(Photo courtesy of pitchersandpoets.com)
By Will Lyons
I can almost smell it: the freshly cut grass, pine tar waiting in the on-deck circle, the leather of a hundred new baseballs and, in my case, Gilroy garlic fries.
Yes, the 2012 Major League Baseball season is now only a mere 26 days away. With the first pitch tantalizingly close, now's the time for last minute league creations for fantasy baseball.
ESPN's Fantasy Baseball Leagues have a great interface for keeping up on players you've loved and hated their entire careers and for tracking rising stars.
Real time gamecasts allow you to listen to the play by play of games across the country while stat trackers keep real time changes for every statistic.
Moving players from the bench to the starting line up, making trades and adding and dropping players is also very easy with ESPN's leagues.
You can also communicate easily with everyone else in your league by posting on each week's "Smack Board."
To all those fantasy sports haters out there, know that I was once one of you.
I used to think that compiling a list of players and relentlessly having to update teams based on who was injured was a chore.
Then last season I realized what fantasy sports is really about: camaraderie (and therefore smack talking).
As we faced our first full season away from San Francisco, fantasy baseball united my friends from home for weekly rounds of put downs and new inside jokes.
While friendship got me interested in fantasy baseball, I stayed because of my now infallible baseball knowledge. If you really pay attention to your fantasy baseball team you learn about every player in the game and as a result take away a complete knowledge of the baseball season.
Even if you don't nerd out on the statistics and inside deals that happen during the season like I do, playing fantasy baseball will supply you with new information, grounding for your love and hate for every team. Go to http://games.espn.go.com/flb/baseball.
Start your league today!
