My Stuff: Strat-O-Matic, and an early fondness for the Orioles

A new Bird Tapes content stream explores what else is in my office closet besides recordings of old interviews. First up: the iconic tabletop baseball simulation game that loomed large in my youth.

The Bird Tapes sprang into existence out of a cluttered closet in my home office, where the history of the Baltimore Orioles sat undisturbed, gathering dust, for more than two decades.

That’s not an exaggeration.

For those unaware: Back in the late ’90s, while writing an oral history of the Orioles that was published in 2001, I traveled around the country recording dozens of interviews with major figures in the club’s history — Brooks, Earl, Frank, Boog, Cakes, you name it. The interviews were preserved on plastic microcassettes, and once the book was out, I tossed the tapes in a shoebox that went in the closet until 2024. That’s when I pulled out the shoebox, digitized the ancient tapes and began making them available to the public as part of the Bird Tapes. Basically an Orioles history project, it is an enduring Substack bestseller two years later, still going strong.

Well, while recently digging through that cluttered closet again, I had a thought. There’s a lot of other stuff in there besides those old, plastic microcassettes. There are boxes filled with old press passes, media guides, research material, memorabilia and more — basically, the detritus from a life spent in and around sports, mostly courtesy of my decades spent writing 11 books and thousands of pieces of sports journalism. And I thought, if the recordings that became the Bird Tapes were so interesting, maybe I should also highlight some of the other stuff in that closet.

So here goes — a new Bird Tapes content stream headlined, simply, “My Stuff.”

Hey, what else could I call it?

I’m going to start with what is definitely the oldest material in the closet, the remnants of the Strat-O-Matic tabletop baseball game that basically ruled my life for a few years in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Yes, I still have it decades later, after many moves and life changes, because — I will readily admit this — it’s a tangible piece of my childhood and I can’t bear to part with it.

I’m ordinarily not that nostalgic, but the mere sight of my Strat-O-Matic game conjures memories of some of my favorite days, when I was a kid living hundreds of miles from a major league ballpark, yearning to be closer to the action.

First released in 1962, Strat-O-Matic effectively simulated major league baseball before the age of video games and computers. The absence of a screen meant you couldn’t actually see the action, which meant your imagination played a key role.

Imagine that.

Each player had his own rectangular card. It featured columns of different outcomes (single, double, groundout, strikeout, etc.) based on his actual statistics from the previous season, as well as ratings for baserunning, speed and defense. To simulate an at-bat, the cards for a pitcher and batter were placed beside each other on the game board. The rolls of three dice determined what happened.

There was a basic version and an advanced version that took more variables into account, but whichever level you used, your job was to manage a club, make out a lineup, pick a starting pitcher, decide when to use relievers, etc. You could play against a friend managing another club, or if you were truly a nerd — guilty as charged — you could manage both clubs simultaneously when you were alone in your room supposedly doing your homework.

I was growing up in Dallas, which didn’t have major league baseball until the Texas Rangers arrived in 1973. My limited exposure to the major leagues in the ’60s and early ’70s is startling to consider in 2026. My television viewing consisted of a “Game of the Week” on Saturday afternoons, the All-Star Game in July and the World Series in October. I could peruse the local sports pages for box scores, standings and short accounts of games played the day before. Individual batting and pitching statistics for players were listed in the paper just once a week, on Sundays.

In search of more information, I subscribed to a baseball magazine, which was where I saw an ad for Strat-O-Matic. The year was 1969. I was 12. My imagination soared. The fact that the game was based on real statistics was impossibly thrilling. It was like bringing major league baseball right into my house. Wow!

I showed the ad to my parents, who agreed to indulge my fantasy. I filled out an order form, buying eight teams, including the Orioles. My father put a check in the mail along with my order. A few weeks later, the cards arrived in the mail with a game box that included a field. I repurposed the scoreboard from my electric football game to enhance the stadium effect.

I set up the field, learned how to play, became familiar with the teams and started playing. No one in my family saw me in the coming days. Tabletop simulation baseball immediately had me in its grip. I was in total control of the environment, a rare and alluring feeling for someone my age. I was league commissioner, manager of all teams, head statistician, PA announcer. I drew up a league schedule with each team playing 25 games. The season culminated with playoffs and a World Series. 

There were other simulation games on the market such as APBA, short for American Professional Baseball Association, which actually was older. But no game was more popular than Strat-O-Matic. Later, I learned there were thousands of fanatics across the country who were even more into it than me. Some went so far as to buy complete sets of new teams every year and replicate entire major league seasons.

My little group of eight teams with 1968 statistics kept me busy for several years. When I saw that the company also was offering historic teams, I couldn’t help myself and bought the 1927 Yankees and 1934 Cardinals, which meant I could now send Babe Ruth up to bat against Dizzy Dean. Or Jim Palmer.

After a few years, I bought a new group of eight “current” teams, including the Orioles again. But inevitably, the time I gave to Strat-O-Matic began to wane. You grow up, find other things to do. I played several school sports. I didn’t think it helped my chances with a girl to tell her I spent hours alone playing tabletop baseball.

But my time spent doing that was among the purest distillations of my childhood. A sportswriter in the making, I learned how to keep score – a mandatory life skill — and calculate an earned run average. Originally less familiar with the major leagues than kids in cities with teams, I learned about baseball itself, the players, the skills, the decisions that managers made. Though I didn’t grasp it at the time, I learned the difference between probable and realized outcomes.

A decade or so after I stopped playing, Strat-O-Matic transitioned into the computer/video age and is still going strong. It is the subject of Facebook groups with thousands of members. An AI-generated online search tells me the game is “iconic.”

More than a half-century later, my player cards and game reside in a plastic container in my closet. Full disclosure, Strat-O-Matic also put out football, basketball and hockey simulation games, and I played the football version. I’ve still got those cards, too.

Recently, when I opened the plastic container and sorted through what’s inside, I felt like I was on an archaeological dig, fingering the residue of my youth. 

There are several hundred baseball player cards, mostly complete teams still grouped in the rubber bands I used to organize them decades ago. I scrawled numbers in the upper corners of the cards of some pitchers — establishing their places in the starting rotation, it appears. A few other cards have inexplicable markings on them, and of course, there are food stains here and there.

Mostly, the cards are in fine condition as emissaries from a stellar epoch of baseball history. When I played Strat-O-Matic, Ernie Banks was on first base for the Cubs, Willie Mays roamed center field for the Giants and Roberto Clemente manned right field for the Pirates.

Among pitchers, Bob Gibson was practically unhittable as the Cardinals’ ace and the indomitable Orioles had four 20-game winners.

The real version of baseball was radically different than it is today, and thus, so were the games that unfolded in my private realm. In the final years before free agency, which arrived a few years after my Strat-O-Matic era, player movement was limited. Teams and lineups changed only incrementally from year to year. A fan didn’t wake up wondering who was playing where. 

Both times I purchased the Orioles, after the 1968 and 1971 seasons, the lineup featured Boog Powell at first base, Davey Johnson at second base, Mark Belanger at shortstop, Brooks Robinson at third base, Paul Blair in centerfield and Frank Robinson in right. Such constancy just doesn’t happen anymore.

The lefty-righty considerations and extreme lineup machinations so common today also didn’t prevail then, at least not anywhere close to the degree they do now. Earl Weaver was just starting to deploy his index cards with pitcher-batter matchup statistics. As a manager, I used the same lineups game after game for many teams, regardless of who was pitching for the opposition. I also stayed with my starting pitchers for as long as possible, minimizing the bullpen’s importance.

Looking back, I think adult sportswriter me would’ve ripped kid manager me for doing so little. But that was baseball then.

The Orioles, Athletics, Tigers, Cardinals and Mets were the elites in my baseball world. I didn’t even buy the “current” Yankees of those years because they were so pedestrian — a clear indication that their real-baseball dynasty was over. (A development far more satisfying to me now than then.)

Amazingly in hindsight, the Orioles were my favorite team. Living half a continent away, I was unwittingly glimpsing my future, when I would live in Baltimore and author books and newspaper columns about baseball and especially the Orioles. They were in their glory in the ’60s and early ’70s, which meant I saw them on television. Kids love winners. I think that explains why I bought an Orioles pennant through the mail, which also has survived many moves and life changes and hangs on the wall in my basement.

As a youngster, it would’ve shocked me to know I’d eventually become acquainted with many of the Orioles on my Strat-O-Matic cards. I felt like I knew them then, but I actually do now, or did, after decades of writing about the Orioles.

Digging through the cards recently, I discovered some unfortunate losses. The cards for the 1934 Cardinals have vanished except for the Dean brothers, Dizzy and Daffy. The 1968 Orioles no longer have pitcher Jim Hardin, a 15-game winner for them that year. Goodness knows where his card is.

But the 1971 Orioles and Pirates are fully intact, leaving open the possibility of a replay of the World Series from that year, which, of course, the Pirates won in seven games, to the everlasting dismay of the Orioles and their fans.

Yup, I’m going to do it soon — give the Orioles a second chance to prevail in a Fall Classic in which they led, 3-2, before losing the final two games in Baltimore.

Maybe things will work out differently this time.

It’s only Strat-O-Matic. But that makes it a big deal.

(I’ll let you know how the replay goes.)

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