Through the years...

Courtney Lant (Mr.) in south Jersey outside of Philly. Grew up in suburbs of NYC and weened on the Yankees thanks to my Mom. First strat set was '85 season. My older brother and a few friend would wait every year for the UPS guy to deliver our box while we played stickball in the street in front of my house. Strat was our religion every summer from '86 - '94. Slowed a bit when we went off to college in 1990 (so i'm 49).

Funny seeing the DnD mentions as I've always thought of Strat as the DnD of sports. Love the imagery it conjures while i play. Video games steal that from you. Can't tell you how thrilled i was when i found 365 on-line back in 2017. Still learning (from you guys), but enjoy the online game despite the lack of control you have over certain elements. That said i think it is very well done. You can't get everything perfect in an algorithm!

I just started stacking up on old card sets and introducing my 2 boys to the dice game. I wish more seasons were available in cards!

Dave Winfield was my favorite player growing up. Had some good seasons with him, but in search of a Championship team that he is batting clean up for!

My name is Mark and I grew up In Smithtown Long Island. I'm 61 years old , but I started with Strat when I was about 12.
Grew up as a Yankee fan and we always begged my dad once a year for a bat day doubleheader to get the most bang for our buck. The sound of 50,000 bats banging on the concrete was thunderous. In one of those games Sparky Lyle shut down the Tigers in the 9th inning and years later I met Sparky in a bar and told him the story over a beer and you could see how much it meant to him to be remembered.
Saw an ad In baseball digest, put some money in an envelope, taped the coins to some cardboard and camped out by the mailbox for days. Got hooked and would save money, order a few teams at a time and started leagues with my brothers and the kids in the neighborhood. Really loved those oldtimer teams. Moved to NYC in my twenties , but moved back to Long Island when I got married.Started a face to face league in NYC and continued even when I moved driving out to Long Island every Thursday. My favorite day was draft day and I'd walk around everywhere with my new team for days.
I played , chess and all those Avalon Hill war games , but couldn't find opponents...the rules were too long. But then the computer came along and I had a built in opponent. Role playing, wargames , SSI, APBA baseball for windows, Strat , hockey baseball, football, I played it all.
I play in another online baseball simulation, I knew about 365 , but always resisted because I hated to give up control.I wanted to MANAGE my team.(Hal sometimes makes me crazy) Then the pandemic rolled around and I found I didn't love this version of Major League Baseball anymore. The heroes of my baseball youth were dying and I longed for those days again, so I bit the bullet and signed up for a league. I thought with my experience , I'd do better than I did(got clobbered)but I actually had a ball and learned and got better as the season went along and met some helpful people along the way.
I'm hooked and currently playing in a franchise league which is my preference. I'm a Jethro Tull fan too.(Warchild was my album)think it's more a question of so many of us growing up in the seventies. It's great meeting you all online and I look forward to seeing some of you in future leagues.

Played the Strat board game since 1965, have over 300 card sets.
Joined the on-line game right from the start, back when it was handled by THE SPORTING NEWS.

Am a documentary filmmaker, currently doing a 3 part series on unique High School Sports Stories

I think this is the most amazing thread ever posted here. Tremendous nod of the cap to Last Druid, who's elicited so many cool mini bios of fellow players. Round of applause to everyone who offered up

Salut...Prosit...Slainte... and quite agree

My name is Mark and I grew up In Smithtown Long Island. I'm 61 years old , but I started with Strat when I was about 12.

Hi Mark and glad you are here. Port Jeff. Cool story and hope to see you in a league soon.

I think Port Jefferson is my favorite town in Long Island . Had a lot of dates at the Steam Room !!
Great meeting you online and hope to see you in a league as well.
I’m commonly in old time franchise type leagues .

Because of this thread i ordered and starting reading the Hack Wilson bio by Clifton Blue Parker. Highly recommended.

Rick and Mark--cheers to both comments

My name is Vince Peak and I am 63 years old. I am a pharmacist and live in Louisville, KY.

I responded to a ad in the Sporting News magazine and ordered my first set of black and white cards sometime in the late 1960s. I ordered new cards every year for several years. Some of the card sets are still in my attic. I created my own leagues or all-star teams, or replayed the season as it was scheduled. SOM taught me so much about baseball and definitely ingrained a love of the sport in my soul. I got some of my friends addicted in high school. We mostly just played when we had free time, since other interests in life emerge at that age.

A few of those friends and I played in a face-to-face league with about 20 other managers for 2 years in college at the University of Kentucky. The biggest controversy was which manager got to role the dice. Our side of campus (South Division) preferred for the manager of the team at bat to role the dice. Managers on the other side of campus (North Division) preferred for the manager of the team pitching and playing defense to role the dice. Home team manager got to choose. My team the second year might have won the league (the 1977 George Foster card still dominated, even without ballpark factors), but we never finished the league. Once again too many conflicting interests!

My wife and I have been blessed with four children (and recently the first grandchild!), so there was no free time to play SOM for many years.

I connected with the on-line version of the game at the Sporting News website in 2007. Honest to goodness, I played only one 20XX team a year (for a few years) during the real baseball offseason (which was also the fantasy baseball offseason!). I began to play a few teams per year about 5 years later. At that point, I found ATG and participated in several andycummings leagues. I eventually got the courage to enter the Barnstormers Tournament, and I have been getting my butt kicked ever since. This on-line game ain't nothing like those black and white cards (or even the red and blue ones!). I am trying to learn from my many mistakes and improve my team construction strategies. I guess we will see if I am any better this year.

I also want to extend my thanks to The Last Druid for starting this thread. Reading the backstories about all these SOM managers has been a blast! Good Luck to All!

Dennis Brock is my name and I too think this is the coolest post of all-time. It's amazing to read about everybody, kinda feel like the timing of it is somehow healing...First I have a confession to make, foolish and perhaps a bit bitter/liquored etc etc, I was not respectful to The Last Druid, so first off an apology to The Last Druid. In fact I came on the discussion board just to see if he was still around because I hadn't seen him in any leagues and he fell off the board last year during Barnstormers.
Strat certainly never saved a life, but I must say that playing strat was my drug, my escape from reality, from a failing business and relationship that dragged on far too long. I was in many leagues with TLD and his winning intrigued me and his intelligence, so in a low place I'm sure I tried to badger him, regrettably.
Well he and many of you taught many a great lesson in here. I never played the board game but I'm fanatical about baseball and numbers. I grew up in San Francisco and points in between San Mateo, graduated San Mateo High in 80, played football & ran track. I went straight into Local #38 Plumbers & Steamfitters Union.
If you grow up in the Bay Area and just make the team that's saying something! The talent pool is ridiculous.
If you want an interesting story about sports, well that'd be about my father also Dennis Brock.
He was born in New Haven Conn, moved west at 8 to San Francisco. Just a few quick takes, he caught the first touchdown at Woodside High School, yes the same school Julian Edelman attended. Then he had to move back to SF and went to Lincoln High School, you couldn't stop him on the field, both sides of the ball. He was their star player, at 6-4 220 he received scholarships from Notre Dame, UCLA and a few others. When you're a big man it's complicated I guess. I said I'd keep it short I know, well he ended up playing for the 49ers taxi-squad in the early 60's, played with Bob Lee QB Gary Lewis RB to name a couple. Well there he is driving the water truck up around Sonoma on the new asphalt getting played on the 101 highway when his idle #84 Billy Wilson gets injured and Pops gets a call up, it's November and I'm about to change all that, I'm born that week! Pops is 20 making $ good money, plus he likes to drink and he does a bit of fighting, I good story for you all if you don't like the LA Rams is when Roman Gabriel came into town all cocky and my Dad dropped him at the front door!,true story and so many more of those kinds of stories and as I grew up I saw some 'stuff'
When your old man tells you not to put your name in the phone book (you remember those) its for good reason.
I realize now to go on is rambling so to so many of you who seem to be around 60 like me (58) and say you miss baseball the way it used to be, baseball that is, when your Dad throws you and your glove in the 67 T-Bird and you head for 'Stick' on a chilly wind filled night and onto the field runs Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds, McCovey,Tito Fuentes, Dietz, Hunt, Davenport, Jimmy Ray Hart, Lanier with Gaylord Perry on the mound, hot dog wrappers in a vortex out in right field and everybody's yelling "come on Willie!!!" well shit that was a different time, we were kids and everything was in color! you never left the house without either a glove and ball, football, basketball, never! you played in bed and threw your ball up towards the ceiling without hitting it over and over and over, oh yeah ramblin, Sorry again Last Druid and hope one day we get to play in a league together again, I thought maybe you quit because of that bump in salary they gave Torii hunter and Hank Aaron : )

ps Scoops Baseball not because of the Topps baseball cards in the 60's, rather I had a blog and I used to go to spring training and write fantasy baseball updates while in the stands for fantasy players, those magazines got written in December I wanted to offer 'live content'

Good Night Now