Fantasy Baseball, circa 1958

I was reading an article about Fantasy Baseball the other day. I didn't digest much of what I read, because I wasn't all that interested in the article. I never have played it, never given it much thought. But, it did take me back to the days of my early teens and my own brand of Fantasy Baseball.

It was probably the late 1950s. It was summertime. School was out and I was always looking for new ways to entertain myself during those long, hot south Georgia days.

I was a bigtime baseball fan. I devoured the Major League baseball box scores in the daily paper. I could tell you the starting lineups for just about every team - or at least the stars for each of them. Of course, there were only 16 teams at the time.

My fantasy season lasted only through the summer months - June, July and August. I drew up my own schedules. Each week was divided into three- and four-game series... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. No days off. (Hear that players' union?) And, talk about droughts - there were never any rainouts.

How did I decide who won and lost each game? Simple. Taking a pencil, I would close my eyes and lower it to a piece of paper on which the schedule for that day was outlined. Whatever team the pencil point landed on was the winner.

I kept my own standings and even figured out, on my own, how "games behind" were (and still are) calculated. I didn't keep any player stats, so, in that respect, there were, there were no players on my teams - just me and my pencil point to decide the outcome of each game.

Crude, yes, and no match for today's sophisticated Fantasy Baseball.

But it was entertaining to a young lad who could only dream of one day actually seeing a Major League game in person.

(Ken Stanford is the Newsroom Manager for WDUN NEWS TALK 550, SPORTS RADIO 1240 THE TICKET, MAJIC 1029, and AccessNorthGa.com.)