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Dear Prospective Vicarious Pompous Overbearing Steinbrenner-Like Know- It-All Armchair-General Sports Empire Magnate-Wanna Be:
It is my pleasure to invite you and your baseball addiction to become charter members in a newly formed Rotisserie League "Fantasy" Baseball excursion. Having determined that 162 games plus Spring training plus playoffs and World Series plus endless off-season debates, talk shows, video replays, and trade rumors are not sufficient to satiate our baseball cravings, we the founders have chosen to join the rapidly aggrandizing Rotisserie/Fantasy movement, and to devote thereto all the excess energy and financial resources that normal people devote to advancing their careers, raising families, helping the poor, or changing the world. To this end, we have formed
The Good IV League
and we would be pleased to have you as a team owner, if you think you can stand it.
If you are as yet a little uncertain about Rotisserie baseball, it would definitely behoove you to investigate as much as possible before the season gets underway and you get your pants whacked off. Briefly, you own a team made up of real major league players whom you draft immediately after Opening Day; you pay some money (our league should require about $40-50 per person over the season); your team's performance depends upon how your players perform in real baseball over the season; you can trade, disable, call up, and sign players during the season according to various restrictions; the team that wins at the end of the season gets (most of) the money and a bottle of Yoo-Hoo poured on the owner's head (this is not our idea, it's the rules). If we like it, we do it again next year, starting with this year's rosters, making off-season trades, and you name it.
There are a few basic reasons why anyone would want to do this:
1. It gives you additional reason to stare at box scores every morning.
2. It helps exercise your (a) mathematical, (b) business strategy, and (c) negotiating skills, making you that much more superior as a human being.
3. It makes our meaningless, puny existence on this hell-hole of a planet seem almost sufferable if only for a fleeting moment now and then (a certain Jim Rice home run in Game 7 of the 1986 AL Playoffs comes to mind).
4. It permits you to receive wonderfully enlightening letters such as this.
Enclosed with this letter is an illegal copyright violating reproduction of the official Constitution and Rules of the original Rotisserie League, revised for 1989. You should probably rush out and buy a copy of the whole book anyway, but this will get you started. In fact, what it will get you started doing, if you're any kind of fan, is objecting to the majority of the Rules. We understand. We agree. Calm down. In spite of all that, it is our inclination to use these rules for our league, rather than complicate matters further. If there is overwhelmingly strong sentiment (or large payoffs), we will consider amending some of the rules for our purposes prior to the season, which brings us to the only really important purpose of this letter:
There will be a non-mandatory pre-season meeting of all team owners on Tuesday, March 28, 1989, at 6:30 PM, at Lotus Development Corporation, 55 Cambridge Parkway, Cambridge (Lechmere on the Green Line). Just present yourself at the guard desk, to see Ford Cavallari. The purpose of this meeting is to introduce everyone, go over all the rules and so forth, and work out all the logistical problems necessary to get this show on the road.
Also, the actual draft date is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, April 16, at 10:30 AM, at 21 Inman Street, Cambridge (Red Line, Central Square, near City Hall). This will be an all-day affair, and it is absolutely essentially that everyone attend. If this appears impossible for you, we will try to work out an alternative, but if you can't make it to the draft, you really can't be in the league. So please be prepared to commit to a firm date at the pre-season meeting, or by telephone if you can't make it.
Finally, you should begin thinking about a name for your team. It should be a bad pun on your own name. The examples or us, your founders, should serve as meager inspiration.
Sincerely,
David N. Townsend, Commissioner
Ford D. Cavallari, Secretary
(quoted from letter of March 10, 1988)
We have chosen the convoluted name of The Good IV League, whose origins we know will fascinate you. Briefly, when Hawk Harrelson used to do color on Red Sox telecasts, he always used the phrase "the good eye". As in, "Dwight Evans has the good eye today, that's his second walk." It was never clear why there seemed to be only one good eye to go around (there was also, however, a "good bat, which Jim Rice usually had in those days). Anyway, in honor of the Hawk, we started out with the name "The Good Eye League". At the same time, most of our members are, through no fault of their own, Ivy League college graduates. Thus, The Good Eye became The Good Ivy, or The Good Eye-V. Finally, however, it became the all-purpose Good IV League, which in Roman numerals can become the "Good Four" League, with nothing after the 4, so it's really the Good For Nothing League. And the Good Ivy League (as opposed to the bad one). And the Good Eye V League. And, if you must, the Good Intravenous League. Aren't you glad you asked?
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Contact me: DNT@DNTownsend.com
Copyright 1997 David N. Townsend