Copyright USA Today Information Network Mar 1, 2004

The Forum

When pitchers and catchers reported to spring training last month, the great Roger Clemens was wearing a Houston Astros uniform, to the chagrin of most real baseball fans -- and certainly those who ever rooted for the Red Sox, the Blue Jays or the Yankees. That's real fans, I said: Fans who root for real teams and feel betrayed, if not downright foolish, for caring so much whenever a player willfully jumps to a rival franchise, leaving them holding the emotional bag.

But then there are an estimated 15 million fans who root for teams that exist only in their own minds. For these fans, who have created their own alternate baseball universe, Clemens really is pitching for the, say, Lipsyte Lions of the Shelter Island League.

Fantasy league fans now are preparing for their annual drafts of real players to stock their imaginary teams. They will keep a particularly close eye on spring training, looking for clues to help them pick or reject a player. Once the season starts, they will scrutinize the real box scores of at least a dozen real teams to see how "their" players did, which will affect the fantasy standings of their imaginary teams.

I'm not so sure what's real in all this and what's fantasy. A good case could be made -- and I probably would buy it -- that these fantasy fans (I'm not one) are baseball's most passionately involved and intellectually engaged aficionados. Some people say they live in a dream world, but I think they may have found the best way to deal with sports these days -- and perhaps even uncovered some lessons for life beyond sports.

I see fantasy leagues as a metaphor for what could be a major switch in American life: Fans beginning to identify not with players, but with owners and general managers, the powers that control players. Something powerfully positive could come of this, if it could be translated into other aspects of our lives.

"Fantasy leagues offer a chance for community and for bonding," says psychiatrist Ronald Kamm, president of the International Society for Sport Psychiatry. "Fans feel disempowered. This gives them some sense of control over the players, who so often abandon their fans, leaving them with a sense of betrayal."

No wonder it's believed that fantasy leagues were born in 1980, soon after free agency made it impossible for a fan to count on a long-term relationship with a favorite player. A group of writers and editors created the Rotisserie League, named after the Manhattan restaurant where they met.

Since then, labor-management disputes (remember the 1987 NFL strike and the "replacement players," the 1994 baseball strike and the cancellation of the World Series?) have drained much of the traditional sense of fantasy out of real sports. Now, almost every sport, including soccer, cricket and NASCAR, has fantasy leagues, ranging from informal groups of school kids to elaborate conclaves of investment bankers and international online organizations.

Richard Lustberg, who deals with sports in his psychology practice and on his Web site, psychologyofsports.com, has a darker take: "Fantasy leagues tend to further remove the players from the fans as human beings. It is really reflective of objectifying the player and of showing how disposable he is. This reflects our consumer culture and even the divorce rate. People are becoming more and more objects to be replaced. In that sense, fantasy sports is reflecting and following a trend." The leagues also follow the trend of everyday people feeling alienated from traditional institutions. New forms of spirituality are springing out of alienation from traditional religions, and the rise in home schooling reflects a loss of faith in traditional education. Non-traditional families are a response to traditional ones that don't work. In their own way, these also are forms of fantasy leagues: people trying to take back some measure of control over their lives.

There are dangers in fantasy-league play. Kamm warns about obsessive behavior that can supplant adult responsibilities. Lustberg warns about gambling, particularly in fantasy leagues sponsored by casinos on the Internet.

Nevertheless, I can't shake the notion that something very positive can be learned from fantasy leaguers. These fans' passion was being taken for granted and exploited. Instead of choosing between giving up or giving in, they found a way to make it work for them.

I do wish that fans used some of that energy and creativity now expended to create fantasy leagues to reorder their everyday universes. What if we decided to stop taking what's handed to us as consumers, as patients, as voters? What if we banded together into leagues of our own? Food co-ops and neighborhood watches are starts, and we've seen sporadic attempts to share music, buy prescription drugs from Canada and form alternative political parties.

Right now, few of these efforts go very far. The big-league corporations get tough, and then people lose heart. We need to be more aggressive -- pretend we're sports fans who just won't take it anymore. The stock market, for example, smells ripe for an active band of investors sharing information not only on companies, but also on analysts whose information so often leads us wrong.

A revolutionary idea?

Don't forget: The Founding Fathers created their own fantasy league.

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Robert Lipsyte is a journalist and author of Warrior Angel. He's also a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.