The FantasyBaseballUK competition is running again this year, with former Baseball on 5 presenter (and fantasy fanatic) Jonny Gould encouraging us all to sign up:
“Hello Fellow Baseball Nuts and a big warm welcome to another season of Fantasy Baseball on the FantasyBaseballUK site.
Now we all know FBUK is to Fantasy Baseball what King Herod was to babysitting, so I am thrilled, nay relieved to be able to confirm that we are BACK!!!! Another year of sleepless nights, another year of crocked aces and Relievers you want relief from. So say goodbye to the Mrs., put the dog in the kennel and take one last look at the sun. In the next 7months you will lose all touch with reality, become obsessed with slugging percentages and even be strangely attracted to grown men in tight pinstripes!!! That is the curse of Fantasy Baseball, and you are already addicted, so don’t even bother to fight it. Log onto FBUK and sign up for another season of free fun and frolics and feverish, fabulous, frenetic, flavoursome fandabbidozziness!
Oh by the way the rules are pretty much the same as always – I will of course be playing (JG’s Chelsea Braves) and losing to about 90% of you, and take it as read that I will again fail dismally to sort out the prizes. Come on – you know you want to.
FBUK – it’s a Baseball thing!!!”
It’s a very simple competition to participate in. There’s no auction or draft, you simply use the roster screen to pick any players you like so long as you fill all of the relevant roster spots and don’t exceed the budget of $12m. The prices of each player are calculated on previous performance and the are re-evaluated each week over the course of the season, so if a guy you select now for $850k has a great April, his price might increase to $1m. However, he stays at $850k for you, giving you $150k extra to play with in comparison to someone who didn’t have your well-placed faith in the player to start with and only picks them up later.Â
You can make as many changes to your roster as you like (the whole team if you’re feeling particularly destructive), but they do not take effect each week until 18.00 on Sunday.
There are weekly and monthly winners on top of the overall season winner, so there’s always a mini-competition to win even if the overall season isn’t going too well. Unfortunately you no longer get your name in lights on TV courtesy of the Baseball on 5 team, not that I ever had that pleasure myself (finishing 9th out of 3,173 in 2005 is my only ‘achievement’ of any note).
I’ll be playing again this year, as ‘Norfolk Oak’ in the A’s League, and no doubt will be moaning here about my misfortune along the way.
The long offseason is almost over, teams only have a few Spring Training games left to play and many of the roster decisions have now been made. The 2010 Major League season begins on Sunday (early hours of Monday for us in the UK) and it’s set to be another fantastic year of baseball.
In 1967, Boston was not a baseball town and who could blame them? The Red Sox hadn’t contended for a pennant since 1950, and hadn’t even had a winning season since 1958.
This week’s web pick comes courtesy of a recommendation by Andrew (@chickenroyal on Twitter). The MLB Network channel was launched in the States at the beginning of last year and one of its first big features was the ’30 in 30′ series that ran throughout Spring Training. Simply put, the MLB Network team goes around Arizona and Florida dedicating a show to each of the 30 MLB teams over the course of 30 days.
Welcome to the first edition of what hopefully will become a weekly column, published every Thursday morning, focusing on the British baseball scene.
Practice Perfect Baseball, the latest baseball coaching manual from Human Kinetics, taps into the experience and expertise of a distinguished group of college coaches, providing a collection of essays that should give every coach some new ideas on how to improve their practice sessions.Â