Strat-O-Matic

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Old School Strat-o-Matic card, when Pete Rose was skinny, had a crew cut, and hadn’t yet bet on baseball.

Every once in awhile I’d get up from my desk, walk outside to the back patio and make sure the salmon hadn’t caught on fire.  I’d push the bratwursts around, flip the burgers with a spatula- maybe toss of couple slices of cheddar on top- then go back inside to the computer.  There was a tall stack of papers on my desk, waiting for their data to be entered.

 

My desk sits in the middle of a rec room, between our couch and the stairway leading to the second floor.  Every so often, little kids with big voices came barreling down the steps, headed outside.  And every once in awhile the big people, the ones holding glasses of Pinot Grigio or bottles of Stella Artois, would stumble over to chat me up for a couple minutes, maybe ask again (for the third time), exactly what it was I was working on. And, um, exactly why did I have to do it tonight?

 

I’m afraid I didn’t do a really good job this past summer articulating how spending 16 hours in front of a computer screen doing data entry was actually, um, a dream come true for me.  Sixteen hours on a Saturday.  Eight hours on a Sunday.  Forty-plus hours each week, above and beyond my regular full-time job, for four straight months.  Twenty-plus hours per week for close to four years.

 

I’d tell them I was almost done, I had an important deadline I needed to meet.  My corporate friends understood this part.  Important deadlines are things which strike a chord.

 

TYPICAL CONVERSATION

 

Now, those numbers you’re typing into the excel sheet, they’re for a baseball game, right?

 

Yeah, it’s called Strat-O-Matic.   Been around since the early 1960s.  They have a board game and a really awesome text-based computer product.

 

Cool…

 

So what I’m doing here is going through box scores from the 1920s and 30s, and then I…

 

Hey- You know what, Scott-  I’m gonna run outside for another beer. Want one? I’ll be back in a little bit.

 

Uh, okay- whatever.  Can you check on the salmon for me?

 

STRAT-O-MATIC

 

I don’t think I’ll do any better explaining the game today.  But here’s a link www.strat-o-matic.com, if you want some additional information.   It really IS an amazing game.  When the Negro League All Star set comes out in a few months, buy a couple sets for the baseball fans in your life. They’re going to love it!

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Tags: Negro Leagues, Scott Simkus, Strat-o-Matic