It was probably the late 1950s. It was summertime. School was out and I was always looking for new ways to entertain myself during those long, hot south Georgia days.
I was a bigtime baseball fan. I devoured the Major League baseball box scores in the daily paper. I could tell you the starting lineups for just about every team - or at least the stars for each of them. Of course, there were only 16 teams at the time.
My fantasy season lasted only through the summer months - June, July and August. I drew up my own schedules. Each week was divided into three- and four-game series... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. No days off. (Hear that players' union?) And, talk about droughts - there were never any rainouts.
How did I decide who won and lost each game? Simple. Taking a pencil, I would close my eyes and lower it to a piece of paper on which the schedule for that day was outlined. Whatever team the pencil point landed on was the winner.
I kept my own standings and even figured out, on my own, how "games behind" were (and still are) calculated. I didn't keep any player stats, so, in that respect, there were, there were no players on my teams - just me and my pencil point to decide the outcome of each game.
Crude, yes, and no match for today's sophisticated Fantasy Baseball.
But it was entertaining to a young lad who could only dream of one day actually seeing a Major League game in person.
(Ken Stanford is the Newsroom Manager for WDUN NEWS TALK 550, SPORTS RADIO 1240 THE TICKET, MAJIC 1029, and AccessNorthGa.com.)
http://accesswdun.com/article/2007/10/84924