Before those sad and isolated statistics replaced hale and hearty line scores as the seat of a fan’s interest; before the flux and flow of the National League disabled list took on the watercooler importance of the Dow Jones; before eager owners mined the late-edition box scores to see if light-hitting Jose Vidro did indeed manage two hits and a stolen base; before there was fantasy baseball as we know and love it today, there was Strat-O-Matic.
If “Strat-O-Matic” sounds more like a late-Fifties innovation at the dry cleaner’s than the finest vicarious ballsmanship money could buy, allow me a brief explanation: Strat-O-Matic was built from three dice and a stack of perforated player cards finely calibrated by Strat-O-Matic statmongers to reflect a player’s performance for the year in question. The first die determined whether you consulted the batter’s card or the pitcher’s; the second two were added together to produce a raft of probabilities: a 1-7, say, on Willie Randolph’s card might mean a routine grounder to short, while a much more improbable 1-11 (think craps here) might have the wispy second baseman take it clean out of the yard. Just a few rolls and you were hooked, pitching dice like a broken-down pension player at a Louisiana border casino.
The first set of cards in our home were based on the statistics of the 1978 season, when Jim Rice was king and Ron Guidry virtually unhittable. My brother, being older, stronger, and more likely to throw punches, always managed our beloved Red Sox, while I made do with the nefarious Yankees, plus a few all-stars culled from other squads. (Who needed Bucky Dent at short? I had Dave Concepcion.) From this distance I can still recall the circus-peanut orange of the dog-eared cards in our split deck — numbered chits you would draw to see, say, if Rick Burleson handled Randolph’s routine two-hopper with uncharacteristic grace or if (hang your head, Tom Dooley) he booted it again. All of our favorite components of baseball were there: the 6-4-3 double play, the fielder’s choice, the odds-against excitement of the suicide squeeze. Odds-against, odds-for: It was all about odds. There was scarcely a shred of skill in the game, aside from aligning those odds in your favor, but still you took every hit batsman personally and savored each home run as if you’d swatted the ball yourself. In our house, at least, passions ran high — so high that my brother once took a bite out of Bob Stanley when he failed to preserve a late-inning lead (The Stanley card was always easy to identify, due to its missing corner and the word “fucker” scrawled angrily across its face). If Bob Stanley squandered leads in this fantasy world as surely as he did at Fenway, other facts were more malleable. With those cards, and a few lucky rolls of the dice, a young kid could change the course of history: Those ’78 Sox might just storm past Reggie Jackson and the swaggering Yanks, take the pennant and then the Series to bring home the trophy for beleaguered Beantown fans. The curse of the Bambino lifted, thanks to a savvy 12-year-old skipper from upper east Tennessee.
My mom moved out of our old house last year, and I went home to clear out my old room, including my beloved Strat-O-Matic set. Most of it went in the trash, I’ll admit, but I did save three cards from that well-worn 1978 set: Dwight Evans, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice. I still have them. And why not? Rice hit .315 that year. —Jay Hardwig
This article appears in July 2 • 1999 and July 2 • 1999 (Cover).