The Negro Leagues Live Again

[sdelmonte]

When I was in high school and college, I used to play something called Strat-O-Matic Baseball. It was a dice game where players' stats were boiled down to sets of probabilities. If you had a good hitter, you were likely to get a hit with a 6 or 7; if you have a dud, you'd have to roll snake eyes or boxcars. It was (and is) very low tech, very much a game for baseball fans who pore over the boxscores for every little stat. My brother and I played it every Shabbos for about five years, and I was in a league my freshman year. (This was my first encounter with any advanced form of gaming, as well. My first 20-sided die was something I bought so we could get rid of the 1-through-20 Split cards.)

Within the past few weeks, Strat-O-Matic released an expansion set. It features the players of the Negro Leagues, the baseball leagues formed during segregation that starred legends like Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige. SI.com's Joe Posnanski writes about the origins of the set, about the Negro Leagues, about how baseball nuts like him and me grew up with this game, and how a lost world is brought back.

I haven't touched my Strat cards in ages. I don't know anyone who plays, and I can't imagine it would be the same. But just knowing that there are people who love baseball that much and who wanted to do right by the Negro Leaguers makes me want to run out and get the set and convince my brother to take a day off so we can try out these cards, the way we used to 25 years ago.

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Oh, memories.

Next to my desk, on top of my 2-drawer filing cabinet, is a 2-drawer index card file. It contains my entire collection of Strat-O-Matic cards, which I've probably not touched in 10 years. We had a very bizarre league which existed entirely in some parallel universe. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. It was good times. (And if you want to bring some cards to a con sometime, I'd love to carve out a couple of hours and play a few innings with you!)

[team-banzai.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, while we had a Strato-Matic Baseball game that was one of the few things which could bring my brother and I together, we did not need dice. The version of strato-matic baseball we had came with player cards cut into circles. The outer perimeter of each card was segmented by boxes of named events matching the percentage of that player's at bats(over his entire career) of times he hit for that event. So if 1% of your carer at bats resulted in home runs, then 1% of the circle's outer edge was in a box(or boxes) labeled HR. So the entire outer edge was comprised of boxes bent around the circle shaped card. You had your cards in a stack which represented your batting order and when you began an at bat, you took the card from the top and slid it into a half circle of plastic on a playing field board. On the top of that plastic half circle was a metal spinner and you then spun the needle on the spinner and waited. Eventually the spinner stopped spinning and ended up with the needle hovering over one of the boxes printed on the player's card. That was the result of that at bat. If you got a base hit of some kind(Single, Double Triple) you placed a marker on the playing field to represent the runner. If the runner had to advance another runner to get to there they should be, that runner gets advanced too(IE: a batter hits a double and there is already a runner on First, the runner on first is advanced to Third so the batting player can be placed on Second).
I do not know what happened to that old game but it is gone. More recently, I am one of the very few people I have ever heard of who have played full 9 inning games of the ill fated and bizarrely complex Topps/Wiz Kids "MLB Sports Clix". I even still have sealed sets of figures like Alex Rodreguez in a Rangers Uniform and Alfonso Soriano in a Yankees Uniform. the figures were released a week before the trade was announced.

Marc

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

My brothers and I used to play Strat-O-Matic often.

[batshua]

Is it derailing to say that I'd love to see them add the All American Girls Baseball League, too?

Because yes, this is awesome, and these men should be remembered for the cool stuff they did, especially given that society in general didn't care at the time, and they should have been recognized and honored… but the same thing also happened to Girls' Baseball.

Not trying to be a bitch, but I can't read my tone. This is awesome. I hope they make more awesome.

[sdelmonte]

I think there's no reason why it can't be done, though the Negro Leagues set was made because one very dedicated fan tracked down every boxscore he could in old newspapers. I have no idea where the AAGPBL records can be found. There is an official website that is heavy on the history but light on the stats.

[batshua]

If I knew enough, I could probably do it, but I have no idea where to start.

For crying out loud, Rockford, IL, home of the Rockford Peaches, has absolutely NO mention of this fact ANYWHERE that I could find when I last looked. No token statue, not a blurb on their website…

I think women playing baseball = awesome but I have no idea how to raise awareness.