9781422283004

gathered at a French restaurant called La Rotisserie Francaise and created their own baseball league, with teams made up of players in the Major Leagues. Their teams then performed based on the stats built up by the “real-life” Ma-

jor Leaguers. A year later, they wrote about a book about what they called “Rotisserie Baseball,” after the restaurant name. It became fantasy baseball and set off a sports revolution. Fantasy football was soon part of the mix, and other sports were added as the years went on. As we’ll see, by the 2000s, fantasy sports had created enormous changes in how sports are covered, watched, and reported, to say nothing of how they are enjoyed by tens of millions of fans. However, fantasy football has a secret—and, ac- tually, older—history. In 1962, a group of writers and

Ray Jaffke (left) has been a member of GOPPPL since 1967. He plays today with his son, Todd.

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