Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

What causes Strat-O-Matic to inspire an obsession amongst its followers?

I play between two and four teams at a time. I think the reason I play, aside from the enjoyment of the game, is because I'm hoping that I'll get that team. The team that sets your personal records. You know, the one where you get all the players you drafted, then get their good cards and the good cards of your other players---the team where everything just clicks. So I play for the enjoyment, but I stay for the team.

Unpredictability. Randomness. The viccissitudes of baseball. And the times everything comes together unexpectedly, or falls apart completely.

Like the team of near no-names (such stalwarts as Paciorek, Cey, DMartinez, Fletcher, Moseby, RJones) that wins the division by a single game and loses in the finals in 6.

Or the unexpected championship in which 6 players post .300 averages, and an unspectacular staff led by Mark Langston pitches just well enough to win.

Or the team that leads its division almost all year but folds up at the end, finishing 3G out of the playoffs, wasting stellar years from such stalwarts as Craig Reynolds (yes, THAT Craig Reynolds), Bruce Berenyi, and Jim Beattie.

It's going 86-76 and finishing last in a tough division. Or going 87-75 and winning the championship.

It's the 102-win team that steamrolls everyone in the playoffs. And the 85-win team that does the same thing.

It's recognizing the value of Tom Seaver, Jack Clark, and Carmen Castillo. It's keeping Tony Muser on your roster year-after-year because you've inexplicably grown used to seeing his name on your roster. It's finding a way to effectively use Steven Ontiveros (the hitter), and a damn good reason to trade Tim Raines.

It's imagining the little guys doing big things, the big guys coming through, and all of them failing at the wrong time. It's winning when you shouldn't, and losing when you should win. It's coming out of the chute hot, and catching fire at the end. It's struggling all year long, switching out parts and strategies, and ending up 76-86 (but, damnit, you swept the first place club in that last series!).

It's trying to find a way to win with Claudell Washington in center, and defending (rationalizing) that trade you made for an "underperforming" Soto. It's knowing that, no matter what the probabilities say, that Tony Gwynn might still find a way to hit .260, and your ace could be Steve McCatty. It's Sid Fernandez throwing 2 no hitters in one season, and Nolan Ryan losing 19.

Basically, it's all the things that make baseball great. Speed, angles, performance (and lack thereof), variables, randomness, and most of all, nostalgia and respect for a game that truly IS America, democratic, boisterous, unpredictable. A game rendered so beautifully and perfectly by Hal Richman, and played so sublimely by anyone and everyone who takes the time to appreciate it. It's completely notional. And completely real. It's utterly and completely Strat.

honestiago, TSN and/or SOM should pay you for what you just wrote. After reading that I'm ready to whip out my credit card and buy another 5-pack! :D

Very nicely done Honestiago. Crash Davis could not have said it better . . . .

http://www.moviewavs.com/php/sounds/?id=gog&media=WAVS&type=Movies&movie=Bull_Durham&quote=ibelieve.txt&file=ibelieve.wav

Well said Honestiago. I was going to post a reply...but...fugheddaboudit. It would pale in comparison with your reply.

Post was good enough to warrant a temporary sticky to the top. :wink:

I agree. That post was a masterpiece.

Sykes, you are doing a magnificent job of managing your '86 Padres. Here's hoping that your team keeps playing like that through the remainder of the season.

And best of luck to everyone in Sporting News/Strat-O-Land in 2008 (except if your team happens to be playing mine that evening).

:twisted:

Geez, that gave me goose bumps :D Everyone go back and read it like James Earl Jones would read it as Terrance Mann in Field of Dreams!

Until we get James to read Honestiago's work for us this will have to do:

http://www.moviewavs.com/php/sounds/?id=bst&media=WAVS&type=Movies&movie=Field_Of_Dreams&quote=baseball.txt&file=baseball.wav

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.