By Kim J. Harmon

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LEN HEAD, NY – With the proliferation of such games as MLB 2002 and Triple Play 2002 for Playstation and Nintendo 64 game consoles and such games as Out of the Park Baseball for the PC, it should be a surprise to some that – after 40 years – an old standard like Strat-O-Matic Baseball remains a vibrant member of the gaming field.

Perhaps that’s because – even after 40 years – the Strat-O-Matic Game Co. of Glen Head, New York, is trying to find new ways to revitalize itself . . . much like it has with its brand new Hall of Fame 2000 set.

Strat-O-Matic founder Hal Richman had been searching for a way to commemorate the company’s 40th anniversary and devised the concept of a Hall of Fame set of cards that portrays every single member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame (up to, and including, the 2000 inductees).

“With the arrival of Strat-O-Matic’s 40th anniversary, we were looking for the proper way to celebrate,” said officials in an open letter to gamers. “After much consideration, our founder Hal Richman decided to release his dream set. The obstacles were great – lack of certain data for some of the early players, devising normalization procedures to five the most accurate reflection of each player’s worth, determining ballpark effects on each batter and pitcher and much more.”

From Al Spalding (who pitched in the very first year of the National League, back in 1876) to Carlton Fisk (he of the dramatic home run at Fenway Park in the 1975 World Series), more than 190 players are each represented on beautifully rendered 51/2 –by-3 inch, multi-colored, high-gloss cards.

Strat-O-Matic is a game played with three regular dice, a 20-sided die, and two or three charts (depending on the difficulty level of the competitors – basic, advanced or super advanced). With simple dice rolls, batters like Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig can be pitted against pitchers like Walter Johnson or Nolan Ryan – with everything from short fences to poor fielding being factored into the equation.

For the past 40 years, Strat-O-Matic has developed playing cards for all the teams in the major leagues – including teams dating back to the turn of the century. The company also created full-season card sets that enable gamers to completely replay dramatic seasons – such as 1941, when Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams captured the imagination of baseball fans around the country.

Strat-O-Matic did have a Hall of Fame set for several years, but it included just 80 players and the cards – like all of the other products the company produced – were printed on basic white cardboard stock (except for the modern major league teams, which were printed on perforated, multi-colored cardboard stock).

The Hall of Fame 2000 set takes the game to a new level.

“It took a lot longer than we expected (to put the set together),” Richman has said. “Everything was very difficult.”

Strat-O-Matic had planned for a March release of this product, but several delays – caused by extensive and exhaustive research as well as printing problems – kept the set from being released until late June.

According to Dave Scott, a Strat-O-Matic chronicler, “the task was difficult because Strat-O-Matic does a lot more than gather stats and immediately translate them into cards.” The era in which a player competed, ballpark effects, the level of competition at the time, and many other judgements for which there is no quantifiable statistic were taken into account in order to create a set where the players span more than 120 years of professional baseball, yet are now able to compete against one another.

In order to do that, Strat-O-Matic developed a methodology which would incorporate a player’s seven peak seasons and avoid the usually sub-par early years and the declining late years (so players like Steve Carlton, who hung on long after they should have retired, will perform much better than their overall statistics would indicate).

Using those formulas, Strat-O-Matic also made an effort to “normalize” the statistics to allow players from different eras to compete against one another. The reasoning for that was simple – around the turn of the century, players were competing on very poor fields with equipment that is a mere shadow of what became available to future players. The supposition was, a player such as Travis Jackson, who was charged with many errors during his time at shortstop, would have performed much better on better fields with better equipment. The reverse would, of course, hold true for a defensive wizard such as Luis Aparicio.

Also, according to company literature, “normalization” was necessary because a batter hitting .300 in a league that hit .280 overall is “not nearly as impressive” as a batter who hit .300 in a league that hit .230 overall.

Will Kolodzie of SOMWORLD said, “The aesthetic quality of the card set itself is exquisite – definitely worth the wait. The color printing and higher paper quality is impressive. In fact, you may not be able to look at Strat’s ‘regular’ cards the same way again.”

The set is so complete it includes Shoeless Joe Jackson, Pete Rose and Carl Mays – players who would be in the National Baseball Hall of Fame had they not been banned (all three of which were banned on suspicion of gambling).

When the new set was finally ready to be released, Mr Richman revived an old company tradition and gathered some of his employees together to play a game. And in the inaugural Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame 2000 game, the Larnaitis team (managed by Rita Larnaitis, Richman and James Williams) defeated the O’Neill team (managed by Vinnie O’Neill, Len Schwartz and Steve Barkan), 9-4.

For Larnaitis, Ted Williams was 1-for-4 with a three-run homer off Nolan Ryan while Babe Ruth was 2-for-4 and Honus Wagner was 2-for-5. For O’Neill, Mickey Mantle was 2-for-3 with a pair of home runs while Ernie Banks and Mickey Cochrane each had a pair of hits.

The past and the present come together.

It can make for a lot of magic.