Las Vegas League 6 Champion Profile - Mike Cameron

[Tom Kessenich]

Good health is often the key to a successful fantasy season. That was definitely the case for Mike Cameron’s team in the NFBC in 2005.



Cameron’s team in Las Vegas League 6 managed to avoid crucial injuries – especially to key players – and that proved to be a successful formula that helped his team capture that league’s first-place prize and a seventh-place finish in the overall standings.



“(Avoiding injuries) is something you don’t have any control over and it devastated some teams (in our league) that I thought looked great on paper at the start of the season,” said Cameron, who works as an operator of a drinking water filtration plant in the San Diego area.



Cameron and his co-managers, lifelong friends Ron Spurgeon and George Melbrod, entered Draft Day with the plan of ensuring their team would have proper balance to begin the season.



“Our strategy that we were most happy with included balancing our Top 10 picks with both hitting and pitching and picking up good hitters who stood to get a lot of Abs during the season,” he said. “That hurt our average somewhat, but the extra Abs enabled us to finish seventh overall in Runs, 33rd overall in Home Runs and sixth overall in RBIs.”



As with nearly every other successful season, the draft alone wasn’t enough to guarantee a standout season. Cameron’s in-season moves proved critical as well.



“Picking up Joe Blanton early in the season, at a time when our pitching was in big trouble and we had an ´ERA of over 6.00 and him becoming what I thought was a premier pitcher of the second half was a plus,” said Cameron, who has been playing fantasy sports for about six years. “Also, Ryan Howard (a July pickup) really bolstered out offense.”



Those moves proved significant as the competition in Las Vegas 6 was intense throughout the season.



“For the first third of the season we had three teams at times in the Top 11 teams overall and we finished the year with four teams in the Top 48 overall,” Cameron said. “It wasn’t until midway through the second-to-last week of the season that we felt secure in winning the league.



“Although we had a sizeable lead at the end, most of that came in the last four weeks of the year. We also had to sweat out finishing in the Top 8 overall as one win or save or badly pitched game – our hitting was not a worry – could have cost us our free entry for next year.”



In the end there were no such worries as Cameron’s team enjoyed a standout campaign. For Cameron, who has been married to his wife Patty for 30 years and has two kids, he has enjoyed both years of his NFBC participation.



“I couldn’t be happier with this forum,” he said. “I honestly have to say that the weeks preceding the drafts are every bit as enjoyable as was winning our league.



“The anticipation of what might happen on Draft Day is the highlight of my fantasy season. Everything else is just gravy.”