Not particularly social.
I've seen many references to fantasy baseball, but (until this column at least)
never took the time to find out just what it was. I wasn't particularly impressed
with what I learned. Apparently (I've read the rules and some general explanations,
but I may be wrong) there are two sorts of fantasy baseball (and the like) leagues.
One of these determines the scores of games, and the league standings, from a
tabulation of the up-to-date statistics of the real life players on drafted to
the fantasy teams. The other "plays" actual games via a behind-the-scenes simulator
which does the work and then lets you know whether your team won or lost. It even
offers you a box score, though there's no real time play by play of the game.
All the fantasy manager has to do in the first model is bid for the preferred
players for his team. Once the team is established, things pretty much take their
course. The winning team of a game is determined by factoring together a number
of statistics from the actual playing of the fantasy team's players in the real
league in a particular week. In the second model the fantasy managers seem to
have slightly more control over the starting lineup, but still none over the actual
playing of the game. These fantasy leagues are apparently quite popular, though
from what I can see not only is there nothing particularly social about them,
there's not much of a game to them either.
Go to: That's a mouthful!, or
Go to: It's all in the game.