July 7, 2004
Original fantasy baseball league still going strong
By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist
It was 79° and partly cloudy outside DiOrio’s Café in Somers Point, the type of early summer afternoon
that has become common at the Jersey shore. Joe Blandino was reading the latest issue of Sports
Illustrated when his jaw dropped and the magazine fell from his hands onto the table in front of him.
In the June 21 issue of America’s sports bible, writer Chris Ballard had an interesting piece about fantasy
baseball. Blandino, who is the athletic director at Bridgeton High School, was a longtime baseball fantasy
leaguer and was anxious to see what he could learn from the story.
What he learned eventually caused him to write a letter to Sports Illustrated.
The SI story gave Dan Okrent, an occasional writer for Sports Illustrated, now an editor at the New York
Times, credit for creating fantasy (or rotisserie) baseball. Okrent has long been a force among fantasy
leaguers and was inducted into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame.
The story explained how Okrent had created the rules for fantasy league baseball on a flight from Hartford
to Austin in 1979. It was that fact that got Blandino’s attention. Because, by the time Okrent had started
working on his fantasy rules on that 1979 flight, Blandino and a half-dozen or so fellow graduates of
Glassboro State College had already completed four seasons of what would become fantasy league
baseball.
“I created what we called the Baseball Owners Club during down time in school in early 1976,” Blandino
said. “I was looking for something that would keep our group together and we all loved baseball. So, I put
together all the rules and created by-laws. They were virtually identical to the rules that most people use
today.”
Blandino got together with the other guys and worked out some subtle changes in their Owners Club. The
group included Dennis D’Orio, who lives in Ocean City and owns DiOrio’s in Somers Point; Gary Cocking
of Margate, a teacher and former coach at Buena; Bob Gruccio, another teacher who once coached
football at Buena; John Coia, a teacher who also owns garden markets in Vineland; Willie Daddario, owner
of Eugene Printing in Bridgeton; Art Frank, President-CEO of Casino-Rama in Ontario, Canada; and Jim
Hoagland of Somers Point, a teacher in Egg Harbor Township.
Joe Morgan was the first player selected in their 1976 draft. “We each chipped in either $25 or $50, we
can’t remember exactly,” said DiOrio. The group has complete stats for each of its 28 seasons but not
complete financial details. “This year, it was $600 to enter.”
Not only did the guys from Glassboro start their league four seasons before Okrent got his brainstorm,
they also inspired the creation of at least one other such league.
“We had season tickets to the Phillies,” said DiOrio, “and there was a guy from Haddonfield named Mike
Dunleavy who sat right in front of us. One day, after a couple of seasons, he asked us whom we were
rooting for. He’d hear me cheering for Joe Morgan and Joe rooting for Johnny Bench. Or Gary would be
shouting for Steve Garvey and Art for Ron Cey. So, we explained our league to him. A few games later, we
brought him our by-laws. He started his own league in 1979 and I think he’s still got it going where he lives
now, in Scottsdale, Arizona.”
In those days, many of the “owners” were coaching high school football so they arranged to have their
end-of-season awards banquet on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. “Our teams were never in the high
school playoffs,” said DiOrio, “so it was the first weekend we didn’t have a game. We still meet on the
Saturday before Thanksgiving, frequently at a casino where we all get rooms for the night.”
The Baseball Owners Club has also had a couple of international drafts. “We normally hold our drafts in
late March,” said DiOrio. “In 2001, we went to Art’s casino in Orillia, in Ontario. And, in the early 80s when
Art was in the Bahamas, we went down there.”
The competition in this club has been close, with everybody winning at least once. “Gary is the New York
Yankees of our club,” said DiOrio. “He has easily won the most. But some of them have been very close.”
In 2002, Cocking and Coia tied at the end of the season and needed two tiebreakers to determine a
champion. Last year, DiOrio lost by one-hundredth of a point in one of his pitchers’ ERA. “If the guy had
pitched one more shutout inning,” he said, “I’d have won.”
Since there are only seven owners in the club (Hoagland stopped in the early 90s), each team is like an
all star team. DiOrio, for example, has an outfield of Vladimir Guerrero, Manny Ramirez and J.D. Drew.
Blandino has Manny Mora, Lance Berkman and Andruw Jones. Another guy has Barry Bonds, Garry
Sheffield and Hideki Matsui.
When the club started, the stats were compiled by tedious research in The Sporting News. Now, there are
450 websites that break them all down for you. “The way we do it, keeping on top of the stats daily is not
quite as important,” DiOrio said. “We don’t have interim contests. Everything is decided at the end of the
season.”
So, now you understand why Blandino and his fellow owners were so surprised by the story in Sports
Illustrated. Maybe the Baseball Owners Club was not the very first such fantasy league. Maybe somebody
in Oregon created a similar competition back in the 1960s. But one thing is for sure. Joe Blandino put
fantasy baseball together in Bridgeton more than three years earlier than the guy who is given credit for
the creation.
Though the SI story caught him by surprise, Blandino isn’t really that upset by the lack of credit. “Our club
did exactly what it was supposed to do,” he said. “It kept our college group together. And we’re looking
forward to our 30th season next year.”
Read more of
Tom Williams' columns