I’ve done fantasy ball since 1997, and I now derive a significant portion of my income writing about it (though you’ll note that I take pains not to write about my own teams). I’ve won a few leagues (a Gwynn-for-Bonds trade put me over the top in my first year. SUCKER), never bailed on a team, had plenty of laughs and talked plenty of trash, particularly in a league I did for a few years with college friends.

And names. Oh, I love the names. I’ve got the Dock Ellis Islanders, the Homer Bush Leaguers, the Mendoza Line Drivers and now El Maximo Jaffe among my better ones.

But you know, I don’t love fantasy baseball. I particularly hate drafting because March is such a busy time of year as a baseball writer that actually bothering to prep for a draft is a total f-ing drag. I do like the day-to-day or week-to-week lineup management part of things come summer. I can count the number of trades I’ve made over the last five years on my thumbs, but I’ll put my ability to comb the waiver wires for an upgrade against anyone’s.

I do fantasy in part because with the broad knowledge of players around the league that the work requires, I’d be silly not to. There are days it feels like little more than a necessary evil, but as an excuse to rummage through box scores, it’s still a pretty fun way to go.

The newest thing out there sounds perfect for all of you time-starved, easily bored peeps. DAILY fantasy baseball.

Right… you play on a daily basis with no season-long commitment. You can play a day, take 3 off, come back and play for a week straight, go away for two months… it doesn’t matter! Each day is its own individual “season”

My favorite part of daily fantasy (fill in your favorite sport) is that you get paid daily also… no more waiting until the end of the season. You enter a game (or as many as you want) before they close (generally around 7:00 at night) and by noon the next day you’ve been paid if you had a winning line-up.

You can play for peanuts ($6) or bigger stakes (up to $110) and just about any level in between. Play heads up or in 3-, 4- or 6-man games.

There are a couple sites out there running daily fantasy, but the most straightforward, easy to use I’ve found is http://365fantasysports.com. (They also have the best variety of contests).

Try it out if you want. I play there under the name Michibuck. If you put “Michibuck” in the “promo code” box when you register you will get a 15% deposit bonus. Try it for a day… if you like it, keep playing. If you don’t, take your money out and move on. No harm, no foul. ($ goes back and forth quickly and easily with Paypal)

Fantasy takes too much time…only so many hours in the day to search for old Boogaloo Joe Jones clips on YouTube..

For the ten days before the draft I crammed – I had Bill James, I had some league guides, and I had a hell of a complicated spreadsheet generated by some SAS code that I wrote. I had expected utility times draft round to give me a target price and a max price. It was on reams of paper because my laptop battery was busted.

It was a disaster and I won’t go into the details but the drafting happened so fast I couldn’t keep track of everyone else’s picks on my spreadsheet which happened to be in order of draft preference (not last name – duh). I didn’t know any of the mid-level players and they were being drafted by nicknames.

Anyway, I made a lot of mistakes, left too much money on the table, but still did pretty well. So the guy I drafted for did exactly what Emma said, he got busy, got distracted, didn’t answer trade requests and so “my” team slowly drifted down to 6th out of 10th place, and these phenomenal professional contacts got the exact opposite impression from the one I intended.

This year I’m leaving it to the pros…

I simply must stay away….although curious.

http://fantasyteamnames.net/baseball

My team name in my $$$ roto league one year was “Pedroia Own Conclusions”

Emma, as I’ve been playing games in the Final Fantasy series since about the same time I first played fantasy baseball, I have to ask – convenient title or are you a dedicated RPG player? Or an homage to the poorly-received, all-star voice cast anime-style movie of 2001?

I tried fantasy baseball one summer, in 2002, and didn’t like what it did to me. I was wired like having had too much sugar, Cornholio. That fall, I started the Banter and couldn’t justify spending time lost in the fantasy stuff. And that’s where I saw it going, to addiction. But even though I don’t play fantasy, I don’t feel the need, like the three wise men mentioned above, to put it down.

To each his or her own, right?