random hackers, rubio begonias

I trot this out every once in awhile. It’s from 1988:

It’s hard to read, I know. It’s a list of the “Champion of Champions” standings from fantasy baseball leagues running on CompuServe. The team with the highest percentage of their league’s possible points was the Champ of Champs. I came in second. More importantly, I won my league, the first time I’d done that.

I also bring this up because I’ve started reading Steven Levy’s fascinating new book about Google, In the Plex. And I was reminded that back in the day, Levy used to play fantasy baseball on CompuServe. That’s him near the bottom of the list of leaders … his team was called the Random Hackers (his invaluable book, Hackers, was written in 1984).