Baseball Picks Wrong Battle Again--Fantasy Leagues, NY Times

"NOW here's a tough one. Who do you root for in the current legal battle between the pandemic of fantasy leagues and the avarice of Major League Baseball?

I have never understood the appeal of fantasy sports leagues, in which people draft individual players and then root for them during actual competition.

Lately, however, fantasy leagues have not been looking so hollow, since they have been leeched upon by Major League Baseball's phalanx of lawyers. This legal skirmish reminds me of how baseball came to have a steroid scandal: M.L.B. is so preoccupied with making money in the short run that it does not see the big picture. Never. These boobs had to be embarrassed by Congress — Congress! — before they became ashamed of their steroid generation.

It's bad enough that baseball is building smaller stadiums to drive up prices, that it values shrimp eaters in luxury boxes over hot dog noshers in the bleachers. Now M.L.B. wants a piece of the action from fantasy leagues.

As reported by Alan Schwarz in The New York Times on May 16, Major League Baseball Advanced Media ordered CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. to stop supplying the players' names and statistics for commercial ventures like fantasy leagues. In turn, CBC sued baseball in United States District Court in St. Louis, claiming that public information, including baseball statistics, was protected by the First Amendment. The trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 5.

These fantasy leagues are an indicator of baseball's deep hold on American heartstrings. M.L.B. should be thrilled that a bunch of fans formed the Rotisserie League back in 1979, meeting in warm places for spring training to divvy up the players.

It's good to have standards. But where were baseball's standards in the past generation when wispy little guys turned up in spring training with new sets of muscles and Cro-Magnon jaws and raging cases of zits? Baseball's top executives conveniently missed that development, but sharp-eyed speculators in the fantasy leagues probably did not. ("Wow, did you see the shoulders on Slim? I'm taking him in the first round.")

Having dozed through the steroid years, letting the union fight off significant drug penalties, M.L.B. is now showing a keen interest in shaking down the fantasy empire. And empire it is. A recent estimate is that these leagues — check them out on the Internet — do a business of $1.5 billion a year.

CBC, the St. Louis-based fantasy-league supplier, carefully does not use photographs of the players or team logos. If baseball could claim ownership, however, of highly publicized numbers like Albert Pujols's home run totals, could other familiar names and products and facts be reserved strictly for commercial usage?

I could argue that fantasy-league types ought to get a life. But if they did get a life, maybe Major League Baseball would be out of business. Baseball should stop trying to gouge these ersatz leagues and instead worry about its abandonment of its traditional working-class fan base. Now that's a fantasy." by George Vecsey, New York Times, May 28, 2006

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