SAM DINGMAN: Arizona is famous for hosting major league baseball spring training.
Baseball is a year-round event in the state — after the regular season ends, teams send a select group of up-and-coming minor league players to the Arizona Fall League, which just wrapped its 2025 season this past weekend.
The Fall League is a chance for baseball players to prove themselves. But it’s also a unique opportunity for a certain kind of baseball fan.
WAYNE EDWARDS: I am smart enough to know that I don't know everything. So there's always something that you can learn.
DINGMAN: That's the voice of Wayne Edwards. He's standing in a conference room of a Sheraton in Mesa, wearing a Savannah Bananas baseball jersey. He's one of about 200 people who've come from all over the country for the 30th annual installment of the First Pitch Arizona, a fantasy baseball symposium. It's a four-day gathering of baseball geeks — their term, not mine — put on by a company called Baseball HQ. Wayne's been playing fantasy baseball since 2004.
EDWARDS: I actually have a title — I'm world renowned. I'm absolutely the worst fantasy baseball player ever in the history of the world.
DINGMAN: When I ask Wayne to back up this claim, he tells me that in over 20 years of playing fantasy baseball, he's won his league once, finished second another time, and one season, he came in third.
EDWARDS: And the rest of the time — doesn't matter.
DINGMAN: So I have to ask: What keeps you coming back every year?
EDWARDS: I love it — it's mind candy.
DINGMAN: Baseball HQ was founded by a guy named Ron Shandler. When Ron walks into the conference room, Wayne breaks into a big smile and introduces me.
EDWARDS: This is the godfather, by the way — that's Ron Shandler.
DINGMAN: Hello, nice to meet you.
SHANDLER: Hi — yeah, I started this conference 30 years ago, so, uh.
DINGMAN: Like everybody else at the hotel, Ron's a pretty hardcore fantasy baseball player. But unlike everybody else, Ron is also the author of a series of books called "Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster." He puts out a new edition every year. A lot of people at the Sheraton are carrying copies of last year's Forecaster under their arms. Ron's kind of a big deal.
Maybe you've seen the movie or read the book Moneyball, where a baseball team called the Oakland Athletics starts winning tons of games despite the fact that, on paper, they have a bunch of mediocre players. It's based on the true story of some baseball geeks — led by a guy named Billy Beane — who worked in the Athletics front office in the early 2000s.
They made up for their lack of raw talent and giant payroll by exploiting parts of the game that other teams didn't think about. While everybody else was focused on hitting home runs and racking up strikeouts, Beane honed in on more obscure statistics like on-base percentage. If the Athletics could figure out a way to clog up the basepaths, creating headaches and stress for opposing pitchers, they were likely to score a bunch of runs. So that's exactly what they did - and it worked. Before long, every other team in the major leagues was trying to figure out how Billy Beane doing it.
But Ron Shandler knew exactly how he was doing it.
SHANDLER: When "Moneyball” came out — I mean honestly, when "Moneyball” came out, I took a look at the things that Billy Beane was doing and I think to myself, "I've been doing this for three or four years already.”
DINGMAN: Ron was already a legend in the fantasy baseball world by that point — he says a lot of major league teams are only just now catching up to the ideas he's been writing about for years. Ron started Baseball HQ as a way to share his insights with fellow fantasy players looking for an edge in their leagues. He knew there were a lot of other people out there like him. But 30 years ago, it wasn't as easy to find them.
SHANDLER: Fantasy has always been those things — you know you hide in your basement and you don't really talk about. ... I mean, it's kind of a solitary pursuit.
DINGMAN: So Ron helped dream up the idea for the First Pitch symposium. He decided to time it so it would coincide with the Arizona Fall League, which, he figured, would be catnip for stat junkies like him. The Fall League is where major league teams send promising minor leaguers they hope will blossom into all-stars. Ron envisioned hordes of fantasy players spending a weekend together, salivating over Fall League standouts that would eventually be eligible for their rosters, and swapping strategies to win their leagues. He recruited some of the smartest people he knew to give talks. And in 1994, the inaugural First Pitch Arizona symposium finally happened.
SHANDLER: We had eight attendees, and 13 speakers.
DINGMAN: But as the years went by, First Pitch got bigger and bigger. These days, it attracts not just hundreds of fantasy team owners but prominent baseball writers and podcasters. And it's developed a reputation as a way to unlock your true baseball geek potential. At the Sheraton, I meet a guy named Duane who's on a pretty impressive run.
DUANE: I've won a championship, and I have a consistent streak of like top three finishes, for almost a decade, and so I feel like I'm doing really well.
DINGMAN: The fantasy players at First Pitch are hell-bent on finding their version of on-base percentage — what "Moneyball" referred to "market inefficiencies." I talk to a guy named Ryan who thinks it might be playing time — he spends hours analyzing how many innings teams let their players spend on the field, trying to see if it's a way to predict — something. To be honest, I wasn't really sure what — I'm not sure Ryan is either. He just thinks playing time might mean something. In the hotel lobby, I meet two women from Chicago - Jen Frankenthal and her friend Kara Brighstman. Kara's working on her own theory of the next market inefficiency.
KARA BRIGHSTMAN: I'm a clinical psychologist, and I'm really interested in people and personalities. And I think that's what I'm drawn to, is the way that I can make it through trying to get to know an entire player pool is because each individual is so interesting.
You know, getting to know the players and sort of where their passions lay, how they feel about the team that they're playing for, or the game of baseball in general, or the community that exists within baseball players. When those things are strong in an individual, I think that also shows up in how successfully they play.
DINGMAN: How do you measure that? Kara's friend Jen explains.
JEN FRANKENTHAL: You watch how the guy ... how he walks up on to the plate. Whether he's looking confident, feeling good. And then when he makes a mistake, is he like, Mmm, I'm mad! Or is he like, "Eh, I'll get ‘em next time.” Like how you read ‘em in real life.
DINGMAN: And speaking of real life — if all of this sounds like an absurd amount of time to spend obsessing about baseball, well — the baseball geeks know that. That's what they love about First Pitch.
FRANKENTHAL: Most of my friends' eyes glaze over when I start talking about fantasy baseball. Here, everyone's like, "Yeah — yeah!” Everybody's into it.
DINGMAN: A guy named Scott who's come all the way from Salem, Oregon, tells me that his favorite part of First Pitch is the stuff that happens outside the conference rooms.
SCOTT: Sometimes it's the hallway chats, the hallway conversations, or the late poker nights, and…
DINGMAN: What happens at the poker nights? Just more talking baseball?
SCOTT: I don't actually do the poker, but you can just hang out outside, and people are just ... You know everyone's friendly, everyone's easy to talk to — that's the craziest thing, is pretty much everyone here is easy going…
DINGMAN: Scott is standing with his friend Lucas — they've been in touch online for a while, but this is their first time meeting in person. I can tell they're really hitting it off.
DINGMAN: Is it possible to get tired of talking about baseball?
LUCAS: Not for me. I've been a baseball fan for 55 years, probably. I never get tired of it.
SCOTT: For me, I don't get tired of it. Although it does feel a little surreal, or not used to it. So you're like, "Oh wow, we've been talking baseball for like four days in a row."
DINGMAN: That feeling that First Pitch is a little surreal, in a good way. That's something I hear a lot at the Sheraton. Wayne, the guy in the Savannah Bananas jersey, says he's not the same person here as he is when he's back home in Georgia.
WAYNE: I'm at a party in my two-story brick front traditional Atlanta, the suburbs. I mean, come on. I mean come on, I'm a CPA and I'm a fantasy baseball nut. Mention that in a cocktail party, just put me in the room and hang a hat on me. Nobody's gonna want to talk to me. But you get here — we all love this, we all speak the same language.
DINGMAN: Later in the evening, there's a special meeting in another conference room. It's for people who are at the symposium for the first time. One of the organizers, Brent Hershey, stands at the front of the room, and welcomes the rookies. He asks everybody to look down at their nametags, where they'll find a red dot, and a little No. 1.
BRENT HERSHEY: It is basically so that anyone that has been here before knows very quickly that you're a first timer. And we go out of our way // that it's always been an inclusive place like this. // And part of that on those of us who have been here for a long…to reach out to you guys.
DINGMAN: Brent says that means the new folks shouldn't be shy about asking for a ride to a fall league game, or an invite to the poker table. The point, he says, is to find your people. Especially if you're used to being a hat rack.
HERSHEY: You can come here totally by yourself, and like, meet new friends.
DINGMAN: And with that, it's time for that night's Fall League game. Before they head out, Brent makes sure the rookies know that when they get there, they don't have to stay in their seats and watch. A lot of people like to stand around and talk, he says. And that's OK, too.
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