A Strat-O-Matic Baseball Memoir

In the beginning, I learned, there had been The Disc Game.

Player cards were cardboard discs that slipped over a spinner. Each disc was divided into numbered sections, with each number representing a strikeout, walk, single, out, home run, and so on. Players who had hit more home runs, or struck out more, in real life had bigger home run, and strikeout, zones. I never heard it called anything but The Disc Game.

You could play a more or less realistic game of baseball. But there was no strategy; no hit-and-run, stolen base, or sacrifice. The pitcher wasn't part of it. There was also the problem of having the spinner come to rest precisely on a line separating two sections of a player's disc.

One of the guys in The Disc Game league no doubt saw the advertisement in a sports magazine: PLAY 1968 BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL GAMES. The ad, for a company named Strat-O-Matic, promised realistic action. Ferguson Jenkins and Bob Gibson would display pinpoint control. Hank Aaron would catch line drives other outfielders would fail to reach. Frank Howard would be among the leaders in both home runs and strikeouts. The same ad I remember seeing in baseball magazines years earlier; same copy, with only the players' names changed each season.

The 1968 cards were ordered, and arrived, as they still do, early in the spring following the baseball season. During the moon landing / Woodstock summer vacation of 1969, when I was taking driver's ed, while the Cubs were blowing their big lead in the NL East, the four Disc Game league guys -- acquaintances of mine since kindergarten -- passed the time playing Strat-O-Matic baseball.

One morning that fall, while waiting for American Government class to begin, I overheard baseball talk and asked what was up. I ended up asking to join the league. It met, almost every night during that senior year of high school, in the basement belonging to a patient and understanding set of parents.