STAN FISCHLER: Fantasy baseball a reality for some

Confessions of a Fantasy dodger from Brooklyn.

They were yapping and rapping about their Fantasy League. A good shrink might even suggest that they were living in a dream world. Fantasy, dream; what’s the difference?

Off the top it sounded like something I should avoid—y’know, like poison ivy—because I also associate fantasy with silly and I really don’t have time for such nonsense. But slowly and surely I began to realize that these fellows treat fantasy as if it’s reality.

I mean that when it comes to fantasy they don’t kid around so I decided to check out one of these fellows to see if he was on the square or whether his head was somewhere in Mars or the planet Krypton, birthplace of You Know Who—and I don’t mean Batman either.

My Fantasy friend of choice happens to be the otherwise sober Michael Rappaport, a student at New York University who—at least at first glance—seems to be a reasonable enough fellow.

But I began questioning even that when Michael mentioned that he was heading west for some vague baseball thing that didn’t seem worthy of further pursuit on my end until curiosity got the better of me.

Turns out that Rappy’s Expeditionary Force took him to Phoenix for the SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) Analytics Conference, where baseball’s top minds spoke about the role that baseball mathematics—also known as sabermetrics—has in making personnel decisions.

Right then and there, I should have found a nearby sandbox and buried my head in it. But, no, I had to get more facts.

...Having digested all of the above, I conclude that the best thing about Fantasy Baseball is that it keeps Michael Rappaport off the streets!

Le Batard: Issues of morality in sports exist in confusing gray area

We are OK with Kirk Gibson hitting one of the most famous home runs ever on one steroid (cortisone), but we slam the Hall of Fame door on the face of everybody else who might have used the anabolic kind. Granted, cortisone is not a banned performance enhancer, but it certainly enhanced Gibson’s performance, which wouldn’t have been possible without it. Lost in the shouting of “Cheater!” and “Fraud!” from a pill-popping America is how often athletes have to go through the pharmacy for the healing properties of hormones — not just to hit home runs but because what they do for a daily living really hurts…

But you have to admit we’ve arrived in a barbaric, confusing place when the following is true: Destroying your body by cutting off your finger or playing with a catheter in your penis is not against the rules, but using some kind of deer antler spray to speed up healing is, and we spend a lot more time questioning the morality of athletes than we do the morality of the athletic culture or its rules.