Fantasyland
By Sam Walker
(Penguin (Non-Classics), Paperback, 9780143038436, 368pp.)
Publication Date: March 2007
Categories: Baseball - Essays & Writings, Fantasy Sports
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Every spring, millions of Americans prepare to take part in one of the oddest, most obsessive, and most engrossing rituals in the sports pantheon: Rotisserie baseball, a fantasy game where armchair fans match wits by building their own teams. In 2004, Sam Walker, a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, decided to explore this phenomenon by talking his way into Tout Wars, a league reserved for the nation's top experts. The result is one of the most sheerly entertaining sports books in years and a matchless look into the heart and soul of our national pastime.
Sam Walker is a senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal and appears frequently on ESPNews.
Most fantasy baseball books have no plot, no dialogue, no women — which is just fine with Tony Horwitz. But when Horwitz wants a little story with his stats, he picks up Fantasyland, by Sam Walker. More at NPR.org
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A vivid journey into baseball's bizarro world . . . Mr. Walker not only finds the humor in this world of the obsessed, he also finds the drama. (Dan Barry, The New York Times)
Brilliantly funny. (The Washington Post)
I have read many books on baseball, but none of them approach the delight, the zaniness, the lunacy, and the sheer reading pleasure of Sam Walker's Fantasyland. (Buzz Bissinger, author of Three Nights in August and Friday Night Lights
The most entertaining book ever written about pretend sports. (Chuck Klosterman, Play: The New York Times Sports Magazine)
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