Can you believe this? Fantasy baseball newsletter publisher Ron Shandler moves into real life, briefly.

With the exception of investment advisories, I suppose, as a rule newsletter editors and publishers don't actually play in the games they write about (although NL/NL is reported, edited and published by newsletter people).

Ron Shandler has been a happy exception, the guy who was able to take his hobby, fantasy baseball, and turn it into his profession.

Definitely an exception

Mike Morrison, once head of new products at McGraw-Hill, liked to say most successful newsletters are written "on subjects so grungy, awful and dull you wonder how the editor drags himself or herself out of bed and over to the keyboard" and, "If you think of a newsletter idea that sounds as if it would be fun to research and write about, run!"

Nonetheless, Shandler's part-time venture, Baseball Forecaster newsletter, launched in 1987, grew successful enough that he was able to quit his day job as a newsletter marketer and work at it full time.

Rotisserie baseball freaks, as fantasy players are sometimes known, are true information sponges. They absolutely want it NOW and will pay to get it.

When we profiled Shandler (NL/NL 8/31/02)), he traced his progression, not entirely satisfactorily, from offering, first, only a print newsletter and then fax, CD diskettes and e-mail updates, and then becoming an entirely online service (except for his annual $24.95 Baseball Forecaster book).

After the false starts with e-mails, etc., Ron put all his stuff on a website in August 1996. By May 1997, he had more online subs than print and during the '98-'99 off-season, he quietly discontinued the print version. He now operates with a group of freelancers around the country from the non-baseball capital of Roanoke, Virginia. (There is an Astro's minor league team in neighboring Salem.)

Enormous success both as publisher and participant

He's enjoyed enormous success in that world both as publisher and participant. He's won "league competitions" among fellow experts and has been profiled in a book about the rotisserie phenomenon ... publicity leading to visibility and sales.

Since then, however, Ron has had a truly seminal experience for a baseball fan. In 2004 he was hired as an advisor by the St. Louis Cardinals.

There was a certain logic in this. The ulitimate guru of baseball statheads, Bill James, was an advisor to the Boston Red Sox before and during their world championship season of 2004. And Moneyball, a book about the application of what might be called "Jamesian principles" (walks: good; stolen bases: over-rated) published by the Oakland Athletics, was on the best-seller lists.

As good as it gets

Let's face it. That had to be as good as it gets for those of us fans of the pencil-wielding geek variety of baseball buff. If you ever even dreamed of standing in against Bob Gibson's fastball, the front-office might still seem achievable.

My old bosses at UCG, Bruce Levenson and Ed Peskowitz, freely concede that having failed to achieve their boyhood dreams of becoming professional athletes, they were able to achieve the adult version, owning a franchise (in their case, part ownerships of two, the Atlanta basketball and hockey teams).

Association ended by mutual agreement

Ron's major league experience, as reported in The New York Times, didn't turn out as well. Unfortunately, while the Cards went 105-57 in 2004 and won the NL pennant, they were swept by the Red Sox in the Serious (a reference to Ring Lardner's classic baseball fiction). Before the beginning of the next season, Shandler and the Cards ended their association by mutual agreement. "I think they thought, winning 105 games that year," Shandler told me, "that they didn't really need outside advice."

During this time, however, as part of the deal, Ron continued as an independent journalist and his December 2004 downgrading of pitcher Mark Mulder, whom the Cards were about to acquire, ruffled feathers. ("Risk-averse drafters might want to spend their money elsewhere.") Some critics charged he was trying to drive down Mulder's trade value so the team could acquire him more cheaply. (Would that they had listened. Mulder, who makes a ton of money, was "less than expected" in 2005 and "downright awful" in 2006.)

"I think when the Times called me, they were looking for me to exult over Mulder's poor performance this year," Ron said. "I just told them I evaluated him as I do all players." (Editor's note: When a power pitcher's strikeout ratio declines, it can be an early warning even if the win-loss record is holding up.)

Shandler allows that the criticism of his report on Mulder led him to step down. "After a while it was, 'Why am I spinning my wheels here?' I don't know if they're taking my information into account when making their moves."

Shandler has returned happily to concentrating on the Baseball Forecaster newsletter and BaseballHQ and RotoHQ websites.

"Working for a major league club was not a glory thing for me. It was just another feather in my cap, like being written up in 'Fantasyland.' When I decided to leave, it wasn't the type of huge decision that a lot of people thought it might have been," Ron said.

Shandler Enterprises LLC, P.O. Box 20303, Roanoke, VA 24018, 540-772-6315, www.baseballforecaster.com