Play free fantasy baseball with other FReepers!

Sideshow Bob and Yahoo.com ^ | February 23, 2002 | Sideshow Bob

[Sideshow Bob]

Play free fantasy baseball with other FReepers!

Take the field with other FReepers & Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball, a free game that gives you the chance to manage your own team of professional baseball players from opening day right through the late season pennant races. Your goal is to get the best lineup on the field every day, since the better your players perform in real-life games, the more value they bring to your fantasy team.

2002 marks the third season of Freeper Fantasy Baseball. Last year, we switched from a traditional 5x5 roto league to 5x5 weekly head-to-head competition.

Each week your team will square off in a matchup against another manager to see who can compile the best stats across the basic 5x5 roto categories. Each stat category counts as one game, with the win going to the team with the highest total in that category.

So, if in a given week, your team hits more home runs then your opponent's, you would be credited with a victory. But, if your opponent's team ended the week with more saves then your team, you would be charged with a loss. If the two teams end up tied in a given category, each will receive credit for a tied game.

This weekly win-loss total will be added to a cumulative season record, which will be used to determine standings. Since each week is essentially a mini-game vs. another FReeper, this head-to-head scoring format will make it more interesting for all teams, all season long regardless of your position in the standings.

The FReeper League will again feature a live online draft, where each manager selects a squad in real time with other managers. Every manager selects one player per round until their roster is full. The draft order reverses each round, so the manager that starts the first round will end the second, and the manager that ends the first round will start the second.

You'll need a Java-enabled browser in order to participate. Yahoo recommends Netscape or Internet Explorer version 3.0 or higher. If you won't be present for the entire draft, go to your team page and pre-rank players. Your pre-ranked players will be used if you can't make a selection at any time during the live draft. If you choose not to pre-rank, Yahoo's default ratings will be used when you can't make a selection.

Please arrive 10 minutes ahead of the scheduled time listed below as the draft will start promptly and may go rapidly if only a few managers are logged in.

For more information, consult the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball Rules.

All you need to play is a Yahoo! ID, so get yours now and step up to the plate. To play go to the Yahoo Fantasy Games Page at:

http://standard.baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1

Here are the league details:

League ID#: 20428
Password: jimrob

League ID# and password are required to gain access to Freeper League.

Draft Type: Live
Exact Draft Time: Monday, March 11 at 7:15 PM PT
Maximum Number of Teams: 20
Maximum Players on a Team: 23
Player Universe: All baseball
Maximum Moves: No maximum
Maximum Trades: No maximum
Scoring Type: Head-to-Head League
Waiver Time: 1 day
Last Trade Date: Wednesday, August 28
Trade Reject Time: 0 days
Minimum Innings per Week: 10
Roster Changes: Daily
Positions: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 5 OF, CI, MI, Util, 5 SP, 4 RP, Bench, 3 DL

If you have any questions, please email me at:

sssbobs@yahoo.com

[BADROTOFINGER]

I would have been a member last year in the FR Sandbox league, but I have been in a league with a bunch of guys there for a few years and didnt want to fork over cash for another Sandbox team. Now it looks as tho Sandbox may not even be running this year...JFK

[Hugh Akston]

Howdy!

I switched back to my Dales here on FR. I saw that Yahoo had the baseball up, so I changed logins to email you and tell you (which I just did) and lo and behold, you already had me pinged here ;-)

I am in.

[Dales]

Bump.

[BADROTOFINGER]

Faithful Roto Baseball Bump...JFK

[Dales]

Right back at you

[RightField]

Left Coast bump ....
I'm in again this year.

[1rudeboy]

I remember having this same conversation with you last year, but I'll bump this just the same. Is anybody interested in more tradional Roto? I have experience as a commissioner in trad 4x4, I have the software, and I'm willing to negotiate.

[NYCVirago]

Cool!

[BluesDuke]

That's what is so great about baseball...there's always next year!!!

For most baseball fans, the saddest words of tongue or pen are, "Wait 'till next year." For us Cub fans, the saddest words are, "This is next year". - George F. Will.

"Ahhh, wait 'till last year!" - Newspaper wag, after the Brooklyn Dodgers were defeated in the 1956 World Series by the New York Yankees...whom the Bums defeated in the 1955 Series, for the only World Series title ever won in Brooklyn.

"Every year is next year for the New York Yankees." - Roger Kahn, in his lead for the story of the Yankees' 1953 World Series triumph over - you guessed it - the Dodgers.

Sign whipped up by a Chicago Cub fan in Wrigley Field on Opening Day, 1980: Wait Till Next Year!

"Next year, we've got to cut back on the losses. At least, back to 110." - Joan Payson*, the original owner of the New York Mets, looking ahead to the Mets' second season (1963). The Amazin' Mets lost 120 games in their inaugural season - but seduced a city and no small part of a country while doing it.

Wait Till Next Century - Smart@$$ placard held up by Fenway Park fan on a Red Sox home opening day in the late 1980s.

* - Trivia: Before she was awarded the Mets franchise for the National League's first expansion, Joan Payson had been a minority stockholder in the New York Giants - and, through a proxy, was the only member of the team's board of directors to vote against the Giants moving to San Francisco after 1957. (She had been a baseball nut since girlhood and was a die-hard Giants fan, holding a season seat at the Polo Grounds until the team did move. And it may have been Joan Payson herself who suggested the Mets revive the Giants' 1950s cap insignia as their own, as well as patterning the Mets' original traveling uniform style after a style used by the Giants during the earlier 1940s...) Payson died in 1975, just days after the Mets' first manager, Casey Stengel, died.

[BluesDuke]

I always thought I'd be a great coach. I don't know what a manager does.

Well, that all depends. Consider Casey Stengel, amidst delivering his first talk to his freshly constituted New York Mets during their first spring training: Do you see them white lines, the ones which go from home plate to the outfield wall? Them white lines are for the hitters to aim at, because all them fellers in the middle are called fielders.

Classic Stengel exchange, with Mickey Mantle. Mantle played in Ebbets Field for the first time in the 1952 World Series. Stengel was showing him the peculiar angles of the park's outfield wall, especially near where the famed right field wall, with the famous lower-half angle and the scoreboard dividing it in half, met the center field wall. "Now," he said to Mantle, "when I played here---" Mantle burst out laughing, really breaking up. Said he: "You played here?" Said Stengel, laughing himself, when one of the New York sportswriters who'd ambled by heard the exchange, "This kid thinks I was born 60 years old and started managin' right away. They never think we did anything before we done it."

[BluesDuke]

Classic managerial commentary:

Hold on. I'll think of something. - Charley Dressen, Brooklyn Dodgers (1951-53)

We try every way we can think of to kill this game. But for some reason, nothing nobody does never hurts it. - Sparky Anderson, Detroit Tigers.

I tell them I'm tall, handsome, and debonair. Of course, that's what I tell them when I talk to the school for the blind. - Rocky Bridges, legendary minor league manager.

James, if you keep pitching like you are today, you're going to be pitching again for me next year. - Minor league manager Jimmy Gleeson, to future Yankee star Jim Bouton, after a particularly rough day.

Goddamn it, maybe there are too many of 'em now. Just give me a team of nine of 'em and let me manage 'em. - Casey Stengel, on blacks in the major leagues.

This ain't football. We do this every day. - Earl Weaver, Baltimore Orioles.

Just a haircut and a shave and don't cut my throat. I may want to do that myself later. - Casey Stengel, to his barber, while he was managing the Boston Braves of 1938-43.

Rowrowrowrrowwrowroworrroowwwrr! - On-again, off-again Yankee manager Billy Martin during a typical tirade.

[Dales]

11 more slots to go. Hope we get more of last year's crew to repeat...

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

Paraphrases of 'wisdom' from the Straight Jackets' honorary mascot:

"We want to win in the best way, not the worst way!"

"We've all been tainted by soft money. I've been tainted by soft money."

"Who stole my strawberries?!"

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

In a related area, here's our chance to do it for real: Interested in owning the Expos? A small pledge will do

[Dales]

Mid-morning (east coast) bump.

[Dales]

I just checked the site, only 9 more slots open.

Hope you guys play again :-)

[Scott from the Left Coast]

The Beammeup Scotties are back. I noticed the minimum innings for pitching has dropped to 7 this year??? (I thought it was low last year at 10!). Any possibility of putting a max on transactions during any week -- that steaming stuff you guys did last year wore me out! I'm off skiing in Canada on the 11th, so I'll just enter my pre-rankings and take pot luck on the draft.

[Dales]

I have not been able to hit the slopes even once this year. And it is going on a decade since I last made it to the rockies. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

Seven slots left. Come on Yankee Gips, it won't be the same without ya.

[LTCJ]

LTCJ & Son are in.

First time in a fantasy league, so go easy on us.

'Course, if we're in the lead, expect no mercy!
(That's the way it works, right?)

[seamus]

Wouldn't miss it. Glad I snuck in before all the slots were taken.