Free Fantasy Baseball 1999
© Greg Spira
Smallworld Baseball, probably the most played fantasy game on the Web, is back with its simple but comprehensive points based system. It looks like the same game Smallworld ran successfully last summer, with only a few minor modifications. You can sign up at http://baseball.smallworld.com/
Sandbox Sports, the other major supplier of free fantasy games on the Net, is offering three different fantasy baseball games, two of which are free. Sandlot Fantasy Baseball is their major free offering, and it enables players to choose leagues and scoring systems (rotisserie style or points based). Heavy Hitters is a less involved but still interesting game that is better suited for newcomers and the less obsessed.
Echelon Sports, a relative newcomer, features a game very similar to Smallworld's at http://sports.eesite.com/ballpark/. The major difference between Echelon's and Smallworld's rules is that Echelon teams deal with a "hard" salary cap while Smallworld teams' salary caps rise and fall based on the changing value of each team's current players.
Meanwhile, Insider Corner Fantasy Baseball is making available for free a very different type of fantasy baseball, in which players you pick participate in simulated games head-to-head. Some fans may find this head-to-head approach more exciting than games based solely on accumulating player statistics. Also, Insider Corner is the only free Web-based fantasy baseball game that allows leagues to continue into the 2000 season and "freezing" players for that purpose.
Yahoo! has this year gotten into free fantasy baseball in a huge way. Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball offers anyone the chance to join in a traditional rotisserie style league (with either a live draft or an auto-pick draft) and also offers free hosting of private leagues (rotisserie style or points style) with pretty flexible scoring and rules available.
Rotonews, one of the best sources for player news on the Net, is also offering free hosting services for established leagues for the second year in a row. Also available is a matchmaking service if you're looking for a league
Newcomer MVP Games is also promising a free fantasy baseball game at their web site. but they have yet to put up any details as of this writing.
There's a very different type of fantasy baseball available at Cyberskipper. I hesitate to say that it's actually Fantasy Baseball, but because it lets fans predict how their favorite teams and players will do in upcoming games, I'm sure some fans will find it fun.
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