Fantasy Baseball Ruins The Real Thing?

Well, that is what Amy Sullivan argues in the latest Washington Monthly. I'll admit that I play fantasy baseball, but that it has become nowhere near an obsession for me. In fact, I cannot help but think that the obsessives run into an element of diminishing returns. If you know a lot about baseball and draft a decent team and don't let your pitching rotation lie dormant for weeks on end, you'll do ok. Make a key move here or there, don't let an injured guy languish in the starting lineup, talk trash when your team does well, lay low when it does not: These are the keys to enjoying but not stressing when it comes to fantasy baseball (or football -- or presumably any other fantasy league, though these are the only two sports that I have ever played).

I would say that if I spend more than five minutes in any given day looking at my fantasy team, it is because I am planning on leaving town and want to make sure my lineup is set for the next few days. Furthermore, I refuse to let my allegiance to my fantasy team, which is not all that great, get in the way of my allegiances in real life, which are. This is to say, I bench players on the team playing the Red Sox for the duration of that series, and I refuse to have Yankees on my team. See? I am a healthy fantasy player. (Plus I have the sense of perspective of a guy who won his league last year.)