BEGINNING OF HOBBY CAME IN '79.

Byline: Daily News

It started over dinner at New York's LaRotisserie Francaise restaurant in 1979 and has grown into a hobby that engages millions of baseball fanatics as well as millions of others who compete in fantasy sports leagues big and small, from the NFL to auto racing.

Daniel Okrent, now the public editor of The New York Times, and some friends were debating at that dinner how they could do a better job managing their favorite baseball teams than the real team officials. Thus Rotisserie Baseball was born at LaRotisserie.

Twenty-five years later it has become a cult.

At first participants had to keep track of statistics by hand from newspaper box scores. The advent of the Internet opened the hobby to more than the most hard-core fans. As participation grew, Internet businesses were formed that would keep track of a team's rosters, statistics and the league's standings for a fee.

There are more variations and the rules have changed somewhat but the game, now referred to as Fantasy Baseball, is largely the same as was drawn out at the New York restaurant in 1979.

Competitors form a league with each person ``owning'' a team. The owners get together in person or online and draft real professional baseball players based on how the owner thinks they will perform during the season. The league's teams compete in eight to 10 statistical categories, such as batting average, pitching wins and home runs. The team that accumulates the best overall statistics at the end of the season wins the championship.