By JIMMY D / Fantasy baseball lawsuit update| Jimmy's archive

MLB DOES NOT STAND for Mostly Lawsuit Baloney, nor is it mentioned in the dictionary meaning of litigious.

Instead, you’ll find descriptions such as ‘excessively or readily inclined to litigate’ and ‘inclined to dispute or disagree; argumentative.’

Baseball’s short-sighted money grab attempt to monopolize fantasy sports and force contest and game providers to pay whopping licensing fees to use player stats is back in the news.

MLB Advanced Media lost in court in August, when a judge ruled in favour of a fantasy sports company (the parent of CDMSports.com) and declared that companies do not need to pay for the licensing rights because (among other things) stats are public domain.

It seemed pretty open-and-shut, but Jimmy D knew the MLB would be back. They had just paid $50 million to the players association over five years for rights to use their names and likeness in fantasy and other stats-based projects. They were not going to let some judge interfere with their profit machine.

So, six months later, MLBAM is back appealing that case. And looky, looky, they have brought the business arms of the NHL, NFL, NBA, NASCAR, golf – hell, even the WNBA has taken up arms in the crusade against all those nasty fantasy entrepreneurs who built the business and created a market for it.

Baseball credits the allegedly steroid-fuelled homer derbies between McGwire and Sosa in the 1990s and the homer exploits of Barry Bonds after them for bringing the sport back from the brink of irrelevancy.

Baloney. Fantasy saved baseball by introducing cool and engaging games and stats features and by making and what thanks do they get? Well, they want to essentially put them all out of business and give rights only to Yahoo!, CBS Sportsline, AOL and other online dynamos who can afford to pay million-dollar licensing fees.

God bless America.

Land of the free.

Home of the brave.

Bastion of the litigious.

Baseball never pressed the issue when fantasy was just a nice little accompaniment to the real thing. Hell, if those kooky fantasy guys wanted to spend all their time and money helping to promote the game, let them go ahead!
But then the numbers started getting out: an estimated 15 million playing fantasy sports and shelling out an estimated $1.5 billion to do it.

All of a sudden, MLBAM was sticking up for the privacy rights of the players. What a pile of road apples.

For the uninitiated or un-Hip out there in Jimmy Nation, you can look that up in the dictionary too as ‘a piece of horse manure on or at the side of a road.’
Jimmy will keep tabs on this, as there will be more follow-up on this in February.

Vezina = Hart in 2007
Martin Brodeur has only won the Vezina Trophy twice is his annoying career (annoying because as a Flyer fan, Jimmy D often curses the Devils). He never won the Hart Trophy as league MVP, a trick turned by Jose Theodore in 2002 and by Dom Hasek twice in Buffalo in the late 1990s.

This could be his year. As Jimmy watches at the all-star break, he predicts that if it’s not Brodeur, it will be either Roberto Luongo or Miikka Kiprusoff marching off with the coveted hardware double.

What has supposedly over-the-hill Marty managed to do for the Devils and for the fantasy rosters of those who picked him up?

He leads the league in shutouts (8), wins (29), goals-against-average (2.01), shots faced and saves made and is second to Chris Mason in save percentage at .928. And you can't point to the presence of Scott Stevens, Scott Niedermayer or game-breaking forwards as the reason.

Luongo has been absolutely lights out for the Canucks in the past two months, who have no business being tied for the Northwest lead. Anyone who grabbed him in the September draft has been rewarded handsomely.

Ditto Kiprusoff, who is making a strong Vezina case again this year. The Flames have another MVP candidate in Jarome Iginla and a stronger supporting cast than last year’s team, making Kipper a longshot in Jimmy’s estimation.

And so nobody has to email Jimmy asking about the only other goalies to win the Hart, they were Jacques Plante for the 1962 Habs, Al Rollins of the 1954 Chihawks, Charlie Rayner of the 1950 Rangers, and Roy Worters of the 1929 New York Americans.

Super Sunday
Peyton Manning finally got it done against his nemesis Patriots. The Bears took advantage of the sloppy Saints to join the Colts in Miami for Super Bowl XLI.

In a season so wide open, it’s nice to see someone other than the Patriots on Super Sunday, although the AFC seemed intent on handing it to them on a silver platter.

The underdog is 5-1-1 ATS the past seven Super Bowls (the Colts are favored by seven), but Jimmy sees Manning going to work early and often.

NHL all-star break, so some deserved time off, but there is often a swap consummated here so don’t fall asleep at the fantasy wheel.

Stay busy and stay lucky.

Jimmy D