A League of Our Own

This might inspire hope or it might crush your dreams. Or maybe you just don’t care enough, but have fun playing anyway. If nothing else this should at least paint a cleaner picture of where this fantasy league came from, and where it is going.

I have always wanted the office of general manager and when asked where my loyalties would be if the Oakland Athletics were moved and their name changed, my answer was I would go where Billy Beane goes. Constructing a perfect baseball team has a fascination of mine for the majority of my short life.

You could say that is what this league is about. At first there was 11 of us, mostly strangers, whose idea of baseball wasn't perfect yet. Our playing careers lasted varying lengths of time and our favorite teams were scattered around the United States. We each came with a unique image of the sport.

Enter the Daily Grind.

Andrew Faris joins the 2013
auction via Skype 

We didn't know what we were doing. There was nothing like what we were about to create. The only thing that we knew was that we each wanted to imitate Major League Baseball as best as we could with our fantasy game. 

Our 11 men became 13 and we filed into a conference room in Orange County for our 2013 auction draft. Reminiscing over trades, waiver adds, and the previous season’s playoffs we bonded. Most importantly the image we each had of this league became a little clearer and the foundation grew stronger.

A year later it was 16 of us split into 14 teams. We were no longer strangers, but friends, rivals, brothers, and importantly, trailblazers.

Take out batting average, throw in on-base percentage, luxury tax, a rules committee, and one more small orange county conference room and were ready for the 2014 version of fantasy baseball’s new “normal.”

Today marks the first day of the third off-season in Daily Grind history. Our third different league champion was just crowned and we aren't setting our lineups today for the first time in seven months. A little refresher seems necessary.

The 2012 final standings

In our first year we saw a sub-.500 playoff team and only two teams achieve more than 20 games over .500. In our second season we removed ties from the equation, a new team occupied the top seed and a bye, the lowest playoff seeded team and eventual league champion finished eight games over .500, and only one team was more than 20 games over .500. In our third season as a league we added a play-in game to decide the sixth seed in the playoff tournament, four teams finished more than 20 games over .500, and we saw yet another new team occupy first place heading into the playoffs.

Over the course of the league’s history there have been 10 different teams to make the playoffs, three different champions, and we still aren't sure what value minor league slots have (if any). Our constitution is anything but polished. We’ve seen international player and steroid controversies. One of us moved to China! Nonetheless, this has turned into something we all love.

We love playing this game because we love baseball. We love it because, like real baseball, each of us has a chance to win. We love it because we are making fantasy baseball into what we want.

We love it for one more reason, and this one is my favorite: We aren’t done.