Customer Reviews

Strat-O-Matic Fanatics: The Unlikely Success Story Of A Game That Became An American Passion

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Obviously, you're not going to read this book unless you've already invested hundreds of hours of your life in playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball. I got the game as a birthday present from a cousin when I turned ten, and again from my mother when I turned 14. With the occasional lapse along the way, I've been a regular player for over 20 years now, and was even fortunate enough to get my name in the computer game credits for two of those years. Therefore, I was destined to buy and read this book, even if it was written by, oh, let's say, the editorial staff of the Washington Times.

Glenn Guzzo, newspaper editor and long-time Strat-O fan, is the man who refused to use the corporate name for the new Mile High Stadium in Denver in his old paper. I therefore had high hopes for the writing of this book. Basically, I was disappointed with the end result, but not enough to prevent me from finishing. Maybe the problem is in the editing -- game creator Harold "Hal" Richman is called by his full name on almost every other page. Other details, such as the circumstances of Hal's first "intimate encounter" with a woman, just don't belong here.

However, the star of this book is the Strat-O-Matic game, the history of which would be enthralling no matter what. The stories from celebrity Strat-O players are quite welcome, especially Spike Lee's. I'm actually going to have to watch "Crooklyn" now. So Guzzo's done what a team of wild horses haven't been able to do.

The first two thirds of the book detail the game's creation, and its survival by creative evolution in the competitive board-game and video game markets. One upside is that, since I finished the book, I've been playing my computer version in dice mode, the first time I've rolled dice to play Strat-O in almost a decade. Not that the results have worked out very well for my retro-league 1934 Boston Braves. Wally Berger, stay out of the 3 column!

The final third of the book details the derivation of the annual fielding ratings, and also includes numerous personal stories, such as a weekend at a face-to-face Strat tournament, and biographies of representative Strat players. As with any game that requires such a time commitment in order to become proficient, Strat draws its share of troubled personalities for whom the game defeats real life. I had to set the game aside in college when it came time to graduate, and didn't get back to it for two years, until my academic future stabilized. The book covers the down side as well as the up.

A book about Strat-O-Matic is going to have a built-in audience and is not going to have much crossover appeal. Therefore, it need not be written by David McCullough or Simon Winchester (though that would be nice). I doubt that a significant portion of the target audience is going to be put off by simplistic writing or the occasional awkward literary device ("That is why the boys' discovery...nearly killed Strat-O-Matic before its birth"). Go read the book, then pick up the dice and cards for a few hours, and see if you can't manage to lose a few to my lowly '34 Braves.

This is a fascinating look at the life of Hal Richman,the creator of the Strat-O-Matic game company. It follows him from his introverted childhood to the ultimate success of his business. Table top sports games and their computer based successors have been enjoyed by many fans of all ages. This book affords the reader an inside view on the whole process of this particular games evolution and its statistical accuracy.

Hal Richman figures prominently in Alan Schwartz's "The Numbers Game," a history of the evolution of statistics in baseball. Schwartz interviewed fifty current baseball executives and found HALF of them had played SOM as a child. On a simple "guilty pleasure" level, there is no way that anyone who played SOM wouldn't buy this book to relive their childhood for a few hours. But it is a meaningful work in many other ways: a young man overcoming a painful childhood. A passion becoming a career. A primer in how to succeed in small business. An example of a "perfect" product reaching its audience.

In "Moneyball" you will find some fleeting references to SOM, its statistics and its impact upon baseball people such as Beane, DePodesta, Epstein, etc. In "The Numbers Game" you will find how this game - a box game, for crying out loud - played as important a role in understanding baseball games as box scores and scouting reports. This book puts you inside the company.

Any baseball fan should own all three books.

Quite simply, Guzzo has written a masterpiece capturing, in eye-opening detail, the complete history and progression of the venerable Strat-O-Matic family of sports board games. Not only does this book lay out, with great relish, how this game company grew from nothing in 1961 to competing with and fighting off challenges from big dudes like Sports Illustrated, EA Games, et al, during the past 30 years.

This book doesn't just mechanically spit out dates, etc. but rather it delves into the very personal reasons *why* Hal Richman started this fine company. I found myself cheering for Hal while reading of each of his struggles and roadblocks encountered in trying to get this company off the ground in the beginning, and also really feeling for the man and realizing that this game is indeed a part of him and not just a product that he is marketing & selling for $$$.

The book also goes over a lengthy treatise on current and past fans of Strat-O-Matic and really does a fine job of capturing the passion that all Strat gamers feel in their very guts when they play this game. There are tributes to infamous current and past Strat players (Chris Rosen, Tom Swank, etc.)

If you love Strat, or have played it at one time in your life, you need to own this book. I'm serious. If you've played any kind of sports simulation in your life, you still need to own this book.

Bravo, Glenn, bravo.

This book brought back so many fond memories of playing Strat-O-Matic as a youth. It was interesting finding out some of the behind the scenes story of this great game. This book has led to me dusting off my old games, hitting Ebay auctions in search of new cards and rekindling my love for a long-lost hobby.

Strat-O-Matic Fanatics would, at first glance, seem to be of interest only to the small group of die hard enthusiasts who play, and are passionate about, Strat-O-Matic Baseball and want to know how it came to be.

Readers are treated to a riveting story, however, about a very shy boy who found solace from his chaotic household surroundings by inventing a game with dice and cards that replicated baseball. Not only is the creator's (Hal Richman) story vividly told, it is done so with a great deal of sensitivity and insight. In addition to being a very personal story, it is also a fascinating tale of the formation of a beloeved small business that has managed to survive despite the entry bigger, better funded competitors, due to careful attention to and understanding of the marketplace and its customers.

Sadly, few people who don't play Strat will give this book a chance, but anyone could find something to enjoy in this book (for those who DO play the game, its really a must read).

NB: The book is well written, despite what a few other reviews state. I'm already looking forward to Guzzo's next book on baseball statistics.

This book is about the life of Hal Richman and the sport board games he invented named Strat-O-Matic. If you are a sports fan, then this book and games are for you. The book brought back my own memories of playing Strat-O-Matic in my youth and the hours of fun my friends and I had on rainy days and cold snowy days. This book rekindled my love of sports and those games and I have begun playing them again with my adult friends and teaching them to some of the youth of my church.

Before I jump in, some readers may not really know what Strat-O-Matic is, beyond being some sort of game. Let's fix that. If you know, skip the next para.

Strat (as many of us call both the game and company) is a mom-and-pop company, more pop than mom, driven by one of those visionaries who felt compelled to create something special. In this case, the primary game was Strat-O-Matic Baseball, which was mainly sold by mail order and advertised in comic books. Unlike most things advertised in comic books, Strat delivered on its promise: a very realistic game of baseball with a card for each player. You roll the dice and read the result off the card. There's been a computer version since, oh, the 80s.

Anyway, that's what everyone's going on about. It was a piece of many of our childhoods, and it's part of quite a few adulthoods.

Glenn Guzzo goes further back with Strat than I do, and he seems to have had unfettered access to Hal Richman, the founder and designer of Strat. This is remarkable because, as Guzzo describes, Richman is an introvert who does not readily put himself 'out there.' There may be others who know as much as Guzzo, but few of them could bring an equivalent journalistic background to the task. The result is a study in Americana, similar in concept to a book on the designer of Monopoly. It tells about the game and its design, set against the backdrop of the times--the Fonzie fifties, the radical sixties, the doldrum seventies, the electronic eighties, and so on.

The book owes much of its appeal to the clear writing style. Let us all give thanks that Guzzo is one of those authors who doesn't feel compelled to show off: he understands that he signed on to tell a story, and he gets on with the work. That work is accessible to the audience most interested in it: Strat players, from Ph.Ds to big league ballplayers to teenagers. Guzzo tells the complete story of Strat from concept to handwritten cards to its current refinement--sophisticated ratings of major league baseball players in all major categories of performance, either playing with dice and cards or on a computer.

In my view, all Strat nuts will enjoy _Strat-O-Matic Fanatics_. I sure did. But would anyone else? I say yes, for it is very much a book on business. Strat was perhaps the first realistic baseball game, but it was still young when it began to play David to well-funded gaming Goliaths, of which the modern version would be Electronic Arts. Avalon Hill, Sports Illustrated, and so on: they all came, and most of them are gone. Hal Richman's little game company is still chugging out game improvements and annual card sets--at the same Glen Head, NY address I sent cash to in 1975. From the business standpoint, Guzzo provides a very insightful study of capitalism in microcosm: how a small company survives and succeeds where most others find ways to go broke.

Think of Richman's company as a living war veteran with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for valour. Survivors graduate, and the way they survived is always useful to those who come after them.

As such, its story is well worthwhile for anyone interested in Strat (or trying to understand such a person's devotion to the game). It's also a worthwhile study in small business management--especially when the small businessperson is also an inventor.

I really rate the book as 3.5 stars.

There is a lot to like about this book, especially from a Strat-o-Matic baseball and football board player whose draft baseball team was the Strat-O-Matic Fanatics.

That said, the book can be jarring at times. For beginners, the book starts with 50 pages about Richman's parents, especially his father. The story of Harold Richman and the game starts after that background story. Luckily, Guzzo makes the tale of Richman's father quite fascinating, otherwise it is a real waste of paper.

The book then covers tells about Mr. Richman and the history of Strat-o-Matic games, a fascinating story. IMHO, this book would bore the casual fan, it really helps if you played the games.

My major problem with the book is that the author deifies Mr. Richman, the creator of the game. Heck, compared to Richman, Mother Teresa comes across as Jack the Ripper. Richman's only fault seems to be extreme shyness, and the author suggests that his father is to blame for that. I have heard Harold Richman is a wonderful man, but give me a break, nobody is that good.

There is little here that discusses how the computer games differ from the board games. Also, there is nothing about the Strat-o-Matic website which is hideous. The site does absolutely nothing to inform people about the game, let alone sell it.

It was very touching story. Also brought back many fond memories, my own interest in sports strategy gaming had the same roots as Mr. Richman's. Escaping from an overbearing parent.