I come now to praise Strat-O-Matic baseball, the board game that for decades has enabled baseball fans like me to bring the national pastime to life in their homes with statistical realism.
I was a late-comer to the game. As a kid I had several baseball games, and my favorite was Ethan Allen’s All-Star Baseball. It wasn’t until 1985 when I bought my Strat-O-Matic set, based on the 1984 season. I was living in Omaha and closely followed the Cubs on cable superstation WGN from Chicago. My wife was working evenings, and after I got the kids to bed I’d set the game up on the kitchen table.
I kept score sheets on virtually every game. Although the records from those early years have disappeared, this afternoon I counted 165 score sheets that I’ve filled out for games played since early 2000.
Most of the time I used legal pads, never bothering to buy a formal scorekeeping book. It takes time, but filling out the lineups by hand and penciling out the inning-by-inning linescore format at the top is a great pleasure.
I’ve played many games using the advanced version of the game that bases player performance on how they fare against righties and lefties. That version is more realistic, but mostly these days I opt for the standard format. Still, I pay homage to the lefty-righty strategy by typically bringing in a right-handed pinch hitter to face a southpaw reliever.
I played dozens of games in 2020, a great comfort to me as the COVID epidemic disrupted our lives and Major League Baseball played a bizarre, shortened season.
Whenever I play Strat, in my head I do play-by-play announcing with occasional color commentary. Those inner voices most often have sounded a lot like Jon Miller and Duane Kuiper in the San Francisco Giants booth, Dave Niehaus at the Seattle Kingdome and Harry Caray at Wrigley Field. I’ve never thought to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch, however.
I’ve had two knee surgeries this year, one in January and the other last week. In addition to physical therapy, I’ve done Strat-O-Matic therapy, you might say, to keep me from going stir-crazy. Conjuring at-bats by Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays against pitchers like Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax brings joy and helps me heal.
Today, I went back to 1965 to have the Giants face the Indians in Cleveland. Juan Marichal and Sam McDowell pitched well, with the score knotted 1-1 after nine innings. It wouldn’t be until the 12th inning before the game was decided. The Giants rallied for three runs against Tribe relievers Don McMahon and Lee Stange, and Masanori Murakami nailed down the save.
That game would not have happened in real life — neither ’65 squad would make the World Series. But the hour or so I spent rolling the dice and imagining the game at old Municipal Stadium on the shore of Lake Erie did me good. 🧢
The Ball Caps Blog 
Excellent post Dan. Brought back some old and more recent memories. My all-time strat-o highlight or lowlight was being no-hit by my son and Dontrelle Wilson.
I’ve never done this! Not sure if I feel like I’ve missed out or not. LOL! Here’s to hoping you’re back up on your feet soon! I want to meet up with you at the Pole Farm sometime so you can show me the residents.
I started playing in 1979. My next door neighbor and I had already been playing Strat-O-Matic Football prior to that. We were still kids then, and our families spent Thanksgivings together, so we played ’58 Colts vs. ’58 Giants as our Thanksgiving tradition.
We’ve since decided baseball is much better, probably because the football game is a bit too simplistic. We also played Basketball for a while, which is nothing to write home about, but there are aspects of that game I liked as well.
I too had a Strat-O-Matic renaissance during COVID. My best friend from college and I played one game a week (mostly) via Zoom or FaceTime and it took us five years to complete a 162-game series between the ’56 Tigers and ’56 Reds, so chosen because back in college we made a drinking game out of Strat-O-Matic which “rewarded” high scoring games.
We’ve since started our second series, between the ’61 Angels and ’61 Cubs, and we’re 13 games into that series right now.
Happy New Year from one Dan to another!
Great stuff, Dan. Thanks for sharing. I never tried Strat football or basketball, although I had other games. I played a lot of Samsonite Football, a card game with no connection to actual stats. But I still pretended Leroy Kelly and Gayle Sayers were in the games and kept their stats. Happy New Year — have DANdy one!