Let me start by saying this: I’ve never met Jed Latkin, but after watching Fantasyland, I feel pretty safe in saying I would not enjoy playing in a fantasy league with him.

Latkin is the central character in the feature-length documentary released Friday via Snagfilms.com and Hulu. The movie — inspired by Sam Walker’s 2007 book of the same name — finds Latkin selected from a group of applicants to fill one of 12 slots in the 2008 AL-only Tout Wars league.

He doesn’t come across as a bad guy in general, but Latkin does strike me as potentially one of the worst possible leaguemates — more annoying than the guy who goes dark after the draft and winds up with two disabled-list players sitting in his starting lineup by June.

Latkin epitomizes the obsessed fantasy player. He estimates that he averages 2-3 hours of sleep a night during baseball season. He stares intently at the computer as his wife is talking to him about getting everything together for their trip to the hospital to have twins. He sits in the living room of his in-laws and talks about how he could manage other teams in the league better than the owners currently doing so.

The really annoying part, though, is the trading. I love hitting the trade desk as much as most folks, but Latkin started making offers before people had left the draft site. He hounds leaguemates on the phone like a used-car salesman (which he’s compared to in the movie) about to lose his job. In the most extreme example, he shows up unannounced at the doorstep of Ron Shandler’s house — a mere 7-hour, 40-minute drive from his place in New York.

“That was the most freakin’ bizarre thing I’ve ever seen,” Shandler says after this Tout rookie spends probably a couple of hours trying to talk him into a trade for B.J. Ryan. Yeah, Latkin made a 15-hour round trip just because he wasn’t satisfied with Shandler’s e-mail answers to trade offers.

All that said, it’s not hard to see why the Fantasyland folks chose Latkin for the spot.

He’s a compelling character, somewhat in the vein of the famous Howard Stern trends we’re all familiar with. (You know: The average Stern fan listens for an hour and 20 minutes; average Stern hater listens for 2.5 hours — both because they want to hear what he’ll say next.)

It’s like that with Latkin. Some obsessive fantasy fans (at least those who can click away from FanGraphs long enough to watch) might be able to relate. The rest of us will probably have trouble believing the extent of his madness.

Fantasyland is well constructed and does a very nice job of playing up and playing off his fantasy eccentricities. My favorite segment cut back and forth between Latkin at a Tigers game and Sam Walker with his family at a park.

While Latkin has left his wife behind in New York with twin infants to go chat up some of his players at Comerica Park, Walker strolls from his place to a playground with wife and two kids. As Latkin slips deeper into depression with each fantasy failure for his team, Walker gives us lines like, “The nice thing about Jed … I feel a little bit more normal.”

This all becomes even more amusing when Walker finishes the season with the highest score ever recorded in an AL-only Tout league, while Latkin finishes somewhere toward the league’s middle.

I won’t give away any more details on the league standings, so as not to ruin the movie’s central plotline, though I will say that Latkin at least accomplished his stated pre-draft goal.

The key thing to take away from this documentary — especially if you’re not overly familiar with fantasy players — is that Latkin does not represent anywhere near the norm. There are certainly other players like him, but the large majority of us are relatively normal folks who just enjoy building teams and trying to beat our peers. Just look at the way this league of fantasy professionals reacts to the new guy.

And you should take something away from this movie, because it’s worth watching for anyone who’s into fantasy. Aside from the entertaining storyline at the center, the film is well packaged, with sidebars playing up aspects from the book (”Stories from Fantasyland“) and fun little quips such as the “fake but potentially true stats.”

When I first heard that a Fantasyland movie was on the way, I expected some sort of adaptation with an actor playing the part of Sam Walker. The documentary, however, proves that even when it comes to fantasy, reality can give us characters too strange to have been made up.

This Forbes.com article from Jan. 13 points out that the magazine was founded on providing readers with sound investment advice. Now, that apparently includes advice on your investments in fantasy baseball.

Zack O’Malley Greenburg is putting together a weekly fantasy “Investment Guide” series for the site that is scheduled to run up until the beginning of baseball season, and the seemingly unlikely host isn’t the only noteworthy aspect.

ZOG (as he labels himself) is drawing contributions from Baseball HQ’s Ron Shandler, Fantasy Sherpa Scott Swanay, Yahoo!’s Scott Pianowski and Nick Rousso of Lindy’s.

“Each week we’ll profile a different position, complete with exclusive analysis and composite rankings,” ZOG writes in the opening article on catchers.

It’s not only cool to see fantasy further penetrate an outlet such as Forbes.com — which has been giving our industry some pretty fair treatment over the past couple of years — but always fun to gather proven fantasy minds and see what the collective has to say.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– The MasterCraft Pro Wakeboard Tour has partnered with the Fantasy Action Sports League to present a fantasy wakeboarding game.

– An awkwardly written press release announces that ProMotoFan.com has launched as a host for pro Motocross and Supercross pick ‘em-style fantasy contests.

– The Wall Street Journal reports that free online sports games are gaining pretty significant audiences, potentially creating some new challenges for the makers of console games. The emergence of games such as Quick Hit football and MLB Dugout Heroes could also create opportunities or competition for fantasy sports providers in coming years.

– Glam Media has added Fashion Fantasy Game to its network, saying the site delivers “to advertisers a highly qualified and zealous audience” dominated by young women. Rather than a true fantasy game that relies on the performances of actual people, Fashion Fantasy Game is a MMORPG that allows users to create and run their own fashion business.

– Jon Williams wants to know who your favorite fantasy baseball “expert” is and why. After 51 votes, “Other” (43 percent) was leading the 10-option poll field by a wide margin, with Ron Shandler (14 percent), Matthew Berry (14 percent) and Jason Grey (12 percent) as the only others in double digits. Razzball.com was getting plenty of play in the early comments as well.

– Pro Football Weekly’s Michael Blunda says that you should expect to see big differences in the way we fantasy football “experts” rank the players heading into this season — much more so than usual.

“I was a schmuck for not making any money on this thing,” Daniel Okrent says early in a Forbes.com story posted Wednesday.

Although Okrent is universally attributed with creating what we know most commonly as fantasy baseball, he and his fellow originators failed to capitalize on their copyrighted Rotisserie Baseball.

But while the Forbes report leads with that unfortunate tale, the crux of the item is really the advice sought from Okrent and several of his leaguemates — as well as select other experts from the fantasy industry.

Forbes went to the eight gentlemen listed below in search of some player recommendations and a bit of sage advice. You’ll have to click on the links for the players. For the words of wisdom on the other hand, look no further than …

Daniel Okrent, creator of Rotisserie Baseball: Pay attention to your wife.

Ron Shandler, Baseball HQ: Decide whether you are in this to have fun or to win. In many cases, those two goals are mutually exclusive.

Harry Stein, original member of Okrent’s league: Bid up superstars (in auction drafts), but make sure someone else gets them. The successful rotisserie player does not get wedded to the idea of landing a particular player. And avoid one-dimensional players.

Scott Swanay, FantasyBaseballSherpa.com: Use a set of player rankings that quantifies position scarcity. If time permits, compare your player rankings to Average Draft Position (ADP) data from a credible source (such as Mock Draft Central) to avoid picking your targeted players too soon.

Sam Walker, Fantasyland: Read psychology books. The way to win is to understand the people in your league and to know what they do before they do it. Try to get inside peoples’ heads.

Bobby Jurney, 2008 winner of NBC Sports’ National Fantasy Baseball Championship: Know the players. It is easy to draft the big names, but nine times out of 10, that is not going to win you anything. It is the people who do the research and know all of the players, big and small, that are going to be successful.

Cary Schneider, original member of Okrent’s league: Find someone younger than you to give you information. If you’re over 30 you won’t know who any of these players are.

Nando Di Fino, The Wall Street Journal: Don’t follow the experts blindly. And read Rotoworld or Rotowire every day. (Di Fino forgot to add: “… and FSB.com.”)