Through the years...

Great post...
I'm Francois from Montreal known as phalfoot. grew up in Valleyfield not far from Upstate NY and Ontario...55 y/o football and flag-flag football coach at the international level...regular job in a private HS right here in Montreal...you could say I'm pretty competitive...Played face to face in the '90's and started this with the pandemic last march...
A bit addictive and time consuming as I actually watch 95% of my teams' games....anyone else do that? Won't have as much time as regular activities are slowly starting again...
What I enjoy most is building a team and all the wheeling and dealing of waivers and trades...
Sadly long time Expos fan but I couldn't care less about Washington....never liked the Yankees as a kid as they gave the Dodgers a hard time in the WS back then...I kind of follow the Dodgers and the Red Sox but never go out of my way to watch baseball nowadays...

Hi Francois--wow man watching em all. that's the way to do it if time! I used to do it for playoff games but not anymore. Yeah building a team is most of the fun...winning is the rest!

Just a bumpity bump

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Awesome Kev...it is nice to see all the folks from the north side of the continent as well, enjoying this geeky game of numbers from Glen Head NY.

Old boys club...well...most around here can identify with that. Sorry.

But as for the trade secrets aspect, I think you'll find most people are willing to share everything they know, but the boards are not well organized for a wiki-type approach. And I think some (myself included) do much of the direct interaction in leagues and only occasionally in public on the boards for various reasons. Sometimes I forget to check the boards for a while.

So, one suggestion would be if/when there is absolutely anything you want to know, or get input on since there is usually a range of potential answers, is to throw it out here on the boards. Many will chime in I think. Then you can assess each on their merits.

but good luck and nice to meet you!

Francois - I don't always pull it off, but I try to watch all the games on playback. I've got it down to a science where I speed it up enough to it only takes about 1 minute for the game to complete itself but I've trained my brain to still take it all in. I find it not just fun but useful: I often catch mistakes I've made with my settings (e.g. suddenly Ted Williams get pinch run for, someone who shouldn't be stealing tries to steal a base, a platoon pinch-hitter doesn't come in when he should, etc).

While we're here, and we have so many Canadians kicking about in the stratomatic community, thought I'd share an interesting (Canadian) podcast I've been listening to, Our Fake History, which recently did a 3-episode run about The War of 1812.

Reminds me of when I went to a Canadian friend's wedding at Niagara-on-the-Lake, and there were all these monuments to Canadian victories over the U.S. in The War of 1812, and I was like, "huh"? We were taught the war was a navel conflict with Britain over maritime rights that ended in a tie. I had no idea the Canadian perspective was more like "we defeated American invaders who tried to take us over." Blew my mind. That whole side of it was never even hinted at when I was in school, so far as I can remember.

But yeah, turns out we invaded Canada and they whupped our ass.

Good on you for watching the games. I may start again.

As for the war of 1812, that's a great point and interesting story on the monuments. Was always a passing footnote and I could never answer why it even happened in the first place. Basically, I think the context was that the British had landed decisive victories in the northeast US, and the americans were kind of desperate--I think DC had been torched by then too...so they tried to push into canada to gain some tactical geography to exploit, figuring the cannucks were easy pickins for some odd reason on their own land, but as you said the US was decisively repelled, and then it became moot because they were able to push back on the British seaside to the east and it kind of stagnated.

Interesting podcast on "America's Plan to Invade Canada," and the history of hostilities between the two countries, more than one might have imagined: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a ... 0528519867

Pretty cool indeed, thanks.
Side thought: I have felt gradually about podcasted-out so I don't think I will have a long term love affair with it.

I have reverted back to reading often again--even though I ditched the social media time sink almost 7 years ago and love every non-minute of it, I found that my podcast list was becoming an albatross of a different kind.

Is that just me? I still enjoy podcasts--but as an example, I started using them on my runs all the time. And I found I was missing the best part I used to enjoy--the peace--the wind--identifying the bird calls--the mind that was free to wander (and wonder).

So now I listen on car trips only, and this one is interesting enough for that list, so thanks...unless I am blasting classic rock.