Rotisserie participants can choose from a wide array of sites that will collect stats and keep standings -- freeing them up to focus on the important stuff. Friedland and his friends picked SportsLine Commissioner (http://baseball9.commissioner.com) to be the core site for their league. Each league pays a sign-up fee of $99.95. The league gets a customized Web page that tracks statistics and overall league standings (updates are posted each morning). For participants who want to wheel and deal during the season, the site also keeps track of players who, because they were never drafted, remain free agents. "You have to know how to play the market," says Friedland.
Keep Your Head in the Game: When it comes to fantasy baseball, there are as many competing philosophies as there are teams. Some owners crave power hitters, some preach speed. Friedland's view is that you can always find an outfielder with impressive offensive stats. The trick is to fill the traditionally weak-hitting positions, such as shortstop, with players who can hit for average and knock in a few runs. That's why he used his first pick this year to draft Derek Jeter, shortstop for the Yankees. After he got Jeter, Friedland went after pitching.
Friedland was happy with his draft. But he's always looking to strengthen his team with a trade or a free-agent signing. That's why he turns to Fantasy Insights (www.fantasybaseballnews.com), a free service that offers injury updates, scouting reports on players -- even information on minor-league prospects. Friedland also pays $24.99 per season to subscribe to Fantistics Insider Baseball (http://fantistics.com). It provides a daily email alert that contains news about injuries, and, every two weeks, it offers trade suggestions, with reports on the top 20 "overachieving" and the top 20 "underachieving" fantasy players. Its "Power Stats" database is sortable by 18 categories. "I love numbers," says Friedland. "The first thing I do every morning is check the Web to see what's happened with my team. I want to know before anyone else does."
Coordinates: Benjamin Friedland, bfriedland@i-traffic.com
Team Player: Kevin Knarr, 30, a project manager at one of the Big 5 consulting firms, loves cycling. He's a fan of the professional tour in the United States and in Europe, and he's a competitive cyclist himself. When he raced for the University of New Hampshire, Knarr was able to maintain a rigorous training schedule. (To stay in shape, bike racers ride hundreds of miles per week.) These days, though, he travels up to 100,000 miles a year on business (by plane, of course). So it's hard to stay current with who's riding well on the professional circuit -- let alone to stay in top form himself. But where there's a Web, there's a way.
Game Plan: If you think it's hard to follow LA sports teams from Seattle, try following European cycling from the United States. Knarr has attended races both stateside and in Europe, and he plans to watch part of the 1999 Tour de France in person. ("It's not much of a spectator sport," he admits. "A pack of racers whizzes by you, and there's a big sprint for the finish. Bodies and bikes blur, and you're left wondering who won.")
Knarr doesn't find much cycling coverage in his local paper, the Washington Post, and it's not likely that "ESPN Sports-Center" will open with this lead: "Forty kilometers from the finish, Lance Armstrong launched a daring attack in the second stage of the Tour of Netherlands." So, to keep in touch with his favorite sport, Knarr keeps turning to the Web. One regular stop is the cycling area on Eurosport.com (www.eurosport.com/cycling/cycling.htm), which offers a calendar of upcoming races, in-depth coverage of teams, and updates on races. His other favorite site is VeloCity: Cycling news from Europe (www.worldmedia.fr/tour).
Keep Your Head in the Game: Knarr lives in Washington, DC, and he does the bulk of his training and racing in the mid-Atlantic region. But he also likes to bring his bicycle with him when he's on the road. In the past two years, he's trained in London, São Paulo, San Francisco, and Dallas, among other places.
How does he figure out where to ride in cities that he's never visited? How, in a strange town, does he find the steepest hills to test his legs? He uses several Web tools. One resource is a site maintained by the Squadra Coppi cycling club (www.squadracoppi.com). The club is named after the great Italian bike racer Fausto Coppi, and the Web site not only offers detailed training-ride maps -- it organizes rides as well. Before a recent business trip to northern California, Knarr planned his rides by visiting BikeCal.com (www.bikecal.com), which offers a wide range of resources, including routes for more than 200 rides. When he's closer to home, he goes to the Mid-Atlantic Cycling Pages (www.macp.org) for training information, as well as race descriptions, entry-fee listings, and directions on how to get to each race.
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