Now for Something Completely Different

The “Gang of Five” traveling face-to-face Strat Tourney Group is looking for ONE adventurous Strat Rat to round out our group for the weekend of August 17th, in St. Louis MO.

This is the inaugural event of my creation. We’re all converging on St. Louis on 8/17, taking in the Cards/Brewers game from a field-level vantage at Busch that night, and playing an all-day face to face super-advanced Strat tourney on Saturday at the Hyatt near the Arch.

The idea is to make it an annual thing and pick a different city/ballpark each year.

The five of us are all members of this community, and “met” within it. We have a handful of enthusiastic “alternates” who for various reasons can’t make it this year. But the 6th will be a charter member and have first right of refusal for 2019. The practical goal is that the group will always be either 6 or 8 guys.

For more information, and for consideration for the role of final-puzzle-piece, PM me.

Well, it happened. The Gang of Five turned out to be just that, five Strat-Rats.

By Friday, we were all in downtown St. Louis. On Friday afternoon we set up our Saturday tournament, a “great teams” showdown, with an ambitious 8 game schedule. The ‘16 Cubs, the ‘11 Cards, the ‘03 Giants, the ‘69 Orioles and the ‘65 Twins.

Busch Stadium is beautiful, and St. Louisans are consummate baseball fans. Fun night at the game Friday.

Each manager had the opportunity to upgrade his team by pulling 5 cards from his teams from the other seasons. My ‘03 Giants added ‘65 Mays, ‘69 McCovey, ‘65 Marichal, ‘16 Cueto and ‘11 Sandoval. As constructed, my team had a very solid batting lineup which was truly terrorizing at 3-5, but only average middle infield defense, a weak catcher, no starting pitching after the top 3, and unquestionably, the worst bullpen in the tourney.

We had a fun day playing Strat on Saturday, even though it was a bit grueling...twelve hours we went, rolling the dice and reading the SA charts. Effectively, it was a ten-game schedule, each manager having two byes, so all playing 8. There were many highlights. Here’s a couple just from my perspective...

The Cards and Giants had a 13 inning, 1-0 game, in which Bob Gibson went 12 2/3 before finally yielding, to Octavio Dotel, with the bases full of Giants. Of course, Dotel immediately gave up a single to Pablo Sandoval (off his very stingy pitcher’s card) for the walk-off win.

In a small bit of cosmic justice, at least from the Cards perspective, in the very next Giants game, Sandoval, who was out of the lineup vs. a lefty starter, and who had been extremely productive from the start, came in as a pinch hitter. And on that at bat he was injured, lost for the remainder of the tournament.

The Giants final game was a 10-2 drubbing by the Twins. With a victory, the Giants would have sealed the deal as tourney champions. But, back at the #4 spot in their rotation a second time, the Giants had to start thirty yearold journeyman Jim Brower. After retiring the first two batters in the top of the first, Brower yielded a solo shot to Tony Oliva, a BP HR on a 20-sided roll of 1. Oliva needed that one-roll too, because in ‘03 AT&T BP HR’s are 1-1. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t stop there. Brower lost control of the strike zone and the next three batters reached. Up comes Brian Dozier. Another pitcher’s card BP HR chance! Chris Witkowski rolled the 20-sider again, and wa la, another roll of 1, a 5-0 deficit, a worn out starting pitcher, and a hole the Giants never came close to digging out of.

It was great to meet my Strat brothers, share stories, and the game we love. Fun times!