Strat-o-matic

One of the craziest, most unpredictable thing that happened this past summer was that Little One, now a not-so-little fourteen-year-old, suddenly inexplicably woke up one morning a diehard Yankee fan. We’d gone to a Met game that May, and she enjoyed it, liked the party atmosphere and the stadium goodies (ice cream in the mini batting helmet), but really didn’t follow the game nor cheered or booed. Same thing when I’d watch a game at home. We’d been going regularly to Yankee games, too, one or two a summer, over the years, and it elicited the same response from her.

Then, sometime in June, she woke up that diehard Yankee fan.

She learned the names of all the guys on the team, and gave them all nicknames. Then she learned their stats and their backstories. Then she started box scoring the games. Then she started DVR’ing games she couldn’t watch live. Then she requested Yankee tickets for special occasions like her Middle School graduation and birthday. This past Christmas she got Yankee socks, a Yankee banner, and a Yankee scarf to compliment all her other Yankee gear, such as the Yankee jersey and the Yankee pillow.

Two months ago, after the Yankees lost in the playoffs, I wondered about her psychological state of mind. What would get her through the next six months until Spring Training ’19?

Strat-o-matic baseball!

It was a game from my youth, something I hardly thought about over the past forty years. But I knew it was the perfect Christmas gift for Little One from Dad.

Strat-o-matic baseball is a baseball simulation game using a set of dice to determine the outcome of every at-bat. You’re the manager; you assemble a batting lineup based on a statistic card for each player on your team. You also need to take into account the player’s position fielding rating, too. Once you and your opponent have created your batting order (and ok’d the opponent’s lineup), you play the game just as a regular game is played, and you box score it.

There’s a red die and two white ones. The red die determines whose stat card you use – 1 to 3 and you consult the batter’s card, 4 to 6 the pitcher’s. Then you use the numbers on all three to see the outcome of the at-bat. Thus, each card has 36 outcomes, and they’re based on the player’s actual performance in actual play. Some outcomes are straightforward, like a strikeout or a walk. When the result comes up as a groundball or a fly ball, the position it was hit to is indicated. You then consult another chart and roll a geeky 20-sided dice to determine the outcome of that grounder or fly ball.

It sounds dull and clinical, but it really isn’t. I remember having a blast playing it with my brother and uncle way back in the late 70s, and so far Little One and I have been enjoying it – much to my delight. So far we’ve played two games. The first, on a lazy Christmas afternoon, her Astros beat my Cubs in a late inning rally, 7-6. The second, played last night, my Twins (led by Bartolo Colon) wailed on her Astros, 9-6, leading 7-0 at one point.

We’re honing our skills before the subway series begins.

The 2018 version of Strat-o-matic baseball seems more comprehensive than the 1978 version. For one thing, we have all 32 teams, based on actual 2017 performance statistics. Forty years ago I think we only had four teams to use (one was the Cincinnati Big Red Machine, the other was the Yanks, and the other two I can’t recall). I don’t remember the nerdy 20-sided die being used back then; I think we just rolled all three dice at once to generate a result of 3-18. I guess you now have four more outcomes with the Dungeons and Dragons icosahedron. But everything else, all the charts and such, slowly came back to me. We’re going to expand beyond the basic game in the upcoming week, utilizing steals and righty vs lefty pitching and hitting. It should be fun. And on a side note, I hope the sabermetrical statistical thing might actually kindle an interest in mathematics in her. It is, after all, in her genes.

We’ve decided to play forty more games until Spring Training starts in med-February. I promised her the Mets will take six of eight of the Yankees match-ups, much like I said they would in actual games. We’ll see. It’s going to be World War III around the Hopper household over the next couple of weeks …