The Roanoker - May/June 2015 - 83

baseball pay for them. They rent out club level spaces
to Roanoke Valley groups who hold drafts there during
the early spring, with the baseball field as the backdrop.
Shelton says there is no conflict with pro sports'
sensitivity to sports gambling because "this is for
bragging rights and nothing else."
Sportswriter Mike Ashley, a Roanoke native who
regularly works and plays in the Star City, though he
lives in D.C., used to write a fantasy sports newsletter,
which was funny. So funny, in fact that it led him to
do standup comedy for five years at Roanoke's Comedy
Club. He's been playing since Rotisserie Baseball began.
He calls it "a wonderfully social activity among sports
fans - something that gives you reason to call up and
heckle your buddies, or try and scam them in a trade.
We often lunched together and swapped multiple players
over pizza orgies at the Radford Pizza Hut [when he
worked there]. The draft, too, is quite the occasion. I've
brought sound systems to announce my first pick, faux
team jerseys to hold up, and even did a Chicago Bulls
light show one year [basketball draft]. Good fun with
friends and always nice to make a memorable appearance
they would talk about for years."
Ashley has a theory about who wins most consistently:
"Some guys are such sports geeks - up all night watching
scores and shows - they always have an advantage. I got
to a point where working as a sportswriter, I just couldn't
come home and invest that much more time in this stuff.
THE

R OANOKER.COM

Rather watch a good movie.
"Guys who are good gamblers do well, also. It's like
playing the stock market: Buy low, sell high, identify
trends and be enough of a fan and a mathematician to
know what they mean. I always felt like I was cramming
for an exam before a draft - and we did auction-style draft,
bidding on players in my basketball league. There's an art
to that, too, bidding other guys up, knowing what teams
and players they like, etc. Then you get stuck with a crappy
player you didn't want on the 12-man roster. I was never
very good at it. Obviously didn't put in enough time."
Shanna Flowers, manager of volunteer services at
Carilion and a former columnist for The Roanoke Times,
used to play fantasy football until she went to grad school
in 2011 and "my interest diminished." Study time and
NFL time clashed. When she played, though, she was
"all in. ... I mean it was time-consuming, because I
constantly scoured online reports, watched the games,
ran to the computer all the time to keep up with the
fantasy points."
She's through playing: "Fantasy is so different now,
but it was new, fresh and exciting then. It was a riproaring time."
It's still fresh and exciting for a large number of
women. Shandler says between 15 and 20 percent of
players are women, mostly playing football.
One of them is Jeri Warner Layne who's ready to kick
some serious butt. Especially when it's her husband's. I

Left: Lance Greene of the
Roanoke City Clerk's office
checks stats on his cell
phone.
Above: Salem Red Sox
GM Ryan Shelton says the
young employees of the
club "play everything" and
have even tried English
Premier League soccer.

MAY/JUNE 2015

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