E-Mail This Article to a Friend Caught in the web of fantasy baseball BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

It started off as kind of a lark, an opportunity, a potential hobby. Something that could help me better appreciate and get better insights into the sports I like. What’s the harm in that? It’ll be fun.

Until it becomes a borderline obsession.

Yep, it’s fantasy sports. In my case — right here, right now — it’s fantasy baseball.

Existing fantasy players know of which I speak, but if you’re not familiar with the concept, be advised that this has nothing to do with fantasy camps, fantasy land, or fantasies of a more lurid nature.

Fantasy sports leagues apparently exist for nearly every pro sport imaginable — the four majors, plus golf, soccer, and NASCAR — and are sponsored by such media giants as Yahoo!, ESPN, and USA Today, among others. Some charge money to join, while others allow free participation but garner income from the many hits to their sites, plus random ads therein.

While the parameters of the leagues vary, the basics of any fantasy league are similar. You become the owner/general manager of your own, say, baseball team, and either you draft your own players through a league-sponsored lottery, or the team is compiled for you based on individual-player rankings (based on past performances) built into the system. In the hands-on format, you and the other managers of the league take turns selecting players in an on-line draft lottery — or, if you’re unable to take part, you’ve ranked all of the players from best to worst, and when it’s your turn in the draft, the computer picks for you the highest player remaining on your ranked list. If your league’s entire draft is computer-generated, then luck plays a big factor in your initial roster, and only through bartering and waiver-wire drops/pick-ups can you alter the complexion (and fortunes) of your team.

I was invited last fall to join in a pro-hockey fantasy league, and while I certainly don’t feel I am as knowledgeable about hockey as I am about some other sports, my interest was piqued by the aforementioned opportunity to better familiarize myself with the NHL and its players. When I was randomly assigned the NHL’s top goalie, Martin Brodeur, along with established goal-scorers like Jaomir Jagr, Peter Bondra, and Keith Tkachuk, I figured I had a pretty good shot in the 14-team league. Alas, my lack of true wisdom about the intricacies of the NHL ultimately brought me down, and I eventually plummeted to ninth overall. But I was indeed hooked. Hockey-savvy or not, I still loved the power I held in controlling my franchise, suggesting and considering trades, and being quick on the trigger when a player was under-performing. In addition, I did indeed become better-acquainted with some of the lesser-known players in the league (Phoenix’s Shane Doan, previously a stranger to me, became one of my unsung heroes).

So here it is now — baseball season. Baseball has always been the sport I feel I know best, but whether that could translate into success as a GM remained to be seen. Unable to participate in the on-line draft, I ranked the players beforehand in order to move up the players I felt would have big years, and move down from consideration those that I had little faith in.

Yet there were some guys who, for one reason or another, I wanted no part of. One was former Yankee second baseman Alfonso Soriano, who seemingly was exposed as a strikeout-prone fraud in last season’s post-season (shame on me; this season he’s been a consistent .300 hitter). Others were crossed off the potential draft list for different reasons; age or propensity for injury were factors (Kevin Brown, Edgar Martinez), clubhouse cancers were measured (Kenny Lofton, Raul Mondesi), and I certainly wasn’t going to select guys that I simply didn’t like (former Sox ingrate Shea Hillenbrand, the Mariners’ Bret Boone). After all, it’s tough to root for a guy on your team if you can’t stand the SOB — or he plays for a team that you despise. These are the dynamics a fantasy owner must take into consideration when building his team.

The draft took place, I got my team, and I was reasonably delighted. I ended up with offensive stars like A-Rod, David Ortiz, Ken Griffey Jr., and Vladimir Guerrero, starters Josh Beckett, Greg Maddux, Andy Pettitte, Roy Oswalt, and Brad Radke, set-up men Alan Embree and Mike Timlin, and closers extraordinaire Troy Percival and Billy Wagner. Ending up with some of these guys was preordained because of my pre-season ranking adjustments; some of it came down to pure luck, including the addition of Pirates 1B/OF Craig Wilson, who prior to this season I had never even heard of. (Thus far, Wilson is having a career year for the Bucs, hitting .344.)

But a fantasy owner/GM/manager is rarely satisfied, and occasionally feels obligated to tinker with the components to get the best possible output on a weekly basis. And a lot of that has to do with the fantasy-league settings that determine what particular statistics will be counted toward your team’s performance in your league. The standards are generally batting average, runs scored, RBIs, homers, stolen bases, slugging percentage, and strikeouts and walks for the offense; for the pitchers, it’s usually some combination of ERA, wins/losses, saves, and strikeouts/walks. By diversifying the stats needed to be successful, you can’t load up your line-up with all sluggers, otherwise your power numbers will be offset by too many strikeouts and too few walks or stolen bases.

And as a result of all that goes into constructing and maintaining a fantasy team, the one-time casual baseball fan (who previously just glanced at the box scores each morning) is converted into a maniacal agate-type devotee upon promotion to fantasy GM. And if he can’t wait for the morning paper, he is relegated to late-night appointments with ESPN’s Baseball Tonight (which gives partial box scores after showing highlights of that particular game) or one of the other ESPN-family stations (which utilize a bottom-of-the-screen crawl to update game scores constantly and alert you to that game’s top performers). There is no better feeling for a fantasy GM than to see one of his players’ names tacked on to the end of the game scores, particularly if the player has hit some homers or posted a multi-hit game. It sends you to bed with a satisfied smirk on your face, as if you’d put up the numbers yourself.

My fantasy team goes head-to-head weekly with the other 11 teams (with cumulative category stats determining the winner), so managers often find themselves rooting against players that they would otherwise love (try to imagine a Red Sox fan rooting against Tim Wakefield if he is a member of your fantasy opponent’s team) or taking undue interest in individual at-bats (say you’re a Yankees fan, but Jason Giambi’s going up against Barry Zito, who’s a pitcher on your fantasy squad). For participants in these on-line leagues, it’s often a contradictory stand one takes, whether it’s cheering for someone you’d otherwise care little about, or against someone that you have a great fondness for; in the end, is it more important for your beloved Chicago Cubs to win, or for your visiting player to have a good game at Wrigley?

No matter how good you feel about your fantasy team, curve balls are inevitably dealt, usually in the area of injuries. Pity the fools who own guys like Nomar Garciaparra, the Cubs’ Mark Prior, or the Rockies’ Larry Walker; you know they’ll ultimately produce, but how long can you hold a roster spot for them? And what about the guys who get hurt during the season, like Kerry Wood, Sammy Sosa, or the Phils’ Wagner? How bad are their injuries? When will they return? Should one cut them loose and get someone who can help now? These are all questions that real-life Theo Epsteins and Brian Cashmans face daily, but fantasy owners are no less fanatical about such issues, particularly if your DL is restricted to just one or two spots.

And then there’s the concept of losing patience with a player and releasing him, only to see him flourish immediately thereafter. That happened to me with the Cubs’ Moises Alou, who I sent packing on April 15 when the 37-year-old’s average had fallen to .194. He’s washed up, I said. He then proceeded to give me a thorough face-washing by collecting 17 hits and four home runs over the next seven games, and as of today he’s hitting .314 with 12 HRs. (Still, his roster replacement, the Tigers’ Rondell White, is batting .327, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.)

And just as Theo and Cash can beam when they make shrewd pick-ups, so too can the fantasy GM who does his homework and snares diamonds in the rough like the Brewers’ Lyle Overbay (.352), the Twins’ Lew Ford (.342), and the Padres’ Mark Loretta (.318), and gets to bask in the glory of these unlikely contributors. Not that we’re talking about any fantasy GM in particular, of course — that’s purely hypothetical. Ahem.

Of course, finding playing time for all your players can also become complex because of limited roster spots, and that’s when pitching match-ups and past history versus a particular batter/hurler must be considered. Does Griffey play tonight, or does Ford? Righty/lefty, home/away — it all comes into play. And I’m actually dreading the day when Trot Nixon returns from the DL, because it’s not like I’m about to bench my current right-fielder, Guerrero, while he tears up the AL at an MVP-style clip (.344, 11 HRs, 36 RBIs).

But that’s my problem, not yours. In the meantime, my squad, the Spanish Inquisition is atop our 12-team league at the quarter-pole, and while there is no real incentive to win the damn thing other than bragging rights, I still am concerned. Interested. Involved. Keen. Maybe fanatical. Maybe even obsessed.

Nah, not really.

Now what time do the damn Padres get under way tonight? Get back, Loretta!

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com