The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, April 21, 2004 - 19 The man who created an obsession New York Times Public Editor and Michigan Daily alum Daniel Okrent talks about his brainchild: Rotisserie Baseball By Jim Weber Daily Sports Editor DANIEL OKRENT COULD BE REFERRED TO AS THE ELI WHITNEY OF THE 20TH CENTURY. WHITNEY DIDN T RECEIVE THE COMPENSATION HE DESERVED FOR THE COTTON GIN, ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTIONS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. OKRENT DIDN'T SEE A PENNY FOR A CREATION USED BY MILLIONS, ROTISSERIE BASEBALL. WITH A GROUP OF FRIENDS THAT WOULD "SHOOT SHIT ABOUT BASEBALL" WITH HIM, OKRENT STARTED A GAME INSIDE OF A GAME THAT IS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING AS MUCH A PART OF BASEBALL AS CRACKER JACKS AND "TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL- GAME. THE MICHIGAN DAILY ALUM WAS RECENTLY APPOINTED AS THE PUB- LIC EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES IN THE WAKE OF THE JAYSON BLAIR SCANDAL. THE DAILY CAUGHT UP WITH HIM TO TALK ABOUT THE START OF ROTISSERIE AND OKRENT'S LOVE FOR THE NATIONAL PASTTIME. The Michigan Daily: How did the whole thing get start- ed back at the La Rotisserie Francaise restaurant in 1980? Daniel Okrent: It was first a group of pals with which I had a monthly baseball lunch at that restaurant, La Rotisserie Francaise (in Manhattan). And we would just shoot shit about baseball. And when I came up with the idea, I proposed it to a different group of peo- ple - I was kind of living in three different places at the time. And these were some colleagues in a company I was involved in in Texas and they thought I was nuts. So I got back to New York and proposed it to my Rotisserie Francaise pals and out of that group, only two said "yes." But then we each thought of some other people and thought of some other people and a month or two later, we had a lunch at a bar called P.J. Mori- arty's, which was really the first time we all got togeth- er. So I guess it should" have been called "Moriarty League Base- ball."t TMD: I heard La Rotisserie Francaise has since shut down. How come it wasn't able to take advantage of being the home of fantasy baseball to stay open? DO: Well it did for a few years, but it wasn't a very good restaurant. TMD: When did you guys realize what you guys had, and when did it take off? DO: Well we began to get a sense of it right in that first year because a couple of us were involved in the media, and other people in the media knew about us and there, was an article about us in The New York Times and there was a segment about us on the CBS Morning News. And the following year, '81, during the baseball strike, a Sa lot of baseball writers had nothing to write about. They had heard about our league. In fact, many press boxes had simi- lar leagues by the beginning of the '81 season. So in '81, they wrote about it a lot during the strike, just kind of fill- ing space. So by '82 it had really begun to spread. TMD: I heard you had to pull all the stats out of things like the Sporting News. Did you enjoy having to do that kind of stuff? How much time did that take? DO: It took a lot, but we must have enjoyed it or we wouldn't have done it, those of us who are obsessive coun- ters of things found it more than tolerable. TMD: Did you ever think to trademark it as intellectual property? DO: It is trademarked, it has been for more than 20 years. But you don't need the trademark to do it, you don't need anything. You don't need to buy any pieces or subscribe to any service. All you need is the box scores. So once the rules were out, and that got out pretty quickly, then anyone could do it. I still think it - is would make a very good case study at aBusiness School class: How would you make money off this if you had thought of this in 1980? r TMD: Another thing we were wondering is your thoughts on the other form of fanta- sy baseball: head-to-head? DO: I've never played that, so I'm sure it's swell. I just don't have any direct experi- ence with it. TMD: I also read you stopped playing Rotis- serie Baseball at one point, and I was won- dering what brought that about. DO: I stopped in '95 and then started again playing a much more, kind of, simplified ver- sion. So I was off for six or seven years, just because it became too much a part of my life - not the playing of it - but just being annoyed by people who wanted to talk to me about it all the time ... (when) people used to follow me into bathrooms. People are so obsessive about it. And I just got fed up because I was doing other things. So I dropped it in and it was funny - that was '95 - and the '96 season started, and I would open up the paper in the morning - and I used to remem- ber that before 1980 (the beginning of Rotisserie baseball), I had always spent a half hour with the box scores in'the morning. But I had no memory of what it was I was look- ing for because, in the intervening years, I was just looking to see how my players had done. So I was like looking at something in a foreign language. It took me a while to get back into the swing of reading box scores as a fan. TMD: Are you turned off by baseball these days, with big-market teams dominating and the steroid rumors and things like that? DO: I'm not crazy about those things, but. . the game is still the game. The Red Sox took three out of four from the Yankees (recently); the Tigers have a winning record. It still has the capacity to surprise me. So, though I wish that there were more balance between the teams and I wish the players were not all pumped on what- ever substance they are pumped up on, I can still love the game. TMD: I hear you are a huge Cubs fan. How did that happen when you grew up in Detroit? DO: When our kids were little, we were living near a Double-A Cubs franchise in western Massachusetts. . And we would take our kids to the games, and my son became absolute- ly printed on the Cubs. They had Greg Maddux, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark Grace - it was an incredible minor league team. And he became so crazy about them that, in time, I became crazy about them, too. I inherited it from my son. TMD: Do you root for the Tigers or are you solely a Cubs fan? DO: Ehh, I'm a Cubs fan more. When I check the American League standings, I look for the Tigers. Could I tell you 10 members of the team today? No. TMD: Obviously you were a huge baseball fan before you started Rotisserie. What is it about baseball that makes it such a great sport? DO: I think that when you are watching baseball, you are a participant. In other words, you are not overwhelmed by the physical size of the athletes. You aren't removed from them because they are wearing enormous layers of armor or protection. They look like normal people out there. And the physical way it is spread over a large area, if you are sitting 20 rows back from the third baseline, you are as close to the third baseman as the first baseman, and a lot closer to him than the right fielder is. So I think there is kind of this almost implicit feel of participation. I also like the pace of it. People either like the pace of baseball or they hate the pace of baseball. I think the gaps in time enable you to get in the game if you want to get into it - to antici- pate what is coming next. . i TMD: Like this? DO: Well, this nothing compared1 is to n Francisco's Barry Bonds FOOD FOR THOUGHT Supporting our Troops Yung Krall, whose father was the Viet Cong's ambassador to the Soviet Union tells how North Vietnam and the Viet Cong had actually reached the decision to surrender, but the protest movement forced a halt to the US bombing and saved them. No media has everreported that; even after her most recent announcement at the UM on March 3, 2004. 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