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Hey, Hello, I am Jeff and welcome to History and
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Factoids about today. Today is July the second. Now, you
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guys know, I love sports and I love history. On
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my coast, he combined the two. Yeah, he has a
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great book out there on the history of fanneries, the
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History of Fantasy Sports. And Larry, why don't you tell
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everybody a little bit about yourself?
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Okay? Well, I.
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Am retired now. I play golf and I play fantasy sports.
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I'm well known as a fantasy sports player. I'm in
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two of the big experts leagues, Labor and how Wars.
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And twenty thirteen, I wrote a book called Winning Fantasy Baseball.
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It was an Amazon bestseller.
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And I've recently come out with a book, as you
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just mentioned, in the History of Fantasy Sports, and the
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subtitle is the Stories of the People who made It happen.
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Yeah, And it's not a textbook out there. It's an
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entertaining book. It's got stories and it's not boring at all.
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Right, that's you know when I got the idea. I
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got the idea for it because, like I said, I
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played fantasy sports for years and I've always wondered, like,
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how did this all happen. You know, it went from
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ideas people had for games years ago to now, let's say,
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worldwide phenomenon with millions and millions of people playing. There's
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more than fifty million people in the US play fantasy sports.
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That's age eighteen and up. That doesn't include all the
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people under ahteen who play. There are two hundred million
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people who play fantasy cricket in India and it's a
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multi billion dollar industry. You know, everybody who's familiar.
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With it now.
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So I've always wondered, like, how did we go from
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these ideas where we are now? Nobody had ever written
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a book about this or told the story.
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So that's why I got the idea.
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And when I began, my idea was, and we'll find
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out who did what when tell the story of how
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this all happened. As I started researching, I started to
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learn all these interesting, fascinating stories of what people had done.
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And so I realized very early on, I can just
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tell the story of what happened and I get the
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job done, but it would also come off as a
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very buoying research paper. But by telling the stories of
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the people, it would make it interesting and an easy
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read and that's what's happening. The reviews are great, people
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say it's easy to read, it's fascinating. Even people who
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never played fantasy sports find it interesting because it's not
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really about fantasy sports so much or how to play.
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It's about the stories of the people and what they
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did well.
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When did it start well, It.
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Depends on how you define the start there were you
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know for me. For me, the definition of fantasy sports
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that you know, the modern day phenomenon, like I just
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described that is games that are based on events that
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have not occurred. So like, if you're doing fantasy football
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this year, you're going to draft the team soon and
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then it's going to all depend on what happens as
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the season unfolds this fall. There have been games in
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the past, like people make word of, like Opera, Strata
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Matic or other games that are based on professional athletes
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but what they did in the past, Like you can
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get a Stratamatic game that's based on what everybody did
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last year or five years ago. So the distinction for
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me with modern fantasy sports is it's based on events
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that haven't occurred yet. But the games like happened Strata
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Maatic and some board games you know, in my opinion,
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were precursors to fantasy sports. And the first chapter of
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the book is about all these precursors. You can even
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go back to the eighteen hundreds. In the eighteen hundreds,
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they came out with games where like you would be
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a board and you'd slide a penny with your finger
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and it would go into a spring activated bat and
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hit the penny into holes on the board for like
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a single double home run. So you know, if you
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wanted to find that as fantasy sports, you know, that
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would be kind of like the first ever fantasy sports game.
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And then it evolved from there.
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That's come a long way, mostly billion dollars two hundred
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million in India. All right, we do a national day.
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Do you know what today's national day is?
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No, I don't.
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Today is National Disco Day. So were you a disco
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guy back in the day?
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My like disco music, Like, I've never been a dancer.
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You know what I was thinking about this, I think
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Americans are too lazy for disco now because if you
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remember back then, you really had to fix yourself up
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if you were going to the disco tech.
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Yeah, well, you know, people people like Daan sing's just
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different than disco.
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Now, that's the reason we're celebrating as far as I
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know right well, the reason we're celebrating today. In nineteen
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seventy four, Glory Gaynor, she released the very first disco
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song was never can say goodbye.
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Day.
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I'm not going to put you on the spot or anything.
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I know. You have that really good book about the
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history of our For fantasy baseball, do you know, is
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there a single Colorado Rocky that anybody would pick down
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this fantasy football team or baseball team?
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Well? Sure, I mean, first of all, when you're talking
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about hitting, there's you know a lot of Rockies are
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good hitters, and you know in that stadium it's an
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advantage to hitters. As far as pictures, you know, people
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like to say, oh, don't take any Colorado Rocket pictures
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because you know the park is so good for hitters.
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But there are skill some exceptions, or some pitchers that
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are useful for fantasy even though they're pitching in Colorado,
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and some of them you might want to put on
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the bench when they're pitching in Colorado and put them
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in your lineup when they're on the road.
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Yeah, I didn't think about that. I mean half the
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games are on the road, so I mean you can
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sit them when they're own.
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Yeah, you know, it depends only but you know, I know,
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well the athletics, it's kind of like the same thing
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that athletics are playing in a triple A park. So
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the hitting murs is you know, crazy girls probably as
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good as Colorado.
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Right, all right, let's see what happened in entertainment on
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July seventh or July second. Let's go back to two
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thousand and seven. Numb one album was Big Dad Daddy
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by Toby Keith. Rihanna and Jay Z had the numb
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one song with umbrella.
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I'm in the Swish Shine to get.
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The I Told you Hobby forever alas friends of the Thumbs,
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to get out of the raining and all down wills
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to have each other you can playing my Umbrella.
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Montgomery Gentry had the number one country song with Lucky Man,
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but I'm I'm a lucky man. God's giving me a
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bruder Fad Got a House and pe Lands running good.
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Taking like the Sai.
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The number one book was Lean Mean thirteen by Jene Ivanovitch.
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The top move was Transformers Now in the War Between
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the Good Autobots and the evil Decepticons. They come to Earth.
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A teenager holds a clue to the Ultimate Power starts
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Shia Labuff, Megan Fox, Josh new hammel Tyrese Gibson. So
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how many how many leagues do you usually play a
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year in, like baseball or football?
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Usually four or five?
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Are you Are your teams really a part or do
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you are you able to usually kind of keep them?
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So you have kind of the same core players.
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Usually it's a lot of similar players, you know, maybe
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half somewhat similar and have somewhat different but you know,
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the form some of the formats are different. Like you know,
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a couple of the baseball leagues I'm in you only
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have American League players and the other leagues you have
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players in both leagues, So obviously those are gonna be quite.
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Different, right, So what got you into fantasy sports In
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the beginning?
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I was driving around Boston one day and I heard
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an ad on the radio for something that sounded interesting,
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and it turned out to be a fantasy baseball league.
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This is this is about nineteen ninety two roughly, So
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I called and I you know, I was interested. I
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joined the baseball league. We did a draft by conference call.
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And that's how I got into it originally. Now, if
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you asked a thousand people how did you get into
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fantasy sports, you probably not. Can hear anybody else ever,
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say because I heard an ad.
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On the radio and the conference call.
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You know, people people get into it mostly mostly it's
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word of mouth. They hear from a you know, from
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a friend or you know, maybe this son D and
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all the somewhere in nine. In nineteen eighty, Dan Oakrint
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started the first like a you know, real modern fantasy
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baseball league, and in nineteen eighty four Bantam Books wanted
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them to publish a book about it. In nineteen eighty four,
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Oakprint published a book about his fantasy baseball league, and
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thousands of people bought that book and started playing fantasy
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baseball because of that book. One of the people who
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bought that book and started playing fantasy baseball was Matthew Berry,
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who is now, you know, like the most well known
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fantasy analyst you know, on TV or you know, anywhere.
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And he was fourteen years old when he bought that
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book and started playing fourteen.
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Yep, the finding career moment, there wasn't it If you
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had the number one choice in the baseball draft, who
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would you pick?
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Well show Heyo Tani is pretty much the consensus number
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one kept these days, although it's kind of odd because
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you know, he's he's a hitter and he's a pitcher.
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So some some leagues you can use him as a
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hitter or a picture. Some leagues they have they let
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you draft two separate shows. Hey Toni's one is a
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picture one as a hitter.
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Oh, that'd be interesting sometimes, I guess of his inn league,
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but you might get him to be kind of complicated.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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My book one of one of the one of the
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quick stories. In my book, there's a there's a you know,
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the book is full of stories of entrepreneurs that started
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different things in the in fantasy sports. I mean, you know,
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originally there was nothing, and people saw the need for
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magazines and started magazines that saw the need for staff services.
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When when computers came out, they realized that you could
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be staffs on a computer.
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And so it's full of these stories of entrepreneurs.
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And there's one one entrepreneurs he's in the book where
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it started a knee service and the guy's dad is
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a huge is now a huge show. Hey o County fan.
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He's ninety two years old. This guy's dad is ninety
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two years old, still plays santasy baseball. He's obsessed with
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sho Heyo County. He stays he's on the East Coast,
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but he stays up late to watch the West Coast
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games for Seal County play.
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He's worth, He's worth one of the pardon I said,
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he's worth staying up for.
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Oh yeah, yeah.
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One of the stories you know, sincere since you're neire
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Denbrah mentioned there's a some brothers, the Grogan brothers, in
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about eighty five, I think it was roughly, they started
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playing fantasy football and they realized, you know, there's like
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nowhere to get information for this, and they decided, let's
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start a magazine. So they put together this kind of
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not not real pfessionally done, but somewhat of a magazine.
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They put it together with fantasy football information, and they
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went to Johnny's newsstand in Denver, and they convinced Johnny
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to take ten poplies of this news letter slash magazine.
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And Johnny said, all right, well, I'll call you in
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a couple of weeks and tell you how it did.
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By the time the Grogramers got home, Johnny called and
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said where he sold out? Plea need more poplies.
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Yeah, that's something and there's something about that, that's for sure.
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Man.
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All Right, let's see what happened in history on July
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the second, let's about seventeen seventy six, the Continent of Congress.
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They voted to adopt the resolution for the Declaration of Independence. See,
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the vote was unanimous except for New York. New York
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had stayed from the vote. They actually didn't vote for
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the Declaration of Independence until it was all over on
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July ninth. But it didn't matter. The Declaration of Independence
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move forward. It was edited by Congress and it'll be
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adopted on July the fourth, seventeen seventy eight, Massachusetts. That's
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a sheeebas spooner. Yeah, she was hung. She was her
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and her she had her boyfriend and two other guys
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kill her husband and throw him down a well. Well
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after that, she was the first woman ever in the
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courts to go through capital punishment in US history. See,
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I mean we're not talking like Salem Witz strous. This
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is the first time a court said no, go ahead
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and kill her. Eighteen forty three in Charleston, South Carolina,