""As I had when I was drafting Strat-O-Matic teams," he recalls, "I was reading the box scores every day, but with no purpose."

After a year without Strat-O-Matic, Okrent sketched out the rules for what became known as Rotisserie League Baseball on a flight from Hartford to Austin in 1979.

Okrent, now The New York Times' first public editor, has done many big things (founder of New England Monthly, managing editor of Life, editor of The Ultimate Baseball Book, and much more), but inspiring the tens of millions who play Rotisserie and its fantasy sports offspring -- and inspiring America's infatuation with sports statistics -- is huge."