Does Anyone Still Play Strat-O-Matic?

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Tekward

Recycles dryer sheets
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I've been playing this table top baseball strategy game for over 30 years in a league that started in Raleigh NC.

Has anyone else enjoyed this hobby? I become completely immersed in a close game, and I compare it to chess with 50 different pieces.

I have been fortunate to win a couple of league championships in walk-off fashion (2023 Yordan Alvarez 3 run HR from a 1 run deficit in the bottom of the 11th).

For the uninitiated:
forward.com

How Strat-O-Matic Baseball Changed My Life Forever

On a warm afternoon in the autumn of 1976, my friend Jonathan took me up to his family’s dusty attic playroom and introduced me to something that would change my life forever. No, it wasn’t my first puff of weed, my first look at National Lampoon (or Hustler), or even my first listen to the...
forward.com forward.com

They Have Lived and Loved the History of Strat-O-Matic

www.strat-o-matic.com www.strat-o-matic.com
www.vice.com

The Managers: What Strat-O-Matic Meant to Its Creator, Its Fans, and Baseball

For inventor Hal Richman, the legendary baseball board game Strat-O-Matic was an escape from a difficult childhood. For generations of fans, it's just been an escape.
www.vice.com www.vice.com
 
Tekward said:
Has anyone else enjoyed this hobby?
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I was a teenager when I last played.....APBA Baseball. I definitely enjoyed it back then, including keeping stats. Haven't played, though, since then and now I'm not even a baseball fan. But I can see how such a league as you describe could be an ongoing hobby.
 
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Oh my, you brought back long suppressed memories. I played Strat-O-Matic Baseball in my early teen (or earlier?) years. I was several years younger than my 3 older brothers and they never wanted to do anything with me. So I played this for hours alone in my bedroom. I would set up my own playoff brackets and ultimately crown my own World Series Champion. I’ve always been a “numbers guy”, so tracking all the game statistics over “the season” was huge fun to me. I would line up all the players’ baseball cards on the sides. I saved my allowance and bought full sets of Topps Cards each year for several years.

Thanks for the memories. I had forgotten all about this. But no, I no longer play.

For what it’s worth, I did the same thing with by vibrating football field that caused the players to move around the field (hopefully) toward the goal line.
 
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I played with a group of friends for about 10 years up until they migrated to the PC-based game. It's a very well crafted board game that can be played at a basic level up to a very detailed level.

I still remember the season I had drafted Fred Lindstrom from the 1930 season and over a 60-game season he batted .407. Since we were using players from all different seasons, the pitching was very strong. It was uncanny, he'd get hits on his card, he'd get hits on the pitcher's card. Other managers would just shake their head at Lindstrom's fantastic luck.
 
I played it in a league of 20-somethings our company hired all at the same time in the mid-80s. We played one or two seasons of "fantasy Strato" before switching to a first generation software program called APBA for a couple more years.
 
I played it from about age 12 (1970) thru a few years after college (mid-80s). I had enough friends who enjoyed it that we could always find 6-8 folks will to play. We played both baseball and football, abbreviated seasons (about 40 games for baseball, 10 games for football). When the IBM PC and clones came out, one way I got up to speed on spreadsheet software was using it to track stats :LOL: .

As we got married and started families, playing it died out. Fantasy games (primarily football) became more interesting and easier. But I still have the Football version of the game from that time.
 
My brother and I got the 1970 season and it took us 4 years to finish a full replay, playing games solitaire. I pretty much stopped in my teens with a few games here and there. One of my favorites was taking "all-time" teams with the cards I had, which included at least one set of great older teams and I think a Hall of Fame set.

I tried SOM's computer game but it was lame. Dave Koch had a better computer game I played for just a little while but didn't really get into it. I really appreciated stat keeping on any game, though I'm sure I could've come up with something on my own to supplement the dice game.

I know scrabbler1 still plays, as he posted in "Old School" this year and other threads. Hopefully he'll see this thread and share his stories.
 
I first encountered it in ads when I think you could get two sample 1962 cards (Mickey Mantle and Jack Sanford (Giant). The amazing thing on that card was seeing Mantle with a 1-19 on taking the extra base.

In 1965 I formed a league with two other friends. Of course, I was super serious about it, both keeping score of the games and maintaining stats (all by hand).

I regularly proposed and consummated trades with the other two. It must have been the case of me getting the best of those trades that those two proposed a "trade deadline"!

Next played about 5, 6 years later when in college.

Then, maybe, five years later in a house I was living in with other baseball fans.

So, it's been about 50 years since I last played it!
 
It’s still going strong. I won a game last night with 2 outs in the 9th!
 
I played more Statis Pro than Strat-O-Matic. Both are fun sims.
 
I played literally thousands of mini-league Stratomatic games as a teenager with my Dad. We were both avid baseball fans and played a 3- game series several times a week for years! We kept all the player and team stats for our “season” and compared end of year results per player with the previous years’ numbers. As I recall the numbers were always very close to actual results. Played regularly from about 1965 through the early 70’s. He only wanted to pay for a limited number of team cards, so we each picked 3 or 4 teams when the new cards came out. What fun, and what a learning experience for true ball fans!
 
I played a lot of table top sports games (cards and dice) from ages 10-15 (1970-1975). I started with APBA baseball and football, then moved to Strat baseball and football. I also played a lot of Statis-Pro. I was fascinated by keeping "stats' for all the players, and truly believe that led to my love of math (and subsequent degree in Statistics).

Of all the games I played, Strat-O-Matic was probably the most fun (and accurate).
 
Where Stratomatic excelled as a game was that you could decide on what level of complexity you wanted and the same cards could be used for Basic, Advanced and Super Advanced.
 
Our league uses super advanced so we have all the platoons and reliever strategy. The position players fielding is also a huge variable, both range and reliability (error %). I compare it to chess with 50 different pieces.
 
A humorous side note. In college my fraternity played a mini-league of "Vince Lombardi Football." 'Tight end on slant-in' was a guaranteed 20+ yard gain virtually every time. And, one guy won a game on a last minute field goal, a mere 99 yard kick.
 
I just saw this thread today. Yes, I still play the game. I was introduced to the game in 1973 when I was 10, buying 5 baseball teams from the 1972 season. I bought some scattered teams for several years in the 1970s. I also dabbled with the other Strat sports game such as football, basketball, and hockey, but of those only the hockey game I played into the 1980s.

My Strat heyday back then was from the late 1970s through early 1980s. I did a full-season replay of the 1956 season after Strat produced those teams in 1982.

Working FT gave me less time to play, and my interest in sports in general was declining into the 1990s. By then I had stopped playing even the baseball game except for about a year in the mid-1990s. It was then I learned of some of the game's new features which made the game better.

Starting in 2005, after being introduced to an online Strat forum, and having switched to working PT, I returned to playing Strat baseball. I had no interest in buying any recent year's teams or buying the PC version of the game (a friend of mine showed me an early version of the PC game in the early 1990s).

I resurrected my old cards, acquired some teams and seasons from the 1970s and 1980s I didn't have but wanted, and replaced a few cards I had lost over the years. I also obtained some card images for players who were not carded, from friends in the online forum who have the PC game. I have played many small projects for the last ~20 years using teams mostly from the late 1970s and most of the 1980s although I also had or bought some other seasons from the 1950s and 1960s.

I also made several tweaks to the groundball charts to clean up inconsistencies and make the results more realistic. I play a hybrid of the Advanced and Super-Advanced versions, using the SADV features which give me the best bang for the buck.

My current project is a partial replay of the strike-shortened 1981 season, using the actual schedule for the NL's top 6 teams. I'll do a similar project for the AL when I finish this one in a few months.
 
mystang52 said:
A humorous side note. In college my fraternity played a mini-league of "Vince Lombardi Football." 'Tight end on slant-in' was a guaranteed 20+ yard gain virtually every time. And, one guy won a game on a last minute field goal, a mere 99 yard kick.
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My childhood best friend had that game, and we played many "seasons" of Vince! We would draft our teams, and I remember I usually was able to get Gale Sayers (the top running back that year). Great memories :)
 
scrabbler1 said:
I just saw this thread today. Yes, I still play the game. I was introduced to the game in 1973 when I was 10, buying 5 baseball teams from the 1972 season. I bought some scattered teams for several years in the 1970s. I also dabbled with the other Strat sports game such as football, basketball, and hockey, but of those only the hockey game I played into the 1980s.

My Strat heyday back then was from the late 1970s through early 1980s. I did a full-season replay of the 1956 season after Strat produced those teams in 1982.

Working FT gave me less time to play, and my interest in sports in general was declining into the 1990s. By then I had stopped playing even the baseball game except for about a year in the mid-1990s. It was then I learned of some of the game's new features which made the game better.

Starting in 2005, after being introduced to an online Strat forum, and having switched to working PT, I returned to playing Strat baseball. I had no interest in buying any recent year's teams or buying the PC version of the game (a friend of mine showed me an early version of the PC game in the early 1990s).

I resurrected my old cards, acquired some teams and seasons from the 1970s and 1980s I didn't have but wanted, and replaced a few cards I had lost over the years. I also obtained some card images for players who were not carded, from friends in the online forum who have the PC game. I have played many small projects for the last ~20 years using teams mostly from the late 1970s and most of the 1980s although I also had or bought some other seasons from the 1950s and 1960s.

I also made several tweaks to the groundball charts to clean up inconsistencies and make the results more realistic. I play a hybrid of the Advanced and Super-Advanced versions, using the SADV features which give me the best bang for the buck.

My current project is a partial replay of the strike-shortened 1981 season, using the actual schedule for the NL's top 6 teams. I'll do a similar project for the AL when I finish this one in a few months.
Click to expand...
That was my introduction to Strat as well, the 1972 season "five team" version. As a Tigers fan, I was happy they were included (along with the four division winners). I started with APBA in 1970 at 10 years old (1969 season)... one of my friends got the 1972 and 1973 seasons. I then got the 1974 and 1975 Strat seasons (by then we had switched from APBA).

This thread has brought back a lot of great childhood memories for me :)
 
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