How About a 75-year-old Slam Dunker?

How online fantasy sports kept a codger younger

How’d my teams do yesterday?

I was born and raised in Caribou County, Idaho. The hospital was in Soda Springs and my parents’ home was in Bancroft, population less than 500. I moved away shortly after my 19th birthday.

Among everything else that entertained a kid, I learned about team sports playing workup, a baseball game we played when we didn’t have 18 players. Usually there were two batters and everyone else took a position in the field. If there weren’t enough players, we used no catcher and the batters chased balls that were pitched and did not get hit.

My biggest memory of those impromptu games of workup involved a mouse in the outfield upon whose head a softball landed. When I raced in to pick up the ball and throw it home the mouse bit me. Well that started something. One of the kids told their mother who told my mother and the next thing I know I’m in Doctor Tigert’s office in Soda Springs getting a rabies shot. I stayed on guard every day for a while seeing if my mouth was getting foamy but it didn’t.

We were a big football crowd in my school and I mean both senses of “football.” In grade school our morning before classes was two teams of oh, I don’t know, maybe 15 kids each kicking a ball and chasing it back and forth on the lawn next to the school.

When I was in junior high we played a form of touch football in which one kid was a passing quarterback and the rest of the team numbering maybe 20 receivers headed for the “end zone:” and arbitrary line gauged by the flag pole in the middle of the yard on one side and the sidewalk going up to the high school entrance on the other. The were no “end zone” limitations and going deep meant going as far as the pass slinger could throw it.

Oh and there was tackle pump where two guys were chosen to be “in the middle” where it was open season on the rest of the kids who had to run back and forth across that touch football field. Object for the two in the middle was to tackle anybody they could. If you were tackled you had to become a tackler. Soon there were like a million tacklers chasing after the swiftest or the biggest kids who had yet to be taken down.

I have a memory of one of those high school behemoths who was a fullback on the football team and that day was the last un-tackled runner. I saw him start across the field roughly in my direction. I was not about to try to tackle him all by myself so I took off ahead of him trying to get out of his path. As he barreled toward me, I turned to look back, stumbled and fell down. Right behind me the fullback tried to jump over me, didn’t get high enough, got tangled in my legs … and … are you ready for this? He went down and I got credit for the tackle while laying flat on my back.

Most of us boys played on the football and basketball teams in Jr. High and High School and there was a wrestling team that I was not interested in, being so skinny and flimsy that my Dad said I’d have to jump around in the shower just to get wet.

On the football team in my senior year there were only 21 boys out for the team. When they scrimmaged, one of the coaches had to play so each team had 11 players.

I played on the basketball team but never got much higher than nine or tenth on the roster and only got in the game when the score was hopeless – my team either behind or ahead. Of course in those circumstances I was a gunner, shooting every time I got the ball.

When I was a Junior our school, North Gem High School made it to the state basketball tournament. We had to petition the state to allow us to play in the same AA league as the other towns around Bancroft because we had only 95 students in the high school. So we were the smallest AA. The second night of the tournament we went up against Post Falls High School which had a 6′ 7″ center name Schlotthauer and a 6′ 3″ guard, both of whom towered over our players. It was a close game but we lost 65-64 and Post Falls went on to win the championship game the next night.

When I moved to CDA, imagine my surprise at the current size of Post Falls, Idaho, whose population in the early 60’s only supported a single AA high school. Nowadays PFHS is one of three 5A (Idaho’s largest) high schools in Kootenai County.

I played basketball after high school mostly during the years of my missionary time in Texas. Was pretty good by that time and wandered why I hadn’t been more aggressive and confident in high school. In 1967 I was playing a pickup game with missionaries and others at the University of Texas El Paso gym and broke my little toe bone. Wore a walking cast for a month or two while it healed. That cast was great and I climbed up to the summit of Mount Cristo Rey just across the New Mexico border from El Paso.

Back when I was about 13 years old, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas. At that time I used to read Street and Smith’s annual sports magazine about the coming baseball, basketball or football seasons. I saw an ad for what I’d call an early fantasy sports game offered by a company by the name of Negamco. I told mom that’s all I wanted and that’s what I got either the Christmas of 1959 or 1960. In the game you became the coach of manager of a pro team. You picked the starting teams, made substitutions during the game and essentially fantasized coaching or managing your team of player cards to victory. Furthermore, since each player had a card, you could arbitrarily create your own team, your own leagues and play out a season.

Best Christmas Present Ever

That’s where at least one form of fantasy came alive in my life and within a year I had the games for baseball and football as well. Later my brothers and I “graduated” to more complex fantasy sport games sold by APBA, a company out of Pennsylvania, I believe.

I eventually designed my own version of a pro basketball league and kept it with me everywhere I went after my missionary years. I tinkered with it now and then and have a small business-card box with my homemade player cards and a set of dice but have not fooled around with it for years.

20 years ago my wife Lietta encountered something online called fantasy basketball and brought it to my attention. Well, even back then at the age of 55 my pickup basketball and church softball days were over. I remember that moment when during a pickup basketball game, I made a move to the basket for an easy layin and felt something stretch in my hamstring. I was done; never even got off the ground and missed the layup completely.

So Lietta’s find was my sports rehabilitation. I signed up for Yahoo Sports Fantasy Basketball season and eventually would up with three teams to manage. Drafted each team, started reading yahoo sports more intently and even a sports almanac or two. Named my teams Arthur’s Jammers, The Raymond Loggers and The Heretics. Every day I adjusted my 13 players into a ten-man roster based on which teams were playing that day.

My Raymond Loggers (Raymond Washington) was in a roto (rotisserie) league and finished 5th with no trophies. Rotisserie, or “Roto,” is the most common way to play fantasy baseball. In this scoring type, teams are ranked from first to last in each statistical category. Points are then awarded according to the order in each category and totaled to determine an overall score and league rank.

Arthur’s Jammers and The Heretics were in head-to-head leagues where each week your team ran up statistic totals in 9 categories with each category counting as a win or a loss. So you would end the week with a 9-0 record if your team beat the other team in all categories, 0-9 if you lost all or something in between. The Jammers and Heretics each finished 4th my first year.

In 2003 I created 4 teams and played with more confidence and skill. Two of my teams The Blazer Maniacs and The Sonic Booms won their leagues.

I was off and running. In total I’ve played in 160 basketball, baseball and football leagues including this year, won my league 32 times, finished second 16 times and 3rd 25 times. There were usually ten teams in each league.

I eventually participated off and on in the CBS Sportsline and ESPN fantasy leagues.

My “fantasy sense” going back to those early years has never left me. In the 80’s I decided I wanted to write fiction and struggles with a historical novel, And Should We Die, that I did not get published until Lietta challenged me to do so when we lives in Bay Center, Washington in 2007.

So how about a 75-year-old slam dunker who dabbles in an assortment of fantasy notions, putting most of them on paper in the form of blogs and websites like this one?

I suppose my fantasies in all venues are my way of countering any drift into senility or dementia and I am quite content in that regard.

My most important regard of course is the lovely Lietta Darlaine Ruger who has never been a fantasy in my world and whose love and companionship make this brave new world in which we live survivable.