American’s pastime is baseball, but if you go into any baseball clubhouse in early August, you’ll find out the real pastime of many professional baseball players. In major league and minor league clubhouses all across the country, fantasy football leagues are on prominent display.
Adam Wainwright once drafted the Falcons defense with the first pick of a fantasy football draft
Fantasy football has exploded in popularity in recent years, and it is no different in baseball clubhouses. Like anybody else across the country, ballplayers are trying to find the right fantasy football sleepers and swindle teammates out of a great quarterback in a trade.
It is fitting, then, that baseball players are using fantasy football to raise money for charity. St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Adam Wainwright created Big League Impact, which provides fans an opportunity to play fantasy football against some of their favorite players. BLI has leagues running in eight major league cities, with a big leaguer ready to welcome you in each city.
Wainwright created the charity because he wanted to combine his desire to give back with his love of fantasy football. In an interview with SB Nation, Wainwright discussed fantasy football, and how he came up with the idea to turn it into charity.
Wainwright has been playing fantasy football since 2001. He learned about the game while playing in the minor leagues. Then teammate Kelly Johnson introduced him to the game, and the Georgia native had an inauspicious debut.
“I can remember playing my first league, I had the first overall pick, and I picked the Atlanta Falcons defense. I knew nothing about fantasy football. I just knew that defense wins championships, is what I was told. And the Atlanta Falcons had a couple new defensive players. And my second pick was Michael Vick. He was a rookie quarterback, and I’m looking back at that thinking, ‘Golly, what a donation that was.’”
Given the number of people who proclaim themselves fantasy football experts, I would love to see one of these experts draft a defense in the first round, just to increase the degree of difficulty for winning a league. Maybe this can become a thing for people who get bored dominating their league year in and year out.
Wainwright first started developing the idea of fantasy football for charity over batting practice in St. Louis. He and other players talked fantasy football trades and roster moves throughout the latter half of the baseball season, and the idea for a charity league came into being. Wainwright and his brother, an attorney, worked out the kinks, and Big League Impact launched for the 2013 fantasy football season.
The first season in St. Louis involved four leagues, with four professional athletes and 44 people signed up. The leagues raised $120,000, with costs of $8,000. In 2014, they expanded to five cities, including Cincinnati, Atlanta, New York (Mets) and Detroit. They raised $452,000, and costs were $30,000. In light of recent issues with athlete charities being money losers, the efficiency of Big League Impact is impressive.
In 2015, Big League Impact is expanding to eight cities, with Max Scherzer also moving from Detroit to Washington, D.C. Scherzer joined on last season, and will be back this year at Nationals Park. Scherzer got into fantasy football in college, and echoed Wainwright’s statements about the intensity of it in major league baseball clubhouses. “When you’re in a clubhouse, I swear, sometimes batting practice turns into GM meetings. You have pitchers going to pitchers trying to make trades. It gets pretty cutt-throat.”
The leagues benefit a wide range of charities, with each player selecting the local charity to benefit. Wainwright has partnered with Operation Food Search in St. Louis. They are a food bank that provides book bags stocked full of food for kids headed into the weekend. Many of these kids will get their best meal of the day at school, so this provides them and their family with more food. Wainwright’s leagues will also benefit Crisis Aid, which provides shelter for victims of domestic violence and sex trafficking.
The leagues will split money 50/50 between local and international charities. The international charity benefiting is Water Missions International. They work to provide sustainable water and sanitation solutions for people in developing countries and disaster areas.
If you are ready to take on one of a host of major league baseball players, head over to Big League Impact. The eight cities each host a handful of leagues with open spots. Here is a complete list of cities and players involved in Big League Impact fantasy football leagues. League entry fee and draft date in parenthesis are listed in parenthesis, and further details are available in the links.
Atlanta ($2,000, August 31) - John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, AJ Pierzynski and Shelby Miller
Cincinnati ($2,000, August 25) - Skip Schumaker, Brayan Pena, Zack Cozart, Todd Frazier
Minnesota ($1,000, August 29) - Kyle Gibson, Torii Hunter, Blaine Boyer and Shane Robinson
New York (Mets) ($2,000, September 2) - David Wright, Matt Harvey, Micheal Cuddyer, Jon Niese and Daniel Murphy
Pittsburgh ($1,000, August 29) - Neil Walker, Charlie Morton, Jeff Locke and Tony Watson
San Francisco ($2,000, August 28) - Hunter Pence, others TBD
St. Louis ($2,955, September 4) - Adam Wainwright, Michael Wacha, Matt Holliday, Matt Carpenter, Lance Lynn, Trevor Rosenthal, John Lackey, Ozzie Smith and Jon Hamm
Washington, D.C. ($2,500, August 22) - Max Scherzer, Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg, Matt Thornton, Ryan Zimmerman, Jordan Zimmermann and Denard Span
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