What are Fantasy Games?

Have you ever dreamed of what it would be like to own your own professional sports team? Fantasy games are a way to live out that dream. And, to make things easier, all fantasy games are fundamentally the same - real athletes and their real-life performances are used to generate points for fantasy teams in fantasy leagues.

For example, in a traditional fantasy league, there is a set number of "team managers." There are a set of rules that determine everything from team roster size, to the scoring method, to schedule. You and your fellow team managers hold a draft, i.e. fill your fantasy roster with real-life ballplayers, from A-Rod to Ben Zobrist.

Then throughout the season, you will set your line-up based on how well you think "your" players will perform. The statistics your positional players generate in their real games are collected, and fantasy points are awarded based on these numbers. The better your players perform, the more fantasy points accrue for your fantasy team.

Ultimately, these points determine a winner in seasonal leagues. The team that accumulates the most points (or points-based wins) over the course of the season - or prevails in the postseason-is declared the league winner. With the league championship comes the glory to boast about it until the next season rolls around, at which point the other teams can smell sweet revenge.

What is ESPN Fantasy Baseball?

Welcome to the world of fantasy baseball - ESPN Style! ESPN Fantasy Baseball is the closest thing you can find to buying your own professional franchise and becoming the team's coach, team manager, and president. All decisions are yours to make. And lucky for you, baseball is a game filled with unbiased player performance statistics. By using these statistics, you have everything you need to understand which players are performing well and which ones are not.

You make all "team manager" decisions on who will help your team and who may hurt your team, all season long. So, with 162 MLB games per team and a minimum of 27 at-bats per game for every team, peppered with strikeouts, walks, home runs and then mixed with flame-throwing pitchers and nasty closers (you get the idea), ESPN real-time stats are yours to plunder and uncover patterns in player performances that would make Theo Epstein proud!

Once you join a league, ESPN provides you with everything needed to build the best possible baseball team. And sure, you got your cut-throat, 11th-hour wheeling and dealing between armchair LMs, fully customizable league rules and scoring, multiple draft methods, live box scores, waivers, trades, free agency, custom player updates, a commissioner, league bulletin boards, sortable stats for all players, and more. There's plenty of room to sling trash- talk throughout your league, and enough stats and weekly analysis to make you the next Bill James. We just want to make sure you know what to do with it all! So sit back as we take you through the keys to ESPN fantasy baseball. Then get crackin' on creating the next fantasy dynasty!