Fantasy baseball is the reason baseball is still one of America’s most popular sports. (I love making blanket statements that nobody can prove. It’s fun. Try it sometime.)

Think about it. Baseball is boring unless it’s the playoffs or your favorite team is playing. Nobody wants to watch the Brewers play the Pirates. Heck, I’d rather watch a Spongebob Squarepants rerun.

So why do people still watch? Fantasy baseball. That Brewers-Pirates game that I would normally skip over for Spongebob? Now that Ryan Doumit of the Pirates and Rickie Weeks of the Brewers are on my fantasy team, I have a vested interest in the outcome of the game. I’m interested. That doesn’t happen without fantasy baseball.

But fantasy is more than that. See, guys like to be in charge of stuff. We take pride in it. In fantasy, we own our own team. We draft players, trade players, pick up free agents, talk trash to league opponents, everything under the sun. We’re the coach, general manager and owner. And we like it that way.

It adds to the arguments that we used to have, except now we’re more sophisticated. Our grandfathers argued over Willie, Mickey and the Duke. Now, we can argue over Albert, A-Rod and Hanley, except now instead of arguing batting average and home runs, we pull out on-base percentage (OBP), on-base plus slugging (OPS) and, if you’re really a stat geek, batting average on balls in play (BABIP””not exactly the catchiest acronym). We’re smarter than we used to be, and that’s thanks to fantasy.

Without fantasy baseball, the sport would not be as fun as it is now. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Sports like horseracing, boxing and, no offense to photo editor Matt Weir, hockey aren’t as followed as they used to be, partly because a large segment of the sports-watching population thinks they’re boring. Baseball has bucked that trend because of fantasy.

It’s time we embrace it. Now, excuse me, I have to go see how Doumit and Weeks are doing. I need a win this week.