Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame

Ian Allan co-founded Fantasy Football Index in 1987. He and fellow journalism student Bruce Taylor launched the first newsstand fantasy football magazine as a class project at the University of Washington. Fantasy Football Index magazine went on become the industry standard – the national sales leader more than 20 years in a row before sitting out the 2011 season due to an NFL work stoppage.

For more than three decades since that 1987 launch, Allan has written and edited most of the content published in Fantasy Football Index magazines, newsletters, and at www.fantasyindex.com. An exhaustive researcher, he may be the only person in the country who has watched at least some of every preseason football game played since in the early 1990s.

Fantasy Football Index popularized the concept of a “Cheat Sheet ” draft list to carry into drafts, and that publication was the first to publish an Experts Poll. Over 30-plus years, the Fantasy Index product line evolved with technology, shifting from photocopied newsletters to broadcast fax to mass-email to Internet applications with customizable rankings and projections.

Allan pioneered data-driven fantasy football analysis, creating proprietary databases of arcane-bur-relevant measures of fantasy performance. Seeking to blend art and science, he mixed hot-take news, eyeball-test observations gleaned from game tape and forward-looking projections based on imposing amounts of raw data.

Allan is a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame. He has appeared on hundreds of radio shows and was a panelist on the first nationally televised fantasy football show in the early 1990s.

Outside of work, Allan runs marathons, swims, plays soccer and makes elaborate custom Jellos. He lives with his wife (Denise) near Seattle. They have two sons.

Greg Ambrosius is the General Manager of Consumer Fantasy Games at STATS LLC and a 22-year veteran of the fantasy sports industry. Greg is the founder of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) and the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC), the industry’s only multi-city high-stakes events. The NFBC and NFFC have awarded over $11 million in prizes since 2004, with each contest having $100,000 grand prizes. Greg was the editor of the industry’s first national newsstand magazine – Fantasy Baseball Magazine – starting in 1989 and was a past president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (2004-08) and the Fantasy Sports Association (2008-10). He is a member of the FSGA’s Hall of Fame and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association’s Hall of Fame. STATS owns and operates all of the live event and online contests for the NFBC and NFFC, servicing hundreds of leagues and thousands of the most die-hard fantasy players in the industry.

Austin launched MyFantasyLeague.com (MFL) in 1995 as a simple website to keep track of his personal fantasy football league. Soon after, he teamed with Hall – who had developed his own Fantasy Football League Manager (FFLM) that was made available in 1993 on Shareware, AOL and Compuserve – and their combined efforts turned MFL into the award-winning, league management system that is still thriving today.

Innovation, remaining nimble and maintaining a loyal customer base were hallmarks of the Austin-Hall duo. The pair introduced many advanced league options to the industry including: alternatives for dynasty leagues and keepers; salary caps; player contracts; the ability to trade future draft picks; IDP flexibility; and support for online salary cap leagues. They were always eager to take suggestions from league commissioners and turn them into new features. Best Ball lineups, Victory Point scoring, doubleheader matchups and adjustable playoff brackets are just a few that are mainstream features now, but were revolutionary at the time.

Sadly, Austin died unexpectedly in 2015 at age 47. But Hall continued to help grow the business by staying true to the company’s original vision of giving commissioners the ability to customize their leagues and create tools such as ADP analysis and waiver and trade recommendations via MFL’s Open Developer’s API.

Hall and Austin become the 24th and 25th members of the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame, joining previous honorees Ian Allan, Greg Ambrosius, John Benson, Matthew Berry, Joe Bryant, Paul Charchian, Cliff Charpentier, Steve Cohen, Glenn Colton, John Dewan, John Hunt, Bill James, Emil Kadlec, Lawr Michaels, Daniel Okrent, Peter Pezaris, Rob Phythian, Peter Schoenke, Ron Shandler, Glen Waggoner, Charlie Wiegert, Bill Winkenbach and Rick Wolf.

John Benson is CEO of Diamond Analytics Corporation and editor of johnbenson.com. He is the author of more than 50 books and hundreds of essays. He also helps others as a consultant in writing and publishing for businesses, individuals and educational institutions. His consulting approach is that of a strategist, beginning with identity and mission, and then flowing through organization into programs, products, and services.

John is a columnist for The Sporting News. Previously his regular columns appeared in USA Today Baseball Weekly and Baseball America. During the 1990’s he covered the Mets and Yankees for The Scouting Report and The Scouting Notebook. He has appeared on ESPN/HBO and the NBC News with Tom Brokaw and has been cited in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Business Week and dozens of other newspapers and magazines. He has frequently been a radio guest.

With a passion for public service, John served eight years on the Wilton, Connecticut Board of Education, including a term as chairman. He was the first-ever development director for the Connecticut Urban Education Fund engaged in fundraising to provide private schooling for the most underprivileged children. John enjoys public discourse and bringing together diverse constituencies. He has been elected to local office four times.

In the corporate world with Fortune-500 firms, John’s career spanned the disciplines of finance, operations, marketing management, sales management and general management. He has held professional and executive positions in the industries of public accounting, mining, manufacturing, and transportation.

John holds degrees in politics, business, and divinity, from Princeton, Columbia, and Yale universities, respectively.

Clients and employers have included:

• AMAX Inc.
• Anaconda Industries
• ARCO
• ASARCO
• AT&T
• Baseball America
• Block Drug
• Milt Campbell Foundation
• Columbia University
• Commercial Union
• Connecticut Urban Education Fund
• Coopers & Lybrand
• Copper Range
• Emery Worldwide
• Goldman Sachs
• Haverford College
• Jefferson Insurance
• Krause Publications
• Morse Electro Products
• City of New York
• New York Telephone
• Primary Communications
• Princeton University
• Revere Copper and Brass
• Rutgers University
• Sandoz
• School of St. John (NY)
• Smoky Valley Common
• The Sporting News
• Times Mirror
• USA Today
• Yale University

Also known as “The Talented Mr. Roto, ” Berry is one of the most recognizable faces in the fantasy industry. His writing combines the statistical analysis required for fantasy sports with humor and personal anecdote. He began his ascent in 1999 as a senior columnist for Rotoworld.com and in 2004 created his own website called The Talented Mr. Roto (TMR). In 2007, ESPN.com acquired TMR and installed Berry as the lead fantasy analyst for all of its sports. The TMR website also launched the careers of many other talented fantasy writers. Berry is the only person to collect four FSWA Writing Awards in a single year (2006), was an inaugural member of the FSWA Hall of Fame (2010), and currently serves as an advisor to the Association’s Executive Committee.

Paul Charchian was the co-founder of Fanball.com, one of the largest pure-play fantasy sites on the internet.Starting in 1993, he helped grow the company from a handful of part-time enthusiasts in his apartment to 80 employees spanning offices in three cities. He published over 200 issues of Fantasy Football Weekly, more than any other industry publication. Fanball.com grew into a well-respected one-stop-shop for league management, player news, fantasy contests and advice throughout the season and across all sports.

While with Fanball, Charchian acted as the lead designer on over25 web-based fantasy applications for high-profile sites such as NASCAR.com, AOL.com, Fanball.com, PGA.com, Best Buy.com and many others.

Through his radio program, Charchian interacts with thousands of fantasy sports players each year. His Twin Cities-based radio show has been on the air for 19 years, making it the longest running fantasy sports show ever. The podcast of the show is usually among the top 10 sports programs in iTunes each week during the fantasy football season.

Charchian was an industry pioneer in television, with a Twin Cities television show in the mid-late 90s, and a nationally-syndicated show in 1999-2000.

Presently, Charchian is the president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, the industry’s largest advocacy organization, with over 120 member companies. Most recently, Paul developed LeagueSafe, a product that has been recognized for multiple industry awards and helps serve a need for the safety of fantasy sports league fees.

He has been and continues to be a tremendous advocate for the industry.

Fantasy Sports, Inc. was founded in 1983 by Cliff Charpentier and Tom Kane- both fantasy football players and successful businessmen. They knew the excitement of the game and wanted to bring it to thousands of others. They first developed the book “Fantasy Football Digest ” which was first published in 1984 and one of their early tag lines was “Fantasy Sports’ Fantasy Football products are designed by players for players. ” In 1998 Cliff came out with his first fantasy magazine, “Fantasy Football Draft Guide Magazine.”

They also produced one of the first league management software tools called “The Kommish Fantasy Football League Manager Software. ”

Over the years, Cliff has written for, or has been interviewed by, publications such as The New York Times and SPORT magazine, as well as dozens of daily newspapers and many radio and television stations. Digest readers call Charpentier “the guru of Fantasy Football ” and “the best scouting combine the Fantasy Football player ever had.” For four consecutive years, the Digest was rated the “First Pick” among Fantasy Football books by USA Today.

In 1995, Cliff appeared on the nationally televised Fantasy Football Prime Time Sports Reality Check-a show which presented a pre-season look at the NFL for Fantasy Football participants. In addition to Cliff, they featured the likes of Hank Stram, Gil Brant, and additional football experts representing publications such as Pro Football Weekly and The Sporting News.

Steve Cohen has been with SiriusXM since 2004 and has three decades of experience working in radio. As Senior Vice President of Sports Programming, he oversees the news and talk programs – including the hiring of talent, show development and production – on all of SiriusXM’s sports channels. He led the development and launch of first-of-their-kind dedicated sports radio channels like SiriusXM NFL Radio, SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, SiriusXM College Sports Nation, SiriusXM FC and SiriusXM Rush, as well as the all-sports Mad Dog Sports Radio channel. He has managed the MLB Network Radio, SiriusXM NHL Network Radio and SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio channels since the merger of Sirius and XM in 2008. He also oversees all of the live play-by-play programming available to SiriusXM listeners, including NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL games, NASCAR, IndyCar, college sports, international soccer, horse racing and more.

Before joining SiriusXM, Steve worked at WFAN Sports Radio in New York, where among his many duties he served as the Executive Producer for both the New York Jets Radio Network and New York Giants Radio Network. He hosted the “NFL Insider ” show for Westwood One Radio and published the Pro Football News and Injury Report. Cohen has written for several newspapers including the New York Daily News, New Haven Register, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Newark Star-Ledger. During his stint as a writer for ESPN.com, he was known as the “Injury Guru. ” He has hosted the SuperBowl.com webcast and the simulcast of the “NFL Insider ” show on NFL.com and was Chief Researcher for the nationally syndicated TV show “Around The NFL ” with Mike Francesa and Bill Parcells. Cohen began his career in 1987 as a board operator/tape editor at WFAN.

Steve is a graduate of the University of Arizona.

Glenn has been playing Fantasy Sports for a very long time, and dived into the industry at LABR (League of Alternative Baseball Reality) in 2002. He is a legal advocate, business advocate, writer, radio-host, expert fantasy player and has been volunteering his time at EVERY FSGA Conference since 2003 to give advice to everyone who attends and especially advising the ENTIRE industry in times of trouble.

CBC v MLBAM- The Watershed Moment in Fantasy Sports

Glenn’s work, passion and advice to the industry in regards to the players’ association make him a compelling candidate for the Hall of Fame. Charlie Wiegert and his partners at CDM were true heroes to take on MLBAM to fight for our industry. Glenn had previous to that, set the tone for how to deal with the players’ associations. Glenn supported CDM and advised the FSGA membership throughout the process including print, radio and TV interviews that positioned our industry as the “good guys. ” He preached partnership not confrontation and ALWAYS spoke to anyone who wanted to understand or get advice on how to handle the Player’s Association’s aggression. He was the industry’s voice of reason.

On Glenn’s advice, the FSGA filed an Amicus Brief, a legal document as a friend of the court to make sure the court understood that a ruling affected our members. Glenn created this brief and SUCCESSFULLY introduced the First Amendment which led the final ruling summary and made the decision have influence federally, thereby stopping the PA’s aggression and eliminating more lawsuits in the fantasy sports industry.

Fantasy Sports Expert, Personality and Journalist

In 2002, Glenn began competing in LABR and writing for Rotoworld.com. In 2003, he wrote the first Rotoworld Fantasy Football magazine with publisher Matthew Berry and Rick Wolf. He has written for Rotoworld and other publications / websites ever since.

Last April, Glenn began co-hosting a radio show on Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio. From the first day, he was a natural on the air and continued his work of crisp analysis and strategy to help fantasy players win championships.

In summary, Glenn was a catalyst for the Fantasy Sports industry’s success in the fight with the players’ associations, a brilliant lawyer who gives that expertise to everyone in the fantasy industry and an accomplished journalist, radio host and an expert fantasy player.

Twenty-five years ago, just five years after receiving his Fellowship in the Society of Actuaries, John Dewan left a highly successful career as an insurance actuary to pursue a life-long dream, the development of the most timely and comprehensive computer database in sports. The fulfillment of that dream was Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems, Inc., orSTATS, Inc. During John’s time as President and CEO, STATS grew rapidly and was recognized in Inc. Magazine’sInc. 500, a list of America’s 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies, ranking #144. In recognition of his leadership role in making real-time sports information available to consumers, John was named to the Crain’s Chicago Business list of key technology players in Chicago and was a three-time finalist for theKPMGIllinois High Tech Awards.The success of the company culminated in its sale to an affiliate of Ruppert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Fox Broadcasting, News Digital Media.

John’s new company isBaseball Info Solutions (BIS). BIS is totally focused on baseball and collects, analyzes and disseminates the most in-depth data in the industry with more than a dozen Major League Baseball teams as clients.

John’s latest books, The Fielding Bible and The Fielding Bible-Volume II, break ground in an area that has been the least analyzed in baseball: defense. His new Plus/Minus System and Defensive Runs Saved developed in the books are a direct application of actuarial and sabermetric techniques.The Fielding Bible-Volume III comes out next spring.

John’s slants on analytics in baseball can be seen at www.StatOfTheWeek.com.

John graduated from Loyola University with a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science. He lives in Chicago with his wife Sue and their two children, Jason and Erica.

Innovation, remaining nimble and maintaining a loyal customer base were hallmarks of the Austin-Hall duo. The pair introduced many advanced league options to the industry including: alternatives for dynasty leagues and keepers; salary caps; player contracts; the ability to trade future draft picks; IDP flexibility; and support for online salary cap leagues. They were always eager to take suggestions from league commissioners and turn them into new features. Best Ball lineups, Victory Point scoring, doubleheader matchups and adjustable playoff brackets are just a few that are mainstream features now, but were revolutionary at the time.

Sadly, Austin died unexpectedly in 2015 at age 47. But Hall continued to help grow the business by staying true to the company’s original vision of giving commissioners the ability to customize their leagues and create tools such as ADP analysis and waiver and trade recommendations via MFL’s Open Developer’s API.

Hall and Austin become the 24th and 25th members of the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame, joining previous honorees Ian Allan, Greg Ambrosius, John Benson, Matthew Berry, Joe Bryant, Paul Charchian, Cliff Charpentier, Steve Cohen, Glenn Colton, John Dewan, John Hunt, Bill James, Emil Kadlec, Lawr Michaels, Daniel Okrent, Peter Pezaris, Rob Phythian, Peter Schoenke, Ron Shandler, Glen Waggoner, Charlie Wiegert, Bill Winkenbach and Rick Wolf.

John started working at USA Today in 1991on the agate desk. He compiled stats and answered the phone calls of the first generation of Rotisserie geeks.

He became the fantasy columnist for USA TODAY Baseball Weekly, and became one of the most widely read columnists in the industry during his tenure (1993-2006). Everyone knew that Wednesday was the day to read Hunt in BW.

His clear and unadorned prose was perfect for conveying information and introducing concepts that had perhaps not been introduced popularly before. His discussions of things like theAge 27 performance spike brought such discussions to the national stage and increased the visibility of the game immensely.

And his handling of the LABR leagues for many years promoted scores of fantasy writers, built the business across multiple platforms and created a somewhat stable benchmark during the 90s, leading to the establishment of some of today’s most venerable fantasy names. His bid prices, however, were far more entertaining than they were useful, but no one ever seemed to count on him for prices. It was his words that were valued.

It became widely known that a mention by John in one of hisFantasy Insider columns was enough to get you onto the map, so writers and industry vendors were constantly jockeying for blurbs in his columns.

John founded the first national experts competition (LABR – the League of Alternative Baseball Reality) in 1994 and won four titles.

He now covers the Oregon State Beavers for The Oregonian in Portland.

George William “Bill” James (born October 5, 1949, in Holton, Kansas) is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose. His Baseball Abstract books in the 1980s are the modern predecessor to websites using sabermetrics such as Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Primer (now Baseball Think Factory).

In 2006, Time named him in the Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world. He is currently a Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox. In 2010, Bill James was inducted into the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame.

Innovations
Among the statistical innovations attributable to James are:

• Runs Created. A statistic intended to quantify a player’s contribution to runs scored, as well as a team’s expected number of runs scored. Runs created is calculated from other offensive statistics. James’s first version of it was: Runs Created = (Total Bases * (Hits + Walks))/(Plate Appearances). Applied to an entire team or league, the statistic correlates closely to that team’s or league’s actual runs scored. Since James first created the statistic, sabermetricians have refined it to make it more accurate, and it is now used in many different variations.

• Range factor. A statistic that quantifies the defensive contribution of a player, calculated in its simplest form as RF = (Assists + Put Outs)/(Games Played). The statistic is premised on the notion that the total number of outs that a player participates in is more relevant in evaluating his defensive play than the percentage of cleanly handled chances as calculated by the conventional statistic Fielding Percentage.

• Defensive Efficiency Rating. A statistic that shows the percentage of balls in play a defense turns into an out. It is used to help determine a team’s defensive ability. Calculated by: 1 – ((Opp. Hits + Reached on Error – Opp. Home runs) / (Plate appearances – Walks – Strikeouts – HitByPitch – Opp. Home runs)).

• Win Shares. A unifying statistic intended to allow the comparison of players at different positions, as well as players of different eras. Win Shares incorporates a variety of pitching, hitting and fielding statistics. One drawback of Win Shares is the difficulty of computing it.

• Pythagorean Winning Percentage. A statistic explaining the relationship of wins and losses to runs scored and runs allowed. In its simplest form: Pythagorean Winning Percentage equals Runs squared divided by the square of Runs plus the square of Runs Allowed. The statistic correlates closely to a team’s actual winning percentage.

• Game Score is a metric to determine the strength of a pitcher in any particular baseball game.

• Major League Equivalency. A metric that uses minor league statistics to predict how a player is likely to perform at the major league level.

• The Brock2 System. A system for projecting a player’s performance over the remainder of his career based on past performance and the aging process.

• Similarity scores. Scoring a player’s statistical similarity to other players, providing a frame of reference for players of the distant past. Examples: Lou Gehrig comparable to Don Mattingly; Joe Jackson to Tony Oliva.

• Secondary average. A statistic that attempts to measure a player’s contribution to an offense in ways not reflected in batting average. The formula is (Extra bases on hits+Walks+Stolen Bases)/At bats. Secondary averages tend to be similar to batting averages, but can vary widely, from less than .100 to more than .500 in extreme cases. Extra bases on hits is calculated with the formula (Doubles)+(Triplesx2)+(Homerunsx3) or more easily, (Total Bases)-(Hits).

• Power/Speed Number. A statistic that attempts to consolidate the various “clubs” of players with impressive numbers of both home runs and stolen bases (e.g., the “30/30″ club (Bobby Bonds was well known for being a member), the “40/40″ club (José Canseco was the first to perform this feat), and even the “25/65″ club (Joe Morgan in the ’70s)). The formula: (2x(Home Runs)x(Stolen Bases))/(Home Runs + Stolen Bases).

• Approximate Value. A system of cutoffs designed to estimate the value a player contributed to various category groups (including his team) to study broad questions such as “how do players age over time”.

Although James may be best known as an inventor of statistical tools, he has often written on the limitations of statistics and urged humility concerning their place amidst other kinds of information about baseball. To James, context is paramount: he was among the first to emphasize the importance of adjusting traditional statistics for park factors and to stress the role of luck in a pitcher’s win-loss record.[citation needed] Many of his statistical innovations are arguably less important than the underlying ideas. When he introduced the notion of secondary average, it was as a vehicle for the then-counterintuitive concept that batting average represents only a fraction of a player’s offensive contribution. (The runs-created statistic plays a similar role vis-à-vis the traditional RBI.) Some of his contributions to the language of baseball, like the idea of the “defensive spectrum”, border on being entirely non-statistical.

STATS, Inc.
In an essay published in the 1984 Abstract, James vented his frustration about Major League Baseball’s refusal to publish play-by-play accounts of every game. James proposed the creation of Project Scoresheet, a network of fans that would work together to collect and distribute this information.

While the resulting non-profit organization never functioned smoothly, it worked well enough to collect accounts of every game from 1984 through 1991. James’s publisher agreed to distribute two annuals of essays and data – the 1987 and 1988 editions of Bill James Presents The Great American Baseball Statbook (though only the first of these featured writing by James).

The organization was eventually disbanded, but many of its members went on to form for-profit companies with similar goals and structure. STATS, Inc., the company James joined, provided data and analysis to every major media outlet before being acquired by Fox Sports in 2001.

Acceptance in mainstream baseball
Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane began applying sabermetric principles to running his low-budget team in the late 1990s, to notable effect, as chronicled in Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball).

In 2003, James was hired by a former reader, John Henry, the new owner of the Boston Red Sox.

One point of controversy was in handling the relief pitching of the Red Sox. James had previously published analysis of the use of the closer in baseball, and had concluded that the traditional use of the closer both overrated the abilities of that individual, and used him in suboptimal circumstances. He wrote that it is “far better to use your relief ace when the score is tied, even if that is the seventh inning, than in the ninth inning with a lead of two or more runs.” The Red Sox in 2003 staffed their bullpen with several marginally talented relievers. Red Sox manager Grady Little was never fully comfortable with the setup, and designated unofficial closers and reshuffled roles after a bad outing. When Boston lost a number of games due to bullpen failures, Little reverted to a traditional closer approach and moved Byung-Hyun Kim from being a starting pitcher to a closer. The Red Sox did not follow James’ idea of a bullpen with no closer, but with consistent overall talent that would allow the responsibilities to be shared. Red Sox reliever Alan Embree thought the plan could have worked if the bullpen had not suffered injuries. During the 2004 regular season Keith Foulke was used primarily as a closer in the conventional model; however, Foulke’s usage in the 2004 postseason was along the lines of a relief ace with multiple inning appearances at pivotal times of the game. Houston Astros manager Phil Garner also employed a relief ace model with his use of Brad Lidge in the 2004 postseason.

James is still (2010) employed by the Red Sox, having published several new sabermetric books during his tenure (see Bibliography, below). Indeed, although James is typically tight-lipped about his activities on behalf of the Red Sox, he is credited with advocating some of the moves that led to the team’s first World Series championship in 86 years, including the signing of non-tendered free agent David Ortiz, the trade for Mark Bellhorn, and the team’s increased emphasis on on-base percentage. During his time with the Red Sox, Bill James has received two World Series rings for the team’s 2004 and 2007 victories.

Sabermetrician Martin Bernstein points out on Baseball Prospectus that knowledge is pointless without application. Following the aforementioned Red Sox and Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics, most major league teams today use sabermetrics and statistic tracking. But although sabermetrics is mostly accepted within baseball, Bernstein says that there is another frontier – the average fan still does not readily use or accept sabermetrics. Beane is such a renowned figure not for his actual innovations in specific statistics or ideas, but for his open-mindedness and application of knowledge that led other’s inside baseball to apply sabermetrics as well. Bernstein concludes that the next most important innovation in the field will be in getting fans to accept and use sabermetic knowledge, and that this goal should be the main focus of sabermetricians until it is accomplished.

The Mind of Bill James, a biography-cum-chronicle of James’s works was published in the spring of 2006. How Bill James Changed Our View of the Game of Baseball was published in February 2007. He was profiled on 60 Minutes on March 30, 2008, in his role as a sabermetric pioneer and Red Sox advisor.

Lawr Michaels began his fantasy sports writing career in the early 1990s under the direction of Hall of Famer John Benson. Nicknamed the “Zen Master” for his unconventional way of looking at the game of fantasy baseball, Michaels was beloved and respected by fantasy players and industry experts alike.

Over his career, he wrote for numerous publications and websites and appeared as both a host and guest on dozens of talk-radio shows. Michaels, who was a central character in Sam Walker’s 2006 best-selling book about the Tout Wars fantasy baseball league, “Fantasyland,” also was a stats stringer for 10 years with MLB.com for the A’s and Giants, played lead guitar in three bands and was an active animal advocate.

Michaels passed away in December after a series of health issues. At the time of his death, Michaels was in the process of re-launching his website, CREATiVESPORTS2.com, which had served as a springboard for new and non-traditional writers to begin their fantasy writing careers. One of his passions was to foster careers in the fantasy and sports writing industry.

In a myriad of tributes to Michaels after his death, he was hailed as a warm, inviting presence, with a deep knowledge of sports and a brilliant fantasy mind.

USA TODAY’s Steve Gardner noted that Michaels was, “always approachable and happy to talk to anyone about the fantasy industry … or music … or life in general. He treated everyone, even those he just met, like an old friend. It’s hard to imagine a better ambassador for the fantasy sports industry than Lawr Michaels.”

Hall of Famer Ron Shandler said that Michaels “was the heart of Tout Wars, though the beat was uniquely his. It breathed life into this ‘game about a game’ and the camaraderie he fostered for nearly two decades.”

Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus added that, “being around Lawr made you a better person. You wanted to match his joy, his heart. Lawr Michaels, who could write and analyze with any of them … just wanted to connect with you, over whatever you loved. Your draft, your team, your new putter, your favorite band, your kid. Lawr Michaels spread joy, and he would want us to do the same.”

MLB.com’s Cory Schwartz remembered Michaels similarly, stating he was, “a genuine American original: a passionate baseball junkie, talented musician, unabashed hippie, enthusiastic lover of life and people. A one-of-a-kind bundle of energy and ideas, the human embodiment of his Tigger tattoo.”

It was only appropriate that the two people most responsible for the growth of fantasy baseball were the first ones inducted into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame. Daniel Okrent and Glen Waggoner ­ Founding Fathers of Rotisserie Baseball ­ were officially inducted into the Hall of Fame at March’s Fantasy Sports Trade Conference in Orlando.

Okrent, who invented the rules of Rotisserie Baseball in 1979, was in Asia on assignment and unable to attend the event. Waggoner, however, made the trip to Orlando and was humbled by the honor from the industry. The Hall of Fame is being sponsored by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

“On behalf of my fellow Founding Fathers and Mother of Rotisserie League Baseball, I want to thank the FSGA for the great honor being bestowed on us,” Waggoner told the crowd of 100 attendees. “Needless to say, we never had a clue that it would come to this. I distinctly remember the thrill of buying Neil Allen for two bucks at our first Auction Draft in 1980. I also remember buying Gene Richards for $9 and flipping through the Baseball Register to find out who he played for. When Okrent published his seminal article, ‘The Year George Foster Wasn’t Worth $35,’ in Inside Sports in 1981, we basked in our 15 minutes of celebrity. And we figured that was that. But of course it wasn’t.”

Waggoner was the editor of the Rotisserie League Baseball books which spawned the growth of this industry in the 1980s, even if it became more like work each year.

“We had a gang of fun introducing an unsuspecting world to our peculiar craziness in the inaugural edition of Rotisserie League Baseball in 1984,” said Waggoner. “Personally, I had a gang of fun editing the first nine editions, even after it became work. But most of all, we¹ve all had a gang of fun playing the game.”
(From Fantasy Sports Magazine)

Multiply’s founders were previously partners of Daedalus World Wide Corporation (“DWWC”) which was founded in 1995, and operated some of the first mass-market web sites on the Internet. In 1996, DWWC launched Commissioner.com, a fantasy sports statistics service that was licensed to, and private-labeled or co-branded for: CBS.SportsLine.com, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, CNN/SI, America On-line, Netscape, Excite, the PGA TOUR and others. In December 1999 DWWC was merged into SportsLine.com, Inc., and operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary. In 2004 the DWWC team was inducted into the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Hall of Fame for its influential role in creating the now thriving on-line fantasy sports industry. Having worked together and experienced growth in start-ups through high-profile publicly-traded companies, Multiply’s team is well poised for repeat success.

Phythian is CEO of SportsData, LLC, a sports content provider he co-founded that powers fantasy applications with stats, editorial content and images.

Phythian’s work in the fantasy sports industry dates back to the early 1990s when he was co-founder of Fanball. The company’s debut product, Fantasy Football Weekly, was the first weekly fantasy sports magazine and grew to a circulation of over 500,000.

Peter is President, Roto Sports, Inc.: RotoWire.com, Mockdraftcentral.com, Databasesports.com

He’s a pioneer and leader in the Premium Player News, Information, and Analysis space. His company has seen success by value their content through a subscription wall (meaning, actually charging online readers for the right to read RotoWire content, as opposed to going the fully advertiser-supported route).

Peter’s also been a very active Board Member in the FSGA and the FSA.

RotoNews.com launched in January 1997 and published its first player note on Feb. 16 1997. RotoNews revolutionized how fantasy sports information was presented on the web with the innovation of the “player note” which were snippets of information every time a player got hurt, traded, benched or had a news event that impacted his fantasy value – all search-able in a real-time database. Most sites today follow how RotoNews had a “news” and “analysis” element to each player update.

“Back in 1997, Peter and his crew launched RotoNews.com (now known as Rotowire.com), giving us fantasy owners a wondrous gift: the player news application. You know, here’s an update on a guy, and here’s the fantasy spin on that news. This changed everything. The days of feeling like a moron because you started a quarterback who, unbeknownst to you, had frayed his septum? Over. And you have Peter to thank.”

Within two years RotoNews had become one of the top ten most trafficked sports sites on the web, according to Media Metrix, ranking higher than such sites as NBA.com. RotoNews.com also launched the Web’s first free commissioner service in 1998, quickly becoming the largest league management service.

“The Internet has been a god-send for fantasy-leaguers. Updated information is just a mouse-click away, while instantaneous box scores make the morning paper seem like the Stone Age. How did we ever play fantasy baseball before the Internet? The same question can be asked of an online service that is changing the face of the industry. In just two short years, RotoNews.com has become the industry leader for news and stats.

RotoNews.com was sold to Broadband Sports in 1999, which went belly up in 2001. The company would re-emerge as RotoWire.com. RotoWire.com moved from a free model to a pay model in 2001.

RotoWire.com is the largest independently-owned fantasy sports web site and syndicates content to such companies as ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports, NFL.com, FoxSports.com, Sirius XM Radio (hosting a daily three-hour show) and Sports Illustrated. RotoWire is the successor to RotoNews.com which was a pioneering web site in sports, developing such innovations as real-time fantasy player notes and free commissioner services.

RON SHANDLER began publishing his unique brand of statistical information under the Shandler Enterprises, LLC name in 1986. A fantasy leaguer since 1985 and a simulation gamer since 1971, Ron was the first author to develop sabermetric applications for fantasy league play. He is the author of the Baseball Forecaster annual, now in its 26th year of publication. Ron is also the founder of the industry trail-blazing web site, BaseballHQ.com, and First Pitch Forum conference series.

Ron’s work has appeared in numerous publications and web sites. His “Fanalytics ” column has been appearing weekly during the baseball season in USATODAY since 2008. In fall 2009, he began a periodic blog in the Sports section of the Huffington Post. In 2007, he was a regular columnist for ESPN Magazine and ESPN.com. He has been quoted and cited by many other sources, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Week and Money magazine.

In 2004, Ron was asked to help create and participate in an advisory board for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club. Many other Major League ball clubs are regular customers of his books and web services.

Ron appeared in the 2010 ESPN documentary, “Silly Little Game, ” part of the network’s “30-for-30? series. The 2002 edition of his Baseball Forecaster appeared in the 2011 movie, “Moneyball. ”

Ron is one of the founders of Tout Wars, the national experts competition featured in the 2006 book,Fantasyland, and the2010 documentary film of the same name. In national experts leagues all told, he has finished in the top three 16 times, including six titles. His 1998 victories in both the AL and NL Tout Wars leagues represent the only dual championships ever achieved in the history of experts competitions.

Among Ron’s notable research contributions to the industry:

• Component skills analysis:The separation of skill from stats by focusing on underlying measures of performance. Ron’s research showed how skills indicators are better predictors of player performance than traditional statistics.
• LIMAPlan:A fantasy draft strategy in which resource allocation is optimized by valuing players using component skills analysis.
• Pure Quality Starts:A measure of a starting pitcher’s effectiveness based on component skills. Uses the “game ” as its unit of measure, unlike most other pitching stats that use the “inning. “
• Reliability Grade:A measure of the riskiness of a player’s projection, based on his track record of playing time, health and performance consistency.
• Portfolio3 Plan:An integrated strategy in which players are evaluated based on skill and risk, and slotted into a three-tiered draft portfolio.
• Strand rate:A formula that explains the variance between a pitcher’s ERA and his skill level. Viewed in tandem with “batting average on balls in play, ” this indicator can help project ERA by adjusting for uncertainty.
• Base Performance Value:A formula that measures a player’s raw skill.

Ron is a corporate member of the Fantasy Sports Gaming Association (FSGA). BaseballHQ.com won FSGA’s “Best Fantasy Baseball Online Content ” award in 2000, 2003 and 2004, and Shandler Enterprises was named FSGA’s “Small Business of the Year ” in 2002. First Pitch Arizona won FSGA’s “Best Live Fantasy Event ” in 2010. Ron was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the FSGA in 2005, one of only four people in the industry to receive such a honor.

Ron has been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research since 1985 and was published in their Baseball Research Journal in 1988. He was one of 12 industry analysts who each contributed a chapter to the 2007 book, How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball.

In 2008, Ron sold Shandler Enterprises, LLC to Fantasy Sports Ventures, Inc. He currently continues as a consultant to the Baseball HQ line.

Ron has an MBA from Hofstra University, is a professional direct marketer and forecasting analyst by trade, and held senior management positions with several international publishers prior to starting Shandler Enterprises. A native New Yorker and die-hard Mets fan, he currently lives in Roanoke, Virginia with his wife and two daughters.

The pioneering Stern, whose long career in the industry is filled with firsts, fittingly becomes the Hall of Fame’s first female honoree.

Stern is renowned for her tireless efforts to formally legalize fantasy sports and gaming in states across the U.S. – first, with FanDuel where she served as Government Affairs Director and, more recently, as Senior Vice President, Government Affairs & Partnerships at Underdog Sports.

During this decade-long period of her career, Stern has also been a member of the FSGA’s Board of Directors and served as its Chair from 2020-2023 – both firsts for a female in the industry.

“Nobody has had more legislative victories than Stacie Stern,” said former FSGA Chair and current Hall of Fame Committee Chair Paul Charchian. “Through her work, Stacie has walked the tightrope of representing the needs of small, medium, and large fantasy operators. And her three years at the helm of FSGA helped reinvent the organization as a blend of fantasy sports and legalized gaming.”

“I’m overjoyed to not only be recognized by the FSGA, but to also become the first female inductee into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame,” said Stern. “It’s a tremendous honor to be included amongst such an illustrious group of Hall of Fame members who have created a path and contributed to the advancement of fantasy sports.”

Stern got her start in the industry at Head2Head Sports, where she worked for over 15 years as its General Manager and Marketing Director. It was there that she made a name for herself as an industry leader and picked up a moniker that has stuck with her all these years later, “The First Lady of Fantasy Sports.”

FSGA Chair Brandon Loeschner said, “I’m very excited for Stacie to receive this honor. She has and continues to inspire so many to engage with the sports they love through games of skill and betting. I foresee a whole new generation of young women entering the industry because of Stacie’s fearlessness in blazing her own trail.”

Stern becomes the 26th member of the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame, joining previous honorees Ian Allan, Greg Ambrosius, Kevin Austin, John Benson, Matthew Berry, Joe Bryant, Charchian, Cliff Charpentier, Steve Cohen, Glenn Colton, John Dewan, Mike Hall, John Hunt, Bill James, Emil Kadlec, Lawr Michaels, Daniel Okrent, Peter Pezaris, Rob Phythian, Peter Schoenke, Ron Shandler, Glen Waggoner, Charlie Wiegert, Bill Winkenbach and Rick Wolf.

Okrent, who invented the rules of Rotisserie Baseball in 1979, was in Asia on assignment and unable to attend the event. Waggoner, however, made the trip to Orlando and was humbled by the honor from the industry. The Hall of Fame is being sponsored by the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association.

“On behalf of my fellow Founding Fathers and Mother of Rotisserie League Baseball, I want to thank the FSGA for the great honor being bestowed on us,” Waggoner told the crowd of 100 attendees. “Needless to say, we never had a clue that it would come to this. I distinctly remember the thrill of buying Neil Allen for two bucks at our first Auction Draft in 1980. I also remember buying Gene Richards for $9 and flipping through the Baseball Register to find out who he played for. When Okrent published his seminal article, ‘The Year George Foster Wasn’t Worth $35,’ in Inside Sports in 1981, we basked in our 15 minutes of celebrity. And we figured that was that. But of course it wasn’t.”

Waggoner was the editor of the Rotisserie League Baseball books which spawned the growth of this industry in the 1980s, even if it became more like work each year.

“We had a gang of fun introducing an unsuspecting world to our peculiar craziness in the inaugural edition of Rotisserie League Baseball in 1984,” said Waggoner. “Personally, I had a gang of fun editing the first nine editions, even after it became work. But most of all, we¹ve all had a gang of fun playing the game.”
(From Fantasy Sports Magazine)

After 19 years in newspaper ad sales, ­ much of which was also spent competing in fantasy leagues, ­ Wiegert helped found CDM Fantasy Sports in 1991, starting a career as one of the pioneers of the booming national fantasy game industry. Wiegert turned a small company called Carol’s Fantasy Baseball into a large national service by aligning his company with national publication companies. He first produced fantasy games for The Sporting News and later branched out to include games for USA Today, Baseball Weekly, MSNBC, The Golf Channel and more. Wiegert is also a founding member of the FSGA and the winner of the 2000 FSGA Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted in the the FSGA Hall Of Fame in 2001 at Chicago conference.

Perhaps the most impactful segment of Wiegert’s career came in the courtroom. That was where his company ­ in CBC Distribution and Marketing v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media­ assured fantasy operators everywhere the right to use player names and statistics in their games without having to pay rights fees to the leagues involved.

“Winning the lawsuit with MLBAM/MLBPA was the highlight of my career, and knowing that fantasy sports games will remain in the hands of game operators instead of the leagues is very satisfying,” Wiegert said. “Most fantasy sports players do not realize that the games they play and love would have been changed and/or eliminated without a positive decision.”

He has followed that up with well over 10 years of devotion to the FSGA Board, serving as an Executive board member and Treasurer.

Charlie’s company, CBC Distribution and Marketing (CDM Fantasy Sports), was acquired by Fun Technologies, and merged with Fanball. Fun Technologies was acquired by Liberty Media Corporation, and in June of 2011, the operation was closed. Charlie, with some former partners, acquired the assets of their original Salary Cap games, and began operating them again in March of 2011 as CDM Sports. Hundreds of Thousands of players have participated in these games since 1991, with over $60,000,000 in cash prizes awarded to the winners.

Bill created the first fantasy baseball and fantasy football leagues that we know of. In the late 1950s, Bill started the S.T. SIHRT– Superior Tile Summer Invitational Homerun Tournament. In August 1963, he had the first draft of the GOPPPL– the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators league. He also dabbled in fantasy golf in the late 1950s. The GOPPPL’s purpose was to promote the Raiders and the AFL.

Winkenbach was also a 10% limited partner of the Oakland Raiders.

Bill, as we know it, is the father of fantasy sports.

Rick Wolf is the founder and President of Full Moon Sports Solutions, a company dedicated to delivering solutions to major media consulting. Originally started in 2001 with clients like FOX, USA Today, AOL and Topps, Full Moon led Strategic Partnerships for Allstar Stats until it was acquired by NBC Universal in August of 2006.

Wolf was previously Director of Business Development for NBC Sports Digital. In this role, he focused on creating partnerships that expand the sports businesses of NBC, including NBCSports.com, the fastest growing major media sports site; Rotoworld.com, the largest pure-play fantasy sports site on the Internet; and NBCOlympics.com. NBC Sports Group went all the way to number six (6) on the Comscore sports list while Wolf was leading Business Development.

Before that Wolf ran Full Moon Web Solutions and provided consulting advice for Allstar Stats. His deep contact base, coupled with product creativity, delivered many great partnerships including USA Today, FOX Sports, NHL.com, CBS Sports, MAXIM and Head2Head Sports. Wolf defined a business model that balanced Business-to-Business services with Business-to-Consumer products and content allowing Allstar Stats to grow into a favorable acquisition target of major media companies. In August 2006, NBC Universal purchased Allstar Stats Inc.

In 1998, Wolf was a founding Board Member of the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association (FSGA), a non-profit organization with the mission of raising awareness worldwide for Fantasy Sports. From March 2002 to July 2006 he served as FSTA Chairman. Rotoworld.com and Allstar Stats have received twelve (12) FSGA awards since awards began in 2002. In 2001, the FSGA recognized Wolf as their Executive of the Year.

Wolf also served as Chairman of the Fantasy Sports Association (FSA) from 2007-2010, a non-profit association whose mandate, different from the FSGA, was to raise awareness for fantasy sports among sponsors, brands and advertisers. Wolf’s efforts at SBJ’s November conference each year, kept Fantasy Sports in the forefront of the minds of major media sports executives. The FSA closed in December 2010.

In 1995, Wolf was hired as the 13th employee at SportsLine.com to direct their digital product. In 1997, he became GM of Fantasy Sports and designed a plan for the consolidation of the Fantasy Industry under the CBS SportsLine brand. In 1998, Wolf created the partnership with Commissioner.com that led to building the most robust fantasy sports suite on the Internet and spearheaded relationships with both MLB and NFL for official Fantasy Products.

From 1987 to 1995, Wolf was a Sr. Programmer for PRODIGY. Wolf was part technology team that built the production tools used to put ESPN on PRODIGY in 1992. Wolf was also part of the technology team at PRODIGY that produced the first online Fantasy game, Baseball Manager. Wolf was the sole maintenance programmer from 1991 when it launched until he left PRODIGY in 1995. The game was ported to an all web platform and still exists today.

Wolf also loves to play Fantasy Sports, especially baseball. Wolf and college friend Glenn Colton have won three USA Today LABR American League titles and three FSGA Fantasy Football titles. Wolf and Colton also compete in Tout Wars AL since 2007 and are still fighting for their first victory.

Wolf lives with his wife (Jeanne) and three sons (Matt, Bryan and Stephen) in Pleasantville NY.