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Fantasyland: One Lunatic's Preview
Ron Shandler - February 24
It all started on November 21, 2003. I received the following innocuous e-mail out of the blue:
Ron, It's Sam Walker, I'm a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Do you have a few minutes to talk? I'm at 999-999-9999. Best, SW
And so began a 28-month odyssey that ends next week with the official release of a book called, Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe.
The underlying concept of this book could be best summed up thusly...
A sports writer for one of the fourth estate's most stuffed shirt publications
Who has a general disdain for this thing called Rotisserie
And thus has never played before
Has a huge Rolodex of contacts within the real baseball world
And a large cash advance to leverage that contact list
So he wants to see if it is possible
To win a Rotisserie League
Against the top players in the country
In order to prove that it could be done
It is, in fact, the dream of every fantasy leaguer -- whether they'll admit it or not -- to be in this position. It is one thing to manage a roster of major league ballplayers from afar, quite another to be able to go up to your secondbaseman, Alfonso Soriano, and ask him whether he plans to steal more bases in the second half.
But that's exactly what Sam did, after weaseling an invite to the Tout Wars American League competition in 2004.
"Weaseling" may be a slightly strong term. However, the above scenario was not how this project was originally sold to me.
The original pitch was described in this column I wrote in 2004. Sam told me that the book was going to look at the culture of fantasy baseball from three perspectives...
- The history of fantasy baseball
- His own introduction to the game
- His participation in Tout Wars
...in that order of importance, more or less. I suppose I can't fault him for going with the storyline that he thought was the most interesting, but I always considered my fellow Tout Wars combatants as a pretty sedate group.
Fantasyland doesn't read that way, however. Sam is adept at taking random, and often minor details and carving them into sharp personality traits and plot lines. We're not fantasy wonks, we're character abstracts. I have to admit that it makes the book sing, but readers are going to come away thinking that the league is comprised of a stoner, a media hound, an angry young man, a brooding genius and the Jimmy Fallon character from "Fever Pitch."
I am the brooding genius, dubbed "The Bearded One." While the core of the characterization may be grounded in some level of reality (only my wife could tell you for sure), the details are slightly skewed for effect. For instance, in trying to create the optimal environment for a brooding genius, Sam describes my office as a dim basement bunker.
As you can see from the above photo, though my office is in the basement, it is far from dim and hardly bunkerish. Perhaps this is how a Manhattanite would link together his observations into an overall characterization. Or perhaps this is just a bit of journalistic license.
In all, I get an excessive amount of ink in the book which is, frankly, embarrassing. But now you'll find out how I got into this game, the classic story about my only meeting with Bill James, and my hidden opinions about the other guys in the league. Similar views were extracted from many of the other Tout combatants as well, which should make for an interesting dynamic when we're all back in the same room come Draft Day. These were attitudes that may have been held privately, but up until now had never been verbalized.
You know, it's like when you confide in your buddy that you think one of the other league owners is an idiot. Fantasyland has emblazoned "IDIOT" into print and blanked the country's bookstores. I wrote to Lawr Michaels: "This is all kinda fun, sort of. Gets us all to know each other little bit better, for good or bad..." It's not like any of this was ever a secret, mind you. Your league owner probably already knows you think he's an idiot too.
As much as Sam played puppeteer with us Touts, we established a rapport with him that provided ample opportunity to pull some strings of our own. As a first-time author, he has been a nervous wreck about the success of the book. So when I finally received my advance copy, I dashed off a quick note because I knew he'd be aching for feedback. I wrote:
Hey Sam... Received your book yesterday. Finished it this morning. Best feature: Can successfully hold down 10 sheets of loose paper in up to 40 mph winds. Worst feature: Page absorbency is lacking for spills over 8 ounces. Regards, Ron
Beginning next week, the volume and tenor of the trash talk is only going to get worse.
But about Fantasyland...
As hard as I try, since I am a character in the book, it is nearly impossible for me to provide an objective opinion. I know most all of the other characters personally, I've lived through the experiences Sam describes, and I knew how it ended before I opened to the first page. That takes away from the experience.
Still, it is an immensely fun read. The characters are the book's greatest strength. My absolute favorites are Nando and Sig, Sam's assistants, who played off of each other and had some of the book's best lines. Their interactions made me laugh out loud several times. The ballgame with Sig and the astrologer was priceless.
And the plot does move, as Sam tries to figure out how he is going to pull off his plan. If nothing else, we've all "been there, done that" to some extent, so it is easy to relate at some level.
But I have to admit, I hate the name Fantasyland. I told that to Sam back in June 2004 when he first let slip that this "Disney Worldish" moniker was the working title. I didn't find out about the Lunatic Fringe sub-title until last fall. By that time, it was all a fait accompli. For someone who is possessed with taking his "wayward family legitimate" (page 206), I have some issues with the packaging.
But you can't judge a book by its cover.
Inside that cover are 334 pages of insight and hilarity. Few books can successfully combine those two diverse elements. Besides, where else could you find index listings such as, "First Pitch Arizona," "Stars and Scrubs," "Sidney Ponson's weight problem" and "Zen Master, See Lawr Michaels."
And how can a book be bad if one of its chapter titles is "Fanalytics"?
After you read this book, if you have any questions of me, feel free to ask, using this contact form. If the volume merits it, I might do a follow-up column in April.
Happy reading!
