Fantasy baseball is a game where players manage imaginary baseball teams based on the real-life performance of baseball players, and compete against one another using those players' statistics to score points. It is the oldest form of fantasy sports, and arguably one of the most difficult and time-intensive due to the 162-game season of the MLB and the inconsistency of players.
Rotisserie league baseball proved to be hugely popular, even in the 1980s when full statistics and accurate reporting were often hard to come by. The traditional statistics used in early Rotisserie leagues were often chosen because they were easy to compile from newspaper box scores and then from weekly information published in USA Today. Fantasy Baseball Okrent, based on discussions with colleagues at USA Today, credits Rotisserie league baseball with much of the early success of USA Today, since the paper provided much more detailed box scores than most competitors and eventually even created a special paper, Baseball Weekly, that almost exclusively contained statistics and box scores. Local papers soon caught up with USA Today's expanded coverage.
