For The Champion In The Rotisserie League, Joy Is A Yoo-hoo Shampoo

Your team's performance is based on the cumulative stats of your players in eight categories: batting average, home runs, RBIs and stolen bases, wins, ERA, saves and the ratio of hits and walks to innings pitched. Fielding doesn't count because it's too hard to figure. First place in a category is worth 10 points (or 12 in the AL) and last place is one point.

There's a little more. You can protect as many as 15 players a year. You can hang on to your player for three years at the price you paid for him, and if you want to keep him longer, you add $5 a year to his salary. Thus, we've instituted free agency, although we're still working on arbitration, visa problems and a drug-treatment program. We make trades, lots of them, and we have waiver deals, farm systems and September call-ups. Some of our clubs have special promotions. The Fleder Mice, owned by Rob Fleder, have a special May Day celebration at the House of Mouse in honor of the slowest man in the majors, Pittsburgh catcher Milt May. The game starts an hour late, and the last 500 fans through the turnstiles get I [LOVE] MILT buttons.

From the very first draft on April 13, 1980, the league began to take over our lives. No divorces, thank goodness, but relationships became strained. Sleep was lost. Sports Phone's profits soared. The fervor spread. Because many of our members patrol the publishing field, we were able to garner publicity on the Today show, in The New York Times , over National Public Radio. Soon offshoots were springing up all over. Is this a great country, or what?

In February, Bantam Books put out Rotisserie League Baseball ($5.95), modestly subtitled "The Greatest Game For Baseball Fans Since Baseball." The book is gripping and enlightening, thought-provoking and rib-tickling. We have wisely retained the movie rights.

Okrent, our Founding Father, should draw satisfaction out of all this attention, yet he found the whole thing rather unrewarding until last year, when he finished third. You wouldn't think that was much, but Okrent had never before finished in the money, which is fourth and above. And he has every baseball book ever written, including Yankee Stranger, the Ed Figueroa story.

Okrent has other interests. He edited The Ultimate Baseball Book, has written a book about the Milwaukee Brewers entitled Nine Innings, to be published next year, and is the editor of New England Monthly magazine. He and his family lead an idyllic life in Worthington, Mass. But every night of the baseball season, before he goes to bed, he calls up each NL box score on his home computer.

For this computer service, Okrent pays $50 a month. He spends about $500 a year traveling to league headquarters in New York. He lays out another $450 a year assembling, trading, waiving, promoting and futzing around with his team. In his first four years in the league, Okrent figures that he laid out about $5,000. For finishing in third place last year, he received a fraction of that amount and a special certificate. That certificate, tastefully framed, now hangs in Okrent's office. "If you have to ask if it's worth it," says Dan, a.k.a. the Swampman, "you don't belong in this league."

" Von Hayes, thirty-seven dollars," said another voice. The funny thing was, we didn't laugh.

The man behind that bid was Glen Waggoner, who, with Peter Gethers, owned and operated the Getherswag Goners until the start of the 1984 season. Waggoner is an administrator at Columbia University, a free-lance writer and an authority on chili. Gethers is an editor at Random House, a sitcom writer and a bowler. Together they fashioned the most successful team in league history. They were the first to have the ceremonial Yoo-Hoo poured over them, and they followed their inaugural championship with three straight second-place finishes. They still did some stupid things, though, like bidding $37 for Hayes, who finished the year as the Phillies' sixth outfielder. Despite their past successes, each wanted his own team. So Gethers has taken over Smith's Coronas, renaming them Peter's Smoked Fish, after a favorite St. Petersburg dive, and now refers to himself as the Sturgeon General. Waggoner has renamed his team the Glenwag Goners.

Waggoner embodies the true spirit of the Rotisserie League, and what a body he has. The Iron Horse, we call him. The league really did make a new man out of him. Okrent recalls, "In those first few months, I used to get calls from Glen at the oddest times, like Tuesday afternoon at four. 'Dan,' he'd say, 'you've made my life. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me.' Then he would hang up." Waggoner's funny news releases gave him the confidence to embark on what is now a thriving writing career.