Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 29, 1994 TAG: 9403290101
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB KEISSER KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Rotisserie or fantasy baseball enthusiasts.
They chew box scores not because they care if the Angels beat the Indians, but because they spent too heavily on relievers and were forced to draft Cleveland catcher Junior Ortiz for $1 and want to see if he managed an infield single.
This is not sports, critics say. It is a perversion of the national pastime, the breaking down of its tradition in a self-absorbed, virtue-less non-reality endeavor.
That's what Olbermann thought, too, when he was introduced to roto leagues in 1985 as KTLA sports director in Los Angeles.
"I walked into the sports office in August of 1985, and everyone on the staff was talking about whether Shawon Dunston would be recalled from the minors," Olbermann said from his home near ESPN's studios in Bristol, Conn. "That's all they would talk about. It seemed they never got anything done."
Olbermann went to then-news director Jeff Wald and said words others have mouthed: "We may need to ban this." But Olbermann decided to wait and see if it could be an advantage.
"A week and a half later," he said, "I bought a team."
Olbermann grew up a big baseball fan. He suffered a head injury that keeps him from driving while getting off a train to Yankee Stadium. His love for the game has emerged from every job he's had: as a reporter at CNN, where he once used bobbing head dolls to re-enact labor talks; to sports anchor at KTLA and KCBS, where he was host of a Sunday night show featuring classic memorabilia; and as ESPN's dry-witted "SportsCenter" anchor.
Olbermann admits his roto love has become consuming. He's in four leagues now and will be the host of one of the more unusual pay-per-view events in sports history - "ESPN Baseball Tonight's Great Rotisserie Pay-Per-View Special," tonight.
But he says roto has taught him a lot about the game and, more importantly, about the modern fan's point of view.
"It struck me early that this was a backlash by fans to the current era of real baseball," he said. "The fan is saying, `I'm not satisfied with the direction the game is taking' - free agency, willy-nilly trades, 50 percent of the players changing teams every year, not being able to identify more than five players on the Seattle Mariners.
"The fan is saying, `This is my alternative baseball reality. I'll make the decisions on who I root for. I'll select those players who are of interest to me, because I'm not satisfied with real life.' He's cutting out the middle man."
Those who denigrate the process don't realize, Olbermann says, that it's a pure form of being a fan.
"Yes, some of those who play seem to be socially maladjusted," he said. "But I'd be happier to sit in a room with 50,000 roto players than 50,000 average fans. They are more interested in the game, they know its history and can analyze it. They're not going out to the park to have a drink and get in a fight.
"I've always thought baseball should do a better job encouraging these leagues. Seattle and Cleveland haven't served any purpose the second half the last few years, except for roto players. There's a certain purity to that."
The decision by ESPN and Time Warner Sports, which is marketing and distributing the show, to name Olbermann host was an easy one. He's one of the cable network's top anchors - he moves back to "SportsCenter" on April 3 after getting ESPN2 launched.
"We talked [at ESPN] the last two springs about doing some kind of roto special," he said. "The pay-per-view element just takes it to a higher level. Even if there are 4 million people who play these games, that's just a portion of ESPN's audience.
"Doing it this way, you're not holding normal viewers hostage and we're offering something on pay you can't get anywhere else."
Time Warner won't project how many people will buy the show because it's a first-time venture. Cost of the two-hour show is $19.95. "Half the price of Howard Stern, and no nudity," Olbermann said.
by CNB