Daniel Okrent, a writer for the New York Times, came up with the idea of Fantasy Baseball in 1980 (named Rotisserie League Baseball after the restaurant where he conducted the drafts.) He and his friends would each cough up $250, choose a group of players as their “team” and the overall winner kept half the pot. At the time, he was also writing a book (“Nine Innings“) about a single baseball game between Milwaukee (then in the AL) and Baltimore that required extensive access to players, officials and the clubhouse. Worried that his fantasy sports would be perceived as “gambling”, he restricted drafts to National League players only, making the Brewers and Orioles irrelevant and calming the fears of the baseball gurus.
Gambling, Fantasy Sports and the Total Hypocrisy of MLB
