Special to the Star Tribune
Published Aug 6, 2002
JAMAICA, N.Y. -- There are Twins fans who have found a way to assure that their players will never go on strike, their team won't be targeted for contraction and they will never have to hear another state representative trash a ballpark plan.
Their savior is a man named Hal Richman.
When he was 23, Richman went to market with Strat-O-Matic Baseball, a card-and-dice board game that for decades has brought joy to baseball fans around the country.
"As a kid, I wanted to be a major league baseball player," the 65-year-old Richman said. "The fates said I wasn't good enough. But I wouldn't accept that answer."
So instead he created Strat-O-Matic, his own version of the major leagues. Last weekend, the game celebrated its 40th anniversary with a convention on the campus of St. John's (N.Y.) University.
While major league players and owners squabbled in labor negotiations only a few miles away over how to divide up billions of dollars, Strat players competed for the chance to win a grand prize of $2,000. Many folks just came to play pickup games and bond with fellow baseball fans.
Strat-O-Matic participants include broadcasters Bob Costas and Jon Miller, actor/directors Tim Robbins and Spike Lee and former major leaguers Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Doug Glanville personally lobbied Richman to improve his defensive rating.
None of those folks made the journey to the convention, but among the 75 participants were attorneys, accountants and auditors from places as far away as California, Colorado, Florida, Maine and Minnesota.
Equal parts Bill Veeck and Bobby Fischer, the Strat-O-Matic players were here for the game they had been playing since boyhood -- and to be reminded that the game of baseball and the sport have become two vastly different things.
"These people really love the game," said Stan Suderman, a software manager from Buena Park, Calif., who organized the main tournament at the convention. "They get to play, manage and be GM all at the same time. And they see baseball headed in a very disturbing direction."
Strat-O-Matic has already targeted one of the game's black eyes this year, picking up the 2002 All-Star Game where it left off in Milwaukee. In the Strat-O-Matic version, Atlanta's Andruw Jones singled home the Dodgers' Shawn Green in the 12th inning to give the National League an 8-7 victory.
It wasn't the first time Richman came to baseball fans' aid in a crisis. On July 14, 1981, during the 50-day major league players' strike, Strat fans gathered at Cleveland Stadium, site of the All-Star Game originally scheduled to be played that night, and played a simulation. Hall of Famer Bob Feller threw out the first dice.
Richman never thought it would be this big. He got the idea for the game as an 11-year-old in Great Neck, N.Y. He went to his room and began rolling two dice, eventually rolling them 5,000 times and creating a table with the results.
He tweaked the idea off-and-on until 1961, when a toy company owner moved in down the street. Richman presented his idea and got a favorable response. He came out with his first set, which had 80 players. He printed 1,000 sets, and sold 350. The next year, he increased the set to 120 players.
Finally, in 1963, Richman's father lent him $5,000 to do his first complete set, with each team from the 1962 season (hence the 40th anniversary celebration in 2002). The ultimatum: When the money ran out, Richman would get no more. He would work in his father's insurance business.
Richman carefully constructed his set, featuring 440 players. In June of that year, when school let out, sales boomed. And Richman's invention was about to take off.
The beauty of the game is its simplicity. Nearly 1,000 players who saw action last season have cards. Batters' cards have columns 1, 2 and 3 and rows 2 through 12. Pitchers' cards have columns 4, 5 and 6 and the same row numbers.
Strat players roll three dice, two red and one white. They look under the column number shown on the white die and the row number that's the sum of the red dice. That tells the result of the play, though sometimes a chart also is needed to determine the outcome. A game easily can be played in a half hour or less.
The advanced version of the game adds remarkable realism. Hitters are graded on their bunting, hit-and-run and clutch-hitting ability. Pitchers are assigned an inning where they become fatigued and a score for their skill at holding runners. A ballpark-effects chart assures that Colorado's Coors Field will yield more home runs than Detroit's Comerica Park.
Game players get to alter history by managing their own teams. The Twins failed to hold off Cleveland last season, but Twins fans can try their best to change that result in Strat-O-Matic.
It's that control that makes the game so addictive. And with it comes the ability to create dream matchups that even the tie All-Star Game couldn't produce. Barry Bonds vs. Pedro Martinez. Torii Hunter vs. Randy Johnson.
And with Strat-O-Matic's recreation of past seasons, Hunter also could take a home run away from Babe Ruth.
Strat-O-Matic has evolved to include board games for football, basketball and hockey, though baseball is still the most popular. The pacing, nostalgia and abundance of statistics makes the national pastime the best fit for a tabletop format.
Richman has managed to stay ahead of the trends that have done in nearly all of his competitors. In 1988, he and colleague Bob Winberry created a computer version of Strat-O-Matic baseball, which is now more popular with Strat players who don't have time to keep their own stats over a full season's play. The company has computer versions of all four major sports.
And this year the baseball game took to the Internet, through a partnership with Sporting News. Fans can play in Strat-O-Matic leagues online at the Sporting News Web site. Many Strat players buy old-time sets on eBay for upwards of $200.
While it has changed with the times, Strat-O-Matic maintains a nostalgic feel that flies in the face of the trends toward video games and fantasy sports. Most diehard Strat fans play neither.
"I hate video games," said 10-year-old Evan Emrich of Westminster, Calif., who with 5-year-old brother Austin was one of two children that competed in the convention. "They're a waste of time."
The boys' father, Pete, played Strat-O-Matic as a child and taught his sons to play, in part for the educational value.
"I learned numbers and probabilities from playing," Pete said. "I never had a fear of math. I'm doing the same with them. And they have no fear of math. They sit and calculate slugging percentages in the paper every morning."
Strat players also tout the ability to control the players and make crucial decisions, something fantasy sports don't offer.
"I don't see how people can find [fantasy sports] interesting," said Jim Brooker, an attorney from Rochester, N.Y. "It seems so passive, other than picking players and crossing your fingers."
Strat-O-Matic has grown its own legends over the years. One is Bill Sindelar, Richman's first customer. Sindelar saw an ad for the game in Sports Illustrated in 1961 and sent Richman a check. Richman confirms that his first order was shipped to Sindelar's Cleveland home.
Sindelar was a regular customer for 40 years, and this year bought his set in person. He was one of approximately 150 who lined up outside Strat-O-Matic's Glen Head, N.Y., offices on Feb. 8, 2002, to buy the 2001 season cards, the highlight of which was Bonds. The annual tradition, known to Strat fans as Opening Day, brings hundreds of the baseball game's diehards to get the first look at the cards. Sindelar died of a heart attack six weeks later.
Another name cited at Strat conventions is that of John Cruz, the Pete Rose of Strat-O-Matic. Cruz was a regular member of the Table Baseball League, a national organization of Strat tournament players. People began to notice when he consistently won tournaments with subpar players. But after analyzing patterns on the player cards Cruz drafted, his fellow participants tested his dice and found them to be loaded. Cruz was drafting batters with hits in their 2 columns and pitchers with weak 5 columns. His dice was weighted so the 2, directly opposite the 5, would come up the majority of the time.
Cruz was tossed from the league. But a number of folks, led by fellow Californians Suderman and Hank Smith, continue to organize Star Tournaments.
"I tell people, 'The money you win here isn't going to change your life,' " said Smith, who calls himself a Strat-O-Matic statesman. "Just have fun and enjoy the game. If winning was all that mattered, only one person here would have fun."
The biggest threat to Strat-O-Matic is the state of baseball itself, especially its inability to connect with young fans. While Evan and Austin Emrich disdain video games, they are a minority in a generation that prefers MTV to ESPN Classic and never knew John Madden was a football coach.
"They're the future of the game," said Staten Island, N.Y. attorney Tony Giacobbe, of Evan and Austin.
Richman's biggest fear is that his company will be needed once again this fall -- to stage the World Series that's never played in reality.
"A strike would detract from the company," Richman said. "It would take away from everything in baseball. You'll always have people who will stay with you no matter what. But we need more than that. We're really an extension of the fans."
(c) Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.