A couple days ago, I wrote an article about the Best Five Fantasy Baseball Books that every owner should read – if they want to win.
In doing so, I mentioned how I believe Ron Shandler of BaseballHQ.com would be one of the faces on a Fantasy Baseball Mount Rushmore monument.
When I wrote that, I initially thought to myself – well, who would be the other three faces? Then someone jangled some keys and I lost my train of thought.
The next day, I got a tweet from @AndrewRFesta that forced me to consider it all just a little longer.
That’s where this article post came in to play, as I decided to write about my four selections.
I feel like each of these choices affected Fantasy Baseball in a great way, whether it’s with something new or just something incredibly useful. These guys were game-changers.
He writes the Baseball Forecaster each year (dating back to the mid-‘80s!) and he helped found Tout Wars, which is the biggest/baddest Fantasy Baseball Experts League in all the land. Then the guy went out and won the AL and NL versions of the league in ONE season!
Shandler is a Bill James disciple that also came up with the LIMA Plan (Low Investment Mound Aces) and the Strand Rate (LOB%).
You likely know him as the king of the NFBC over at NFBC.Stats.com, but us old people know him as the guy that was behind one of the very first/best Fantasy Sports magazines. Dating back to the late ‘80s, Ambrosius and his crew wrote and published the Fantasy Sports Magazines that I bought every single year. He was even president of the FSTA for a few years.
While he’s certainly more known for his Fantasy Football work at ESPN, let’s not forget he got his start writing at the Talented Mr. Roto back in the day.
No one has done more to help the Fantasy Sports industry burst into mainstream sports news and the pop culture world than Berry.
If you haven’t read his book, “The Fantasy Life,” you are missing out on one of the funnier/more interesting stories in this industry … even though it’s mostly about Fantasy Football.
Even though he bowed out of Fantasy Baseball last March, his effect can’t be denied.
OK, soooo yeah, this one is going to be controversial because it’s really not a face at all.
For those unfamiliar with this website, let me explain: RotoNews.com was the very first Fantasy Baseball news website back in 1997, where blurbs of analysis accompanied each news bite. They were so successful, so quickly, that they were bought by another company.
Eventually, that new company went away, and the three main RotoNews guys, Jeff Erickson, Peter Schoenke and Herb Ilk decided to re-start a new news site, and they called it RotoWire.com.
If I had to choose a face, I guess I’d choose Jeff Erickson because he seems to be out there the most – he’s in Tout Wars and he hosts a SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio show with Chris Liss.
So that’s my choices for the four faces to go on the Fantasy Baseball Mount Rushmore. Which faces would you put up there?
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Can't stay away from this one, even though I have no argument with your four, plus I am not sure how to get down to four, but I think Dan Okrent, Glen Waggoner, Alex Patton, John Benson, and John Hunt have to be carved into stone as well.
Maybe you need a bigger mountain.
Have you also formally requested that Rushmore be changed to Reagan, a Bush, Clinton and Obama?
To me, Okrent, Shandler, and Berry are a clear top three.
The fourth slot is... difficult.
Alex Patton gets my vote. His late 80s/early 90s books were thorough, entertaining and informative.