A Love Letter to Baseball and Strat-O-Matic — Unveiling Hidden Heroes and Epic Moments on the Tabletop
I’ve had a love affair with baseball since I opened my first pack of baseball cards back in 1977.
Catfish Hunter was the first card I pulled, and my mind filled with imagery that only a four year old could conjure. Growing up in Yonkers, New York, I had never seen a catfish. The closest thing we had to a river was when the sewers overflowed after a storm. To my four year old imagination, his drooping mustache and affable grin must be exactly what a catfish looked like.
My love affair only intensified when a friend introduced me to Strat-O-Matic Baseball in the summer of 1986. The Mets were having their greatest summer in thirteen years, relying on the arm of Doc Gooden and the bat of Darryl Strawberry. The Yankees were a contender, and Don Mattingly had established himself as my baseball idol.
New York was abuzz with baseball, and when I found out there was a board game that let me manage my favorite player — fuggetaboudit!
As I passed into adulthood and discovered girls, cars, and responsibitity, more or less in that order, Strat-O-Matic became another of the games relegated to the top of the bedroom closet, and when I moved on my own, all but the memory of it was left behind.
But in 2009, while browsing a game store for the latest D&D book — a hobby that had survived into adulthood — I spotted the latest version of a box of Strat Baseball on a random shelf and picked it up on a lark, thinking I’d roll a few games now and then.
Fourteen years later, I’ve rolled more than a few. I’ve rolled a few thousand.
It’s become one of my go to hobbies, an escape from an increasingly digital world. It’s peaceful, imaginative, and takes me back to those simpler days of my youth.
Recently, I rolled a game for the ages.
One of my favorite parts of Strat-O-Matic is discovering players I’ve never heard of and learning more about guys I only know from history books and box scores.
In the second game of my 1972 baseball replay, Opening Day in Atlanta, April 6, 1972, I got to know Norm Miller and Jim Breazeale.
Both players had a ton of promise.
I’d heard of Norm Miller, a stand out high school player and in his first year in the minors, playing for the Quad City Angels of the Midwest League in 1964, Norm hit .301/.446/.525. Then, in 1965 he was selected in the rule 5 draft by the Astros and hit .289/.406/.492 for the Amarillo Sonics in the Texas League.
When he made his major league debut in 1965, he was the sixth youngest player in the majors. He played in the majors for 10 years from ‘65-’74. He played more or less full-time for the Astros in 1969, batting .265 with 4 home runs and 50 rbis. He was out of the game at the young age of 28 after suffering a back injury.
Miller was present at the first game in the Astrodome, where Turk Farrel’s pet boa constrictor pooped all over Miller’s uniform in the locker room before the game. He was the first to read Jim Bouton’s controversial book, “Ball Four,” as he was Bouton’s roommate while Bouton wrote the bestseller. To top all, he lockered next to Hank Aaron during Aaron’s historic assault on Babe Ruth’s career home run record.
He wrote a book about his baseball life, appropriately titled, “To All My Fans… From Norm Who?”
Then there’s Jim Breazeale, who I’d never heard of, a first baseman who got all of 179 at-bats in the majors. He was an impact minor leaguer, slugging .281 with 23 homers in 1971. His power and potential had him dubbed as the first baseman of the future for the Braves, set to take over for Hank Aaron and facilitate Aaron’s return to the outfield.
Unfortunately, a head on car wreck on December 20, 1972 destroyed his ankle and took away that opportunity in a flash. He wouldn’t get another major league at bat until 1978, an by the following year he was out of baseball entirely.
Well, on Opening Day 1972 in my personal Strat-O-Matic universe, Miller and Breazeale (pronounced bruh-ZILL, in case you struggled with it like I did calling the game on my tabletop) came up big.
In a wild contest between the Braves and Astros that took 14 innings to resolve, a game where both starting pitchers, Joe Neikro and Larry Dierker, went 10 innings apiece, a game that saw 17 runs and 42 base hits, Miller and Breazeale took my breath away.
Each man got a single plate appearance.
Miller came to the plate for the visiting Astros in the top of the 11th to pinch hit for starter Larry Dierker, who did not want to come out. Game tied at 5, one out. Doug Rader on third, Roger Metzger on first, the go ahead run ninety feet away. Cecil Upshaw, the Braves closer, was on the mound trying to keep the score right where it was.
Miller had 4 home runs in 107 at bats in 1972, reflected on his Strat-O-Matic card as a solid HOMERUN on a roll of 2–6.
The dice tumbled from my hand and clattered across the table, coming to rest after bouncing off the green Strat-O-Matic storage box where the rest of the league cards looked on in rapt attention.
2–6.
Norm Miller hit a go-ahead 3 run home run, putting the Astros on top 8 to 5!
The clubhouse erupted! His teammates greeted him at the plate, a hero crowned. Surely they could hold a 3-run lead.
A single by Cesar Cedeno followed, but Upshaw settled down to retire Jim “Toy Cannon” Wynn and Bob Watson. The game headed to the bottom of the 11th, 8–5 Houston in front.
Enter Astros closer Fred Gladding. Ole Fred has a nice card, 38 hits and 12 walks in 49 innings, barely over a base runner an inning, and 14 saves to go with a 2.77 ERA.
Noted in bold lettering in the lower right corner of Gladding’s card, HOMERUNS ALLOWED: 1.
To the plate, two-time All-Star, two-time World Series Champion, 1977 National League Championship Series MVP, and three-time National League Manager of the Year, Dusty Baker.
Fly out to center. No problem for Cedeno, a 1 rated defender, as good as it gets in Strat. One away.
Next up, Gladding faced twenty-five time All-Star, 1957 World Series Champion and National League MVP, two-time National League batting champion, four-time National League home run and rbi leader, three-time Gold Glove winner, and current MLB record holder for career RBIs (2297), extra base hits(1477), and total bases (6856) and the man who would be the first to break Babe Ruths’s lifetime home run record of 714, (still the reigning home run king in many people’s eyes) Hall of Famer, the immortal Hammerin’ Hank Aaron.
Strikeout. Two away.
Gladding was dealing.
Next up, 1971 Rookie of the Year with 33 homers, carded for 28 home runs in 1972, Earl Williams.
Single.
The Braves live on. Opening Day shall not end with a whimper, but a roar.
Williams on first. The run doesn’t matter. Now batting, career .247 hitter with 90 home runs in 15 major league seasons, Mike Lum.
Walk.
Baseball’s a weird game.
Runners on first and second. Two outs. The light hitting (22 homers in 6325 plate appearances, carded for 1 homer in 498 at bats in 1972 with a .292 on base percentage) Felix Milan.
Grab some pine, Felix.
Enter pinch hitter Jim Breazeale.
5 homers in 85 at bats in 1972. Solid HOMERUN chances on 3–5 and 3–9, and a split 1–13 chance on 3–10.
At this point, my lovely wife, Meeghan, wandered into the living room and asked how the game was going. I had been quietly calling the game out loud, and she must have sensed my excitement.
I recapped. “Opening Day. Bottom of the 11th, two men on, two men out, and Jim Bruh-ZILL, a guy I’ve literally never heard of, coming to the plate as a pinch hitter. A couple of solid HOMERUN chances in his 3 column.”
She’s played a little Strat to humor me, and heard me talk about it enough to immediately grasp the gravity of the situation.
She watched as I rolled the dice.
Chances were the game would end right there. Gladding would get the save, spoiling the Braves home opener. The Astros would start the season 2–0.
Jim Breazeale would be quickly forgotten.
Norm Miller would be the hero…
But wait…
Gladding deals to the man whose major league career would be derailed eight months and fifteen days hence…
3–9. HOMERUN!
Tie ballgame!
Jim Breazeale entered my Strat-O-Matic and baseball memory forever.
My wife’s, too.
The truth is, Houston went on to win in 14 innings. A single by Tommy Helms scored Bob Watson in the top of the inning. In the bottom half, Larvelle Blanks managed a one out single, but George Culver got Braves backup catcher Paul Casanova, the last bench bat available, to ground into a game-ending 4–6–3 double play.
The Astros improved to 2–0, and the Braves fell to 0–1.
The season goes on. I’ve played two games of this 1972 replay. One-thousand nine-hundred and forty-two remain. I’ll be rolling them for a year or more before we know who makes the playoffs.
But even then, I suspect I’ll remember Norm Miller and Jim Breazeale on Opening Day in Atlanta.
A guy I kind of remembered and a guy I’d never heard of.
Two guys I knew nothing about, beyond some stats on their Strat-O-Matic cards.
I know a lot more now than I did before this game. I know they were a couple of guys with a dream. A couple of guys who got a taste of the magic of playing in the major leagues. A couple of guys with stories to tell.
In my Strat-O-Matic Baseball universe, they are forever heroes.