A Treat

This being February 1^st and two-thirds of the way through meteorological winter, I treated myself to a visit to the website for Strat-O-Matic, which makes a board game I’ve played since eighth grade.  Hint: LBJ was still popular at the time.

Allow me to explain how the game works.  There are hitter cards and pitcher cards, along with three dice; two of the dice are yellow, the other white.  The white one determines if you look at the hitter card (with columns numbered 1-3) or the pitcher card (with columns numbered 4-6).  The sum of the two yellow dice determines which of the eleven possibilities in each column you’ll deal with.  For example, say the white die comes up a three and the two yellow dice are a four and a five.  That means you’ve rolled a 3-9.

You check the third column of the hitter batting and go down to the ninth possibility, which could be anything from a double play to a homerun; it’s all based on statistics.  Basically, Strat-O-Matic is the first application of cybermetrics to baseball.  As a kid, I never knew, and now couldn’t care less.  What’s always mattered to me is getting to be the manager.  I make up the lineups, decide on pitching staffs and make all sorts of in-game decisions:  When do I lift my starter?  Do I pinch-hit here or use a pinch runner?  Is it too early to make a defensive change?  Failing to do that has cost me a lot of games down through the years.

The real fun part of the game is winning with an underdog team and fairly anonymous players; my personal Hall of Fame would start with such long-ago talents as Wayne Causey and Gates Brown.  Oh, the homeruns in the bottom of the ninth.  Most every year, the company does a season from before its inaugural full season of 1962 or reprints a year it has done, but adding current rules.  (For example, every ballpark has its own personality.)  This year, it’s 1968, when Gates Brown managed to hit .370 in 92 at-bats.   

Strat-O-Matic actually allows you to turn back the clock without too much nostalgia (or the muscle pain associated with getting back into shape).  I want to remember walking to my friend Frank’s house to play?  Then I pick 1965.  See what is must’ve been like for Yankees’ manager Joe McCarthy to have Joe DiMaggio?  In that case, I’d go with 1941.

You can’t beat back time, but with Strat-O-Matic baseball you can travel back there.