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AROUND THE QUADS
Claiming to be the oldest continuously operating fantasy baseball league in existence, the Roach Motel League, with nine College alumni among its 12 members, will celebrate its 20th anniversary during the upcoming 2001 baseball season. A rotisserie baseball league is an organization in which participants, or "owners," field their own baseball teams by selecting ("drafting") individual major league players. Trades are permitted, but unlike major league baseball, there are salary caps in most rotisserie leagues, making Steinbrenner-like purchasing binges impossible and placing a premium on how owners use the money at their disposal. The league standings are determined by the players' cumulative statistics. "We started the league back in 1981, while we were all undergraduates, in an apartment house on 110th Street and Broadway nicknamed the Roach Motel because it was in terrible condition," says Ed Koral '83, the league's defending champion. Despite the members' graduation and departure from Morningside Heights, the league has remained intact and has become the primary means of staying in touch for this group of college friends. "Since Columbia, of course, the league's members have moved all over the country - and in some cases, to other countries - have married, had children, etc., but yet our annual league still survives," says Koral. "Our player draft takes place every spring," he continued. "No matter where we are, we all descend upon one destination - some of its locations have included New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and last year, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. - to have our auctions, make our picks, and to just catch up. An owner only misses the draft when there is no possibility of him getting there. On more than one occasion, that means making his picks by speakerphone while his wife is in labor." Benefiting from the explosion of communications technology in the past two decades, the Roach Motel League is decidedly more high-tech in the year 2001 than it was during its humble conception on 110th Street. "In our early years, everything was done by pencil and paper," Koral said, "and standings and updates were only sent out three of four times a year. Now, everything has changed; with faxes, e-mail, our own webpage and the stat service we hired to keep track of our records, we can get updates every day, making trades more frequent and the league more competitive." While there is a minor financial award for winning (usually just enough to cover airfare to the next year's draft), Koral asserts that no one participates with monetary motivations. "The new champion is crowned with a bottle of Yoo-hoo over the head," he says, "and I was lucky enough to get that shower last year. But more importantly, the goal of winning is to gain the respect and admiration of our group of friends. It's just a lot of fun." In addition to Koral, other Columbia members of the Roach Motel League are Mark Allen '81, Alan Saffran '81, Francisco Navarro '82, Steve Georgeson '82, Rob Clarick '83, Larry Hardin '83, Jaime Prieto '83 and Tim Hughes '83.
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