Strat-O-Matic Fanatics: The Unlikely Success Story of a Game That Became an American Passion

by Glenn Guzzo

This is the true story behind the creation—and re-creation—of America’s most popular sports board game ever Strat-O-Matic. Overcoming abuse and betrayal, Hal Richman beat the odds and built a company... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879462809
• ISBN13: 9780879462802
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: ACTA Publications
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Deserves a broader audience

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.

A truly classic book about the greatest baseball board game ever

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.

good history, good business book, good biography

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

Rekindling the Fire

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.

The game that changed baseball

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.