Fantasy Leagues- Coover Style!

Al Doyle's, "Putting Together a Reality Team,"is based on helping baseball fans who indulge in fantasy leagues, put together a team like the big league norm. Doyle gives a few pointers on how to form a collection of higher-level players, in comparison to what he considers regular fantasy football rosters, consisting of 25 men with diverse talents and skills, leaving defense forgotten. He bases his advice on the conclusion that there is too much fantasy, and not enough reality to create a well-rounded roster. He gives some very direct guidelines to accomplish this.
Have:

• one hall of famer
• do not have five aces in the starting rotation
• an outfield of All-stars at every infield position
• back of the roatation starters
• middle relievers
• utility players
• You are allowed anyone who appeared in a major league game anywhere between the 1800's to the present. 

 He then continues to explain how to arrange your team, it's plays, and specific moves that will be most accomplishing, such as, "Go with as few as nine arms if you like complete games and dead-ball era workhorses, or do your best Tony LaRussa impersonation and have a 13-man staff complete with two LOOGYs. Since I'm in favor of complete games and four-man rotations, my ace is one of the most durable starters of the live ball era." This article stood as a great reminder for the role myth plays in baseball. I was automatically taken back to Coover when reading this article as it gives directions to taking baseball from game form, and creating a reality of it within your life, and giving it a story. These men making fantasy rosters, and plays, consider it their team, they are the couch, the players are their men, yet really, it is all fake. When you say our team won, or I can't believe my team lost, it is not your team. The Yankees won, you watched. The players belong to their specific teams and themselves, the fantasy league creator, is just a fan. I take this back to Coover as his book, "The Universal Baseball League," depicts a man who has moved his own life into a baseball game that he has created, and only he plays. He is the only actual living, breathing human within his reality, yet he is depressed at the loss of one of his players. He talks about them with people in his actual reality, and throws away his job and realistic friends for a game ruled by dice, and players that don't exist. Just like Coover creates a man who lives in his "league," Doyle is giving advice on how to create your own story and altar reality. As he describes the perfect big-league compared to the 25-man roster, he creates a story for men interested in fantasy leagues. He helps them to become better "coaches," and how to manage a team, and how to lead your team to victory. It makes you part of the game, not just a viewer of it.