The Winds of Change

Shh! Listen... Do you hear that?

Just listen.

Do you hear something?

You're not listening.

It's just a faint whisper brushing through the treetops, like the soft rustle of crinoline petticoats in a Southern belle's skirt as she sashays down a dusty country lane.

What is that noise, you ask?

It's the winds of change.

We've felt this wind before, my friends, gloriously cool upon our cheek.

On a misty November day in 1892, William 'Pudge' Heffelfinger accepted $500 to suit up and play football for the Allegheny Athletic Association club, helping them to a win in their game against their rival, the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

And thus, professional football was born.

The winds of change stirred that day.

In 1961, a Bucknell University math student named Hal Richman had the idea for a tabletop baseball game using cards that had statistics of players in past seasons. He called it Strat-O-Matic, and it became a huge hit. With some rolls of the dice and consulting of cards for various major-leaguers, a stat-obsessed kid could construct season after season. Through the years, Strat-O-Matic fended off hours of summer boredom for countless youngsters.



More winds. More change.

In the summer of 1980, a New York magazine editor named Dan Okrent had the idea to 'draft' various baseball players onto fantasy teams and compete with a group of his friends. They would meet at a Manhattan restaurant for lunch called La Rotisserie Francaise to play. They called their new hobby 'rotisserie baseball'.

And just like that, fantasy sports were born.

The winds of change were blowing mightily that day.

Now, on a recent fall day in 2007, YouBeQB was launched. So if you close your eyes and listen intently, you can hear that same wind -- infused with traces of the voice of Pudge Heffelfinger, the click of Strat-O-Matic dice on a '60s tabletop, and the smells of a Manhattan eatery -- starting to kick up again.

Congratulations to you for being one of the first to recognize a new wave in interactive sports. Enjoy in it; bask in it.

YouBeQB has arrived.

And it's here to stay.