Greetings baseball fans and welcome to another season of major league baseball. With the new season comes many exciting new changes. Every team is starting the season tied for first place and nobody is out of contention quite yet.

But perhaps the most exciting thing about the return of major league baseball for all of us stat-geeks is the beginning of a new fantasy baseball season.

That’s right everybody. Go and buy your new magazines, search to the ends of the Internet, and comb through all of those unknown new players in search of that one “sleeper” who is going to catapult your team into championship contention.

For those of you who don̢۪t know what fantasy baseball is all about, let me go ahead and give you a quick crash course on the finer points of the game.

Fantasy baseball is a game comprised of many of those pointless stats that all but a very few people in the world care about. The season starts with a draft that is usually held just before the beginning of the regular season. In this draft you simply choose players that you believe will put up the best stats at each position and give you the best chance to win.

There are many different ways the game can be played. The most prevalent is based on total points in head to head match-ups with the others in your league. To put it simply, if the team you put together through your draft scores more points than the team you are up against on that particular day, then you get a win.

The most important stats for players in fantasy baseball are pretty much the most important stats for those in real baseball. Most of your points are going to come from hits, home runs, runs scored, stolen bases, RBIs, wins (by the pitcher), strikeouts and saves.

There are many different options for the fantasy player who wants to join a league. In the early days of fantasy baseball, all of these stats were kept by the commissioner of the league. These days things are much easier.

Fantasy baseball is now primarily Internet-based with some of the more popular fantasy sites being ESPN.com, sportsline.com and yahoo.com. These sites make it very easy and inexpensive for the baseball fan to join a league.

You can get a group of friends together, have a private draft and give your information to one of these sites, which will easily keep all of your stats for you and maintain your league’s standings. Or, if don’t have a group of friends interested in fantasy baseball, you can participate in any number of free Web sites where you can join a league and play with people you don’t know.

So baseball fans, if your favorite team is one that is not typically very successful (i.e. Pirates, Royals, Devil Rays, etc.), and you normally lose interest in the season by the first month, fantasy baseball might be the thing for you. It makes it easy to maintain interest throughout the entire season, because it isn̢۪t about rooting for a team, it̢۪s about rooting for players.