Le Rotisserie San Francisco

[Crash Course]

This is an amazing story.

This year, the winner of a select fantasy league, in which people use the statistics of real-life players to simulate games, will get an actual front-office job with the San Francisco Giants. The Giants say the incoming special assistant for baseball operations will report to General Manager Brian Sabean and will help evaluate players, prepare for the amateur draft, and crunch statistics in the database.

A cynic might suggest the person will also need a working knowledge of Sabean's coffee preferences.

Although the Giants aren't saying how much the new hire will be paid, only saying the rookie would draw less than $100,000, the person will have to quit whatever job he or she now holds to sign the one-year contract. Of course, that should not be a problem. The winner of the contest presumably spends much of his or her workday furtively playing fantasy baseball anyway.

Baseball has really come a long way on the fantasy front. It was just a few years back that MLB would not even acknowledge it because they considered it gambling. Now, when they see it can line their pockets too, they're all over it.