman, an Idaho hog farmer, won $241,300 last year after tearing through the NFBC. It couldn't have come at a better time for Mr. Hinkleman, whose farm was hemorrhaging money thanks to the swine flu epidemic sweeping the nation at the time.
"People were scared to eat pork," says Mr. Hinkleman, noting that he didn't have to kill any hogs, but lost sales due to the perception that eating pork would transmit swine flu.
The closest Mr. Hinkleman had come during a stretch of five failed tries at NFBC was a 52nd-place finish in 2007. Mr. Hinkleman says that he found success last year after reading a Q&A session on the NFBC boards with four-time winner Shawn Childs.
This is the guy who stops traffic among NFBC participants when he enters the room. Shawn Childs doesn't have a job on TV offering advice. As far as I know, he doesn't even have a Twitter account where people can ask him which two outfielders he would rather have in a group of four. He simply wins. In the last six years, Mr. Childs has won four NFBC league titles, finished third three times and fifth once in the overall Main Event standings. He has career NFBC earnings of over $100,000. The advice he gave in that message board chat that Mr. Hinkleman heeded for his big win? Make sure your top three players combine for 75 steals and 75 home runs. There were no advanced sabermetrics involved. Mr. Childs wins partly because of an approach as simple as drafting guys who are fast and/or hit home runs.
He's also in the Gobots' league. Randomly, my friends were stuck in a league with the master of every game ESPN has ever put out, plus the master of the NFBC. At least, they reasoned, they would have a few days in Vegas to sip champagne at the Wet Republic nightclub, which became a makeshift command central for last-second draft prep.
Players like Dr. Olson, Mr. Childs and Mr. Hinkleman go largely unnoticed by the majority of the fantasy-playing universe. Outside of a certain Bat Out of Hell and the nominating committee of the NFBC Hall of Fame they remain largely unknown. But they will beat you to a ruthless pulp in the high-stakes leagues of NFBC and WCOFB. And they will take your wallet.
Six months from now, a new Main Event winner will be crowned, feted and feared. For now, after a long and arduous draft season, all we drafters can do it sit, wait and revel in the fun of actually getting to play our game in a major league park.
Write to Nando DiFino at
[email protected]
Sidebar:
Average Draft Position gives fantasy owners more than just an idea of where players are being selected in drafts. It can also help identify the most-buzzed about players and indicate changes in roles on teams. A big leap in ADP could mean anything from being named a closer to getting the starting first-base job. Those taking huge losses most likely were hurt, cut from the team, or lost a starting role. Here are the biggest movers on MockDraftCentral.com over the last two weeks:
TOP DECLINERS
Player Pos Team ADP Change
Joe Nathan RP MIN 214.37 -25.1%
Ryan Garko 1B SEA 256.43 -17%
Francisco Rodriguez RP NYM 46.4 -14.8%
Ryan Sweeney OF OAK 248.16 -14.1%
Brandon League RP SEA 247.13 -13.6%
Ty Wigginton 1B BAL 249.19 -13.2%
Francisco Cordero RP CIN 59.52 -12.9%
Huston Street RP COL 84.32 -10.8%
Luis Valbuena 2B CLE 229.55 -9.7%
Matt Guerrier RP MIN 233.68 -9.7%
TOP RISERS
Player Pos Team ADP Change
Victor Martinez C BOS 8.7 9.7%
Jonny Gomes OF CIN 210.8 9.4%
Kosuke Fukudome OF CHC 153.36 9.1%
Ian Kennedy SP ARI 201.2 9%
Hanley Ramirez SS FLA 2 8.5%
Prince Fielder 1B MIL 5.76 8.5%
Scott Hairston OF SD 159.16 8.4%
Ben Francisco OF PHI 146.92 7.4%
Miguel Cabrera 1B DET 3.17 7.3%
Chris Perez RP CLE 181.27 7%
NEW PLAYERS ON THE BOARD
Player Pos Team ADP Change
Gaby Sanchez 1B FLA 207.16 NA
Matt Diaz OF ATL 207.68 NA
Colby Lewis SP TEX 262.64 NA
