It's one thing to understand that it makes no sense to check the boxscores every 10 minutes for new developments when you can just wait until the end of the night to get it all at once and quite another to act (or show restraint) on that understanding.
Did Nick Markakis walk again? Perfect, that means he's playing HIS game even at the major league level. Is Isringhausen going to walk the bases loaded for Lieberthal? Ball three. Ball four. Sweet. Got Lieberthal in two leagues. Come on Lieberthal, get me some RBIs and put a hurt on all the people who own Izzy in my various leagues.
Checking the boxscores after the game is like betting on a game, but not watching it. Sure, the result is the same either way, but you lose the drama, the ups and downs. Let's be honest, fantasy ball is one part cool, detached analysis of information and probably two parts enjoying the process of rooting for your guys. Seeing them hit home runs, or at least seeing it in the boxscore in virtual real time.
Checking the boxes after the games, for instance, if you actually had plans one night and couldn't periodically hit refresh at your PC, does have its good points, though. You get to gorge yourself on the information, racing through game after game to see how your guys did. It's kind of like coming home after a long night out to a full fridge and stuffing yourself on 10 different things. Sometimes I'll race through 12 games in a minute or two and think about how long it would take someone who didn't follow baseball to absorb and retain as much information as I did. They'd probably have to study it for a few hours.
What fanatically well-oiled machines we've all become.
One thing I almost never like to do is look at the real time stats for my whole team or my "team boxscore" at the end of the day. It takes all the enjoyment out of going through and finding the information one piece at a time. And also it hurts you because you don't get to incidentally absorb all the information about all the players you don't own at the same time.
Or maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, and I'm the only one that does it this way. It could a relic from my early days of fantasy baseball in the mid-90s when I'd buy a USA Today and sit down in the Italian sandwich shop in my building on 56th and Broadway in Manhattan. I'd get a Proscuitto and Mozzarella sandwich and a coffee, and go through each boxscore, hoping for home runs, steals and saves. When I was in law school (which sucked, by the way,) it was the highlight of my day.