Anthony Christopher Rinaldi
Anthony Rinaldi was born on May 1st in Brooklyn, NY, but moved to little Ephrata, PA in 1994. The small Amish town would never be the same...
He is a very well rounded American on and off the fantasy sports fields. For example, not only has he (as recent as 2006) claimed fantasy gold, but also raised over $6000 in three years for the juvenile diabetes research foundation. Aside from being the General Manager for the fantasy franchise known as Tonys PONYS, Anthony has also been a big part of some non-fantasy (unsurprisingly successful) sports franchises including The Ephrata Dodgers (Dodgeball) The Fighting Irish (Wiffleball) and the Mounts (Baseball) to name a few. In his free time he loves playing video games, poker, sports, and his trombone. You would be hard-pressed to find someone within a 20 mile radius of Ephrata who couldn't tell you a Rinaldi tale, as tall as it might be. When you ask him he'll go on and on, beach story after Boston club story, after beach story, after baseball story. Although he has no favorite he gets ecstatic explaining the time he single-handedly won the 2004-2005 (8th Grade) student faculty basketball ball game with his half time heroics (sinking a shot from half court.) If there is any one person who has seen the abilities of Anthony first hand it would surely be the crafty lefty now pitching for McDanial, Mike Freeman. Career verse the Warwick 2008 state finalist Ace Rinaldi is an unprecedented 11-13 With 1 HR 2 Triples 2 Doubles and 8 RBIs (and 1 strikeout). Rinaldi takes great pride in everything he does and as he would put it "If you're gonna do it, do it right."
Tidbits:
Favorites-
Color- Orange
Movie(s)- Zoolander, Matrix Trilogys
Teacher- Hagen
Arch Rivals-
Mark Royer
Joel Yoder
Not just a Fantasy
My friends and I could quite possibly be the most competitive people in the world, and to add fuel to the fire we can’t help taking everything we do to an unbelievably extreme level. For example, our high school holds an annual dodge ball tournament to raise money for juvenile diabetes and to enter each team was required to come up with one hundred dollars. Not only did we have jerseys professionally made and buy team shorts, wristbands, headbands and gloves but we also went out and raised 4,000 dollars and continued to raise that bar all three years we entered. Now I told you that to tell you this. It was five years ago when we were looking for something to do in our small town in rural Pennsylvania but in a town where every other vehicle that goes down the road is pulled by a horse and all of the Fabreez in the world could not cover up the persistent smell of manure, most of the time keeping yourself entertained was not an easy task at hand. It wasn’t until this beautiful summer afternoon when we stuck gold. Fantasy football. Although we had all heard of the game, at the time none of us really knew the specifics but were naturally anxious to learn since anything with the word football in the title was interesting to thirteen year old boys. The general idea of fantasy sports is to draft professional athletes and manage them throughout their season and the better they did the more points your team was awarded. We started out small with online drafts and leaving the occasional smack talk on message boards but quickly grew.
During the summer leading into my senior year of high school we inevitably took it to the next level by launching a website. The site if full of interesting factual information and entertaining fictional articles, and spearheading the site handed me the responsibilities of maintaining its beauty but more importantly writing weekly columns. Ironically, throughout my academic career I’ve always had phenomenal English teachers at my fingertips trying their hardest to get students interested in writing, but it really never appealed to me. Actually I think just saying that writing didn’t appeal to me is a huge understatement, I would’ve voluntarily taken a test every day of the year before I started a term paper. It wasn’t until this website came along that I learned something that none of my teachers could ever get through to me, an epiphany if you will. It was never actually writing that certain people love, but the topics that they write about. This eureka moment in my life had come at the perfect time. I began to apply my new theory of writing to everything from homework assignments to the dreaded SATs and really had a blast with the essay I included with my application to the University of Pittsburgh. I never would have guessed the most influential experience towards shaping my perception of writing was joining a fantasy football league with a bunch of my good friends.
Five years later we’ve evolved from a small league that just played fantasy football to a business of sorts, selling everything from t-shirts to advertising space. We now all take sojourns from our studies across the country to partake in offline drafts in a nearby hotel suite for everything from football and baseball to hockey, basketball, golf and even auto racing. If nothing other than a valuable lesson and a way to stay in touch with my friends comes out of playing fantasy sports I will be completely satisfied.