I can’t recall where I first stumbled upon Strat-o-Matic baseball. Looking back it feels like it was always part of my life. I don’t know when it entered, and with the limited number of retail shops in my small hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, it seems almost impossible that I somehow found it on a store shelf.
The year was 1980, and the set included the 1979 Major League Baseball season. I loved my Milwaukee Brewers, and to replay them by rolling dice gave me far more pleasure than to plug into the Atari.
I would spend my summer days playing baseball outside with my friends. As the sun went down, I would run upstairs to my room and grab my dice.
There were no score sheets back then. I made my own homemade score sheets using notebook paper. Heck, I didn’t even know how to score. I simply created my own scoring system. I still use it today. It’s etched into my mind like a fingerprint; impossible to forget.
I recall playing the entire Brewers baseball season. I had one of those old foldable mini-schedules you could find at nearly any gas station. Game by game I worked my way through the season, completely fascinated by both the accuracy of the mounting statistics, and the unexpected twists and turns and memorable moments that unfolded before me.
My love for tabletop gaming soon expanded beyond Strat-0-Matic. I would look for tabletop games in the back of sports magazines, and before I knew it I was programming sports simulations on my Tandy tape drive computer. I recall having a program so vast and intense that it could create outcomes of each game just like my tabletop passion, and accrue statistics as the season moved forward.
I was 15 years old and had no idea what I was creating, or just how impressive my developing programming and math skills were becoming. It was just about baseball. Figuring out baseball, playing baseball. Exploring baseball through math.
But I also fell in love with probability. I recall spending weeks and weeks trying to figure out the probability of rolling 2d6 and 3d6. I would perform endless rolls, marking tick after tick on paper until one day it hit me. Mentally I connected with just how the probability of 6-sided dice truly worked. I will never forget this experience and epiphany.
My programming skills allowed me to create a simulation for the state of Wisconsin. At age 16 they hired me to build a program that basically walked an individual through the job search and interview process. Programming in Basic had become second nature to me, and I spent the summer of 1984 creating a program so large and vast that it wouldn’t fit on one floppy drive. At first the state of Wisconsin had no idea what to do with it.
I was later told that they used the simulation for nearly a decade as a training tool for those looking to find employment.
In 1986, I set off for the New Mexico Institute of Technology to study astrophysics. None of this would be possible without Strat-o-Matic. The statistics. The mathematics. My love for probability. And my love for programming logic.
All of these things resulted in a near perfect SAT and ACT score in mathematics. I would like to think I was gifted in these areas, but more so I think I fell in love with them because of tabletop baseball.
Life moved on, and I spent time in the military, got married, had kids, and was a faithful father. From 1986 to 2020 there was no tabletop baseball in my life. I was doing other things; developing a career, cutting the grass, being a faithful husband and role model for my children – and one day realizing I felt detached.
Somewhere around 4 to 5 years ago I stumbled upon Out of the Park baseball. Now being a small business owner, I would squeeze in an inning every 15 to 20 minutes between my client work. Over the course of 12-hour work days I was able to fit in two to three games a day.
During these years I played over 2,000 games of computer baseball. It ended up like a sad marriage. I loved the game but knew it way too well; every minor flaw became an annoyance, and it was almost impossible not to exploit aspects of the game. It wasn’t like tabletop baseball. You can’t cheat the dice, no matter how well you know the game.
Last year, and out of the blue, I was asked to attend a PLAAY convention in Denver. Not because I knew anything about the gaming company, but because my good friend Joe Bryan wanted to reconnect after many years apart.
Many of you know Joe as the creator of Payoff Pitch baseball. I know him as the young kid I used to babysit when I was a teen. At that time I introduced Joe to tabletop games, and we would spend endless hours playing. Little did I know where that would lead Joe.
In any case, I traveled with Joe to the convention and by the hand of fate was reconnected with table top sports. I returned home with a few games in hand, and slowly over time my reconnection with dice and card baseball blossomed once again into a consuming passion.
I realized that at age 57, time was no longer my friend. While I love my work and my small business, the hours were passing far too rapidly. I felt disconnected with many of the things I had once loved.
As Christmas approaches and 2024 draws to an end, I find myself surrounded by every possible tabletop baseball game I could find on eBay and on the internet. Currently, I am taking my time exploring each, in blocks of 10 to 20 games.
I’m treating each like an adventure; getting to know the game in a slow and enjoyable fashion. Learning to embrace the uniqueness of each system and its mechanics, and through the rolling of the dice not only enjoy the outcomes of baseball, but also run myself through the process of trying to understand how the game was developed.
This is truly the combination that I am in love with when it comes to tabletop gaming. Correction, tabletop baseball.
Baseball has always been my first love. If I had all the time in the world, and a winning lottery ticket in hand, I would do nothing more than watch baseball games while rolling tabletop baseball games, imagining the soft and warm summer breeze of my teenage years creeping through the window screens as the hours passed by slowly.
Somewhere in the background of my mind, I can hear Bob Uecker or Harry Caray calling a game in the background while I roll dice. “Hey everybody!”
These days I wake up and look forward to the next game, and not only that, but the development of my own game. One of the beautiful things I found out about tabletop baseball is that there’s a wonderful community of individuals dedicated to not only the exploration of various games, but also the creation process. Each game is like a gem; a unique mechanic system that just begs to be learned and enjoyed.
A system with one focus – to help you stay connected with baseball in such a beautiful, simplistic, and peaceful way.
Retired editor and small business owner; baseball fanatic. My love for statistics in math was launched in my early teens while compiling and analyzing statistics from Strat-o-Matic baseball. Currently working on my first game - High Leverage Baseball - as part of a startup gaming company called Massive Tension Gaming.
Great article! Really enjoyed reading this.
Thanks Kevin I appreciate that
Awesome. I have about 150 games. We should talk (or play, lol).
Nice write up of your experience, Steve. Glad you are back in the fold.
Thank you Joe