Smak-O-Matic
By Steve Felson
Volume I, Number 2
January 21, 2001
Don Baylor was Eaten by a Gerbil
Sitting on the floor of Evan Picone’s bedroom in the fall of
1980 rolling dice and flipping tattered orange split cards is one of my fondest
childhood memories. I can still hear
the crackling melodies of an overplayed Styx “Paradise Theater” album in the
background. I can still hear the little
magnetic men vibrating with delight on the Monday Night Football game we played
after baseball season was over. But the
sound that haunts me most is the savage clatter of gnawing and gluttony as Don
Baylor was eaten by a gerbil.
Midway
through our two-man league’s fall classic, I was taking my Chicago Cubs (trust
me, I made a lot of trades) to the Strat-O-Matic Word Series title. Evan’s Cincinnati Reds hit like a group of
graduates from the Mark Belanger School of baseball. After Baylor had struck out for the millionth time, Evan asked me
if I wanted to trade for him…right there in the middle of the game. No sooner than I requested we wait until the
game was over, Evan proclaimed, “That’s it!
Don Baylor, you’re fired!” Evan
hastily opened the cage where his gerbil resided and dangled Baylor’s card in
front of the door. He asked me one more
time if I wanted to make a trade. Like
the guy who always dies in those Clint Eastwood movies, my face must have shown
an ounce of doubt. In that moment, Don
Baylor’s card became gerbil food.
I made a
mental note at this point in time that some people take life, and specifically
Strat-O-Matic baseball, way too seriously.
Although I have since lost track of Evan, I have my suspicions that he
now works for the post office. Unfortunately,
his spirit lives on in the gamers of the new millennium. MEMO TO STRAT-O-MATIC PLAYERS EVERYWHERE:
THIS IS JUST A GAME!
I have
been playing strat-o-matic on and off for 20 years. For me, the joy is pouring over statistics of past seasons,
rooting for players in Sportscenter highlights because I have them on my team,
spending hours reading books like “Stats Inc. Player Profiles” in preparation
for an upcoming draft and sharing the game with my wife who, admittedly, knows
little about Strat-O, but understands that when I say, “Yes!” and she sees the
fireworks on the screen that I hit a homer.
The joy, however, also lies in wondering how the heck you could lose 5
in a row at home to a hapless team or how you could have traded Travis Fryman
to get Hideki Irabu. The joy is in the
journey, not the result.
There are
many people out there, unfortunately, who just won’t get the preceding
paragraph. After all, I did not speak
of championships and victories. I
included no facts on how many home runs a player hit or how my drafting Derek
Jeter when he was only in 4th grade helped me win the championship
in 1998. There are many in the Strat
community that feel it is there duty to suck the life out of the game by
calling meetings and invoking parliamentary procedure to discuss the legalities
of ABs or IPs. There are those who get
Strat-O-Matic confused with a game of Risk as they amass armies and allies to
sway opinions and forward their own Steinbrenneresque agendas. To these people, I provide the following
wisdom from the movie Stripes…Lighten up, Frances.
Don’t get
me wrong, the comic value of these individuals is immeasurable to the rest of
us, but you’ve just got to feel sorry for them. And yes, I understand the argument that real baseball has its Ty
Cobbs whom nobody likes and everybody respects and, ergo, so shall every
Strat-O-Matic league. Of course, if
anyone playing Strat-O-Matic could hit .400, they would be playing real
baseball.
I realize I can’t change the masses in one fell swoop. There have always been curmudgeons and nay Sayers. There will always be those Oliver Stone wannabees who believe that Super Hal is plotting against him and his team. But if this article helped just one lonely sole to drop his spoon back into the bowl of Ramen noodles and send out an apology email to the rest of his league, this article was worth it. In summary, Strat-O-Matic is just a game, play it that way. Give to your fellow League brothers….because a 1979 Don Baylor card is a terrible thing to waste.
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