CK HISTORY

Some CK History

In March of 1996, Lee Miller, Matt Ostrowitz, Jess Kryscio and seven others joined up for a random fantasy baseball league on the then 'new' ESPN SPORTSZONE.com website.

There were teams like the Marc Drucker's "Golden Bears," Todd Rubin's "Rubin Sandwiches," John Martin's "Iowa Cornfielders," and the eventual winners, "The Willow Grove Red Sox," owned by John Grandinetti.

We cannot forget that Brian Fitzgerald (who rejoined in 1999 for a second go-around) was also a part of the inaugural Craig Kilborn season when he managed his "EastBurg Smashers."  Three-year player Dave Medur rounded out the league with his "Boston Dawgpound."

Not too many records were kept of that inaugural season, except we know that Lee lost the league title on the last day of the season by only one point.

At the time, everyone knew we had something going in a highly competitive league, but no one even thought to make it a recurring keeper league, as it has grown into today.

We all joined the league that March of 1996 because we had a favorite anchor on ESPN's "SportsCenter," and we all DID think that Craig Kilborn was THE MAN! Two years later, Killer Kilborn left ESPN to join Comedy Central to start up an new talk-show called the "Daily Show."

League players were saddened by the loss of their leader as he abandoned ESPN, but in 1998, league players decided to make the league stronger than ever been by installing "keepers" to each franchise, allowing the legend of Kilborn rage on.

At the end of the 1998 season, the idea of a "Rule 5 player" was developed by Osty and Jess. Rule 5 was supposed to be a plan to build a "farm system" within each CK franchise by adding younger players into the rotisserie mix. The plan had its good points as well as its bad points, giving exclusive rights to the owners who drafted the up-and-coming future stars. The Rule 5 idea lasted for three seasons until it was voted down in the 2001 off season, 6-4.  Owners missed the concept of building a stable of young players and in 2002 the Rule 5 draft was recussitated.

As the years went on, CK (the league) constantly grew in popularity and was even mentioned on the Fantasy Games front page in 1999 as one of the leagues with the highest indexes, grading overall league supremacy.

Also in 1999, I, Jess, brought more fame to the league as my team was ranked third in the world on July 7th, 1999. The EastBurg Bombers continued to stay in the top 30 until the 3rd week in Sepember when they finished 40th overall (out of close to then 500,000 teams).

In 2000, Craig Kilborn left the Daily Show in favor of CBS as he started up another humerous late night talk show, "The Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn." Now each member who stayed up later would be able to follow their leader as they made strategic late-night moves to bolster their rosters.  Craig also had a super supporting role in the 2003 comedy flick "Old School" with Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell.  In August of 2004 Kilborn left the Late, Late Show to persue 'other ventures.'  We in the CK family hope to see the great Craiggers back on TV or on the silver screen soon. 

CK prides itself on keeping the members it has and making them its own family. It really is though when you think about it. We rely on each other and trust each other to put forth the best effort we can, as we attempt to beat each other up for league supremacy.

CK has become an institution as it enters its tenth anniversary season in 2005. Today we have three of the original 10 members as well as six of 10 members from the second (1997) season.