Last night I had the opportunity to attend one of Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Forums in Washington, DC. I had never been to a fantasy baseball seminar before, so I was not really sure what to expect. After a few year of trial and error, Ron Shandler has hit on a format that seems to work really well. The whole program was broken into nine innings (or sections), and the information that doled out was broken into manageable and themed chunks (ex: 5 pitchers at workload risk).

Plus, the crowd was kept regularly engaged by answering some Jeopardy-style questions that are part of a competition against other First Pitch Forums. To illustrate a point about high-risk, high-reward pitchers, a mock auction was conducted with volunteers from the audience. The balance of audience participation and expert advice (that is why people are there after all) worked well and kept the crowd engaged for the full three hour session.

While the fantasy baseball advice doled out by Shandler and company was top-notch what struck me as the most interesting was the audience. The majority of the crowd had been to one of these sessions before, so these were definitely your much more serious fantasy baseball players. In fact, after hearing how the crowd asked questions, discussed issues, responded to questions, I can certainly say that if someone picked 12 people at random from that room and put them into a league, that would be a very competitive fantasy baseball league.

Entrance to one of these forums is $39 in advance or $49 at the door. While that price may be a little steep, I would liken this to going to a play for the night. Spending over three hours talking about fantasy baseball is not a terrible way to spend a night (your significant other may differ, but that is another issue).