Craig Mitchell -- "Summer is a Strat-O-Matic Heaven"

Baseball has been a part of my daily life since 1971. When I wasn’t watching it, I was playing it. I was a Met fan, and my best friend at the time, Gary Rind, was a huge Yankee fan, so we immediate clashed competitively. We played whiffle ball in my back yard constantly. I was the Mets, he was the Yankees. We put up the home run fence, went over the “automatic rules.”  One hop off the fence was a double. A line drive or a grounder past the mound was a single. Off the fence was a triple, over the fence a homer. Anything off the big tree varied. Off the trunk was an out. Off the lower limbs was a double, UNLESS the player in the field caught the rebound, then it was an out. Anything caught or popped up was a fly out.  If a grounder to short hit or rolled over the broomstick we laid there and there were runners on…it was a double play.

We made line ups and we played.  My line up consisted of Felix Millan, Rusty Staub, John Milner, Cleo “Baby” Jones, Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson etc… His consisted of Jerry Kenny, Danny Cater, Bobby Murcer, Bill Sudakis, Thurman Munson and Celerino Sanchez.  We followed the line ups and we batted exactly like the players did.  I mean exactly, the same ticks, phantom swings, hunches and bat position the real player had. If they did it, we did it.  This included hitting lefty or righty. It was a big deal. To this day you can try me. If you want to see exactly how Jerry Grote, Felix Millan or John Milner batted I can still do it with 100% accuracy. My favorite was Willie Mays. I imitated his smooth loopy phantom swing to perfection. 

In real life, the Mets and Yankees were actually evenly matched in the early 70’s, with the edge going to the Mets because of the pitching, But Gary Rind kicked my butt almost every game. I could play, but Gary was on a different level.   My record was literally like 3-23 but I didn’t care. I loved playing. As for Gary, well, he got bored of pounding my head in every game and eventually he stopped visiting my little ball field I made in my back yard. That didn’t stop me. I spent hours by myself playing  self-hit whiffleball Met/Yankee games by myself, playing game after game. Writing line-ups, recording each result, retrieving hit whiffle balls and going back to the plate to continue the inning while even compiling batting and pitching stats.  I couldn’t get enough.  But then in March of 1975, I discovered Strat-O-Matic. Actually, it found me.

Met fans are accustomed to hearing Keith Hernandez mention Start-O-Matic. Strat-O-Matic is the world’s greatest baseball simulation game. It’s played with player cards and dice  It sounds silly, but it is AMAZINGLY accurate. I overheard Scotty Trelin and Neil Ferber talking about the game in 10^th grade Biology. I was instantly interested and barraged them with questions. They told me it was available at Hermann’s (a local NY sporting goods store) I was there that night…and I bought the game. The game came with a board (which I never used) and two teams, dice, x-cards, an x-chart  (for error results), a fielding, stolen base and injury chart (yes, players got injured!) and of course, an order form.  I immediately ordered the entire 1974 season (via mail order) and I dove in and played the games CONSTANTLY. The two random teams the game came with were the 1974 Brewers and the 1974 Expos. Talk about yawn. You couldn’t get anymore middle of the road than them, but I was just grateful to have it and I played that game as much as I could while I waited for my season cards to arrive. I played it so much that to this day I can’t hear the names Steve Renko, Bob Coluccio or Larry Lintz without thinking of it.

I played and played and I couldn’t believe that my season pack was taking so long to come. My parents went to Florida for two weeks and I was staying at my Sisters and I rode my bike two miles to my house every day to check the mail and NO DICE…LITERALLY.  Finally my parents came home, and so did I. In walks our neighbor, with a pile of our mail and right on top was the big padded bag I was waiting for. I grabbed it, ran to my bedroom and didn’t show my face again for 3 months.  I immediately checked out the Mets.  Seaver! Yes!  Matlack, Koosman, McGraw, Yes! Staub Yes! Don Hahn and Dave Schneck in center? I’ll deal with it.  This was going to rock. I had planned to play a whole season, but with each game taking about  40 minutes to complete, playing every game for every team would have taken FOREVER, so I picked 4 teams I really liked The Mets, the Dodgers, the A’s and the Yankee’s . I made a schedule…and played…and played…and played.

Now, I got my best friend Tom DeSantis  hooked as well.  In the hot summer months of vacation from 74 to 77 and beyond, we weren’t out playing baseball or going to the park pool as often as we were in my bedroom with the air conditioner blasting eating peanut butter sandwiches playing game after game of Strat-O-Matic. Mostly at night. To be honest we did venture outside during the day and played "Strat" as we called it at night, but on the REALLY hot days, we stayed in the cool and went at it. We played while the Mets were on TV or the radio, nothing stopped us.  Mostly we played our own leagues and then we would play important series together (Like the Mets/Yankees or Mets/Dodgers or our individual championship series) He had his Mets and his way to manage and I had mine. We played 162 games and we shared our results (as they happened. We did stats and shared them and had a great time. When we had an important homer, we would throw a die on the others game sheet and when that grabbed each others attention we would reveal the game event that happened. It was usually a big hit or a homer. Two dice tossed on each others page meant a player hit two homers in the game, 3 meant three…and so on. In big situations in our games we would make the other person stop and listen while we announced our game like Bob Murphy and Lindsay Nelson.  Looking back, it reminds me of the same dedication that D & D players had years later.

I literally played Strat-O-Matic for the next 10 to 15 years. Eventually, I got to the point where I drove to Railroad Ave, in Glen Head NY and picked up my orders instead of waiting for them to arrive. I also graduated to the “advanced” version of the game to be even more accurate.  But Strat-O-Matic went hand and hand with my love of baseball and of the Mets.  I never even thought about playing any other team. It was ALWAYS the Mets. Every year that was the team I played, managed and enjoyed.  I played through the late 70’s and early 80’s and sweated out games started by  Ray Burris, Kevin Kobel, Doc Elis and Pat Zachary.  Meanwhile, I got to manage the likes of Lee Mazzilli who owned the much desired AA rating in base stealing always giving him the green light to go.  Dave Kingman who’s card always seemed to have equal amounts of Homeruns and Strikeouts on it.  I played with my other friends, tried to get my nephew into it, it was sincerely my biggest hobby and/or obsession.

There were records. Lee Mazzilli with 88 steals; Dave Kingman clocked 62 homers long before Mark McGwire did in real life.  Cleon Jones had a 37 game hitting streak and on and on.  I took the game very seriously! If it wasn’t theoretically possible, I wouldn’t have it. I remember playing with a friend, Tom Frey. He’s a huge Met fan make no mistake about it.  But he would do things like playing Ed Kranepool at short. It would NEVER happen in real life!  But you could do it. If you played a player out of position he automatically got the worst fielding rating, but even so, I just couldn’t deal with it, so we never played more than once or twice. Simply put, I was a hard core Strat-O-Matic player.  I couldn’t change and didn't want to.

Eventually, I graduated to computer sims. Micro league Baseball, Strat-O-Matic computer game (all graphic only), High Heat, MVP baseball, The 2K series and my current favorite MLB: THE SHOW. I still, only play the Mets. I’m actually playing a season right now that features the Mets roster as it would be if the season started today.  I have Bartolo Colon, Curtis Granderson and Chris Young on the roster.  I also have Ruben Tejada at Short and Ike Davis at 1^st…and so far so good.  By the end of March I’ll have MLB: THE SHOW 2014….and it will continue.

But it all started with Strat-O-Matic.  That’s the game that fueled (and was fueled by) my love of the Mets and baseball and took the seed that started in whiffle ball and let it grow to the personal tradition it is today.  Strat-O-Matic is still around. It’s still played the same way and still has a huge fan base.  There are adult leagues that play religiously every week and if I had more time I would definitely start one or join one. But if I did, I’d have to have the Mets. The Mets or nothing. There’s just no two ways about it.  The Mets and Strat-O-Matic; a summer heaven!