Now a New York Times bestseller!
Fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy basketball, even fantasy sumo wrestling: the world of fantasy sports is huge, and still growing. Today, more than 35 million people in the United States and Canada spend hours upon hours each week on their fantasy sports teams. And as the Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst for ESPN, Matthew Berry is on the front lines of what has grown from a niche subculture into a national pastime.
In Fantasy Life, Berry celebrates every aspect of the fantasy sports world. Brilliant trash talk. Unbelievable trophies. Insane draft day locations. Shake-your-head-in-disbelief punishments. Ingenious attempts at cheating. And surprisingly uplifting stories that remind us why we play these games in the first place.
Written with the same award-winning style that has made Berry one of the most popular columnists on ESPN.com, Fantasy Life is a book for both hard-core fantasy players and people who have never played before. Between tales of love and hate, birth and death, tattoos and furry animal costumes, the White House Situation Room and a 126-pound golden pelican, Matthew chronicles his journey from a fourteen-year-old fantasy player to the face of fantasy sports for the largest sports media company in the world.
Fantasy will save your life. Fantasy will set you free. And fantasy life is most definitely better than real life. You’ll see.
For Those About to Draft: Salute Him My first encounter with Matthew Berry happened many years ago, back when he actually responded to personal emails. His writing in those days was raw, emotional, honest, and very very funny. More importantly, Berry had ideas about fantasy sports that I felt tackled the passion and heartbreak that those of us who played fantasy sports had to keep hidden from those around us, lest they give us the name ‘nerd.’ Being a school teacher, I was able to read the book today when it showed up on my…
Compared to his Columns… If you are reading this review, you are probably a member of the tribe. That is, the tribe of fantasy players. And love him or hate him, Matthew Berry is Moses. But maybe the only thing more sad than staying up late to play fantasy sports is staying up late to read about playing fantasy sports. Alas, that is how I spent last night. I pre-ordered this book on a whim months ago, and when it came, I figured it would be nothing but Matthew copying his ESPN columns and pasting them into book form. I…
Creating Your Own Fantasy Life Imagine if you could write for the top sitcom in America, then write movies in Hollywood, and actually make a ton of money doing it.That sounds like fun, right? Sounds like you would kill to have a dream job like that.Only Matt Berry did the exact opposite of that. He wrote 12 episodes of Married with Children. Wrote for a bunch of other shows. Even wrote a movie or two. And then gave it all up.I would never have done that unless someone was offering me…