Vol. II,
Issue #1 - January 2014
|
Support the Cause
If you are enjoying
the content and information our newsletter shares with you, why
not support us with your helpful contribution for our minor expenses
and time?
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**
Welcome to USBN Vol. II - Issue #1
**
Comments from the Wolfman about
the first
issue of our Second Year
and some new pages with another very special interview, oh
yeah!!
Yes
we made it into 2014 and this is indeed an exciting time to be
alive, that is if you love sports. We have the NFL Super Bowl
this Sunday, the Hockey and Basketball Seasons are going hot and
heavy and in MLB there are still deals to be done and free
agents to decide which teams they will sign. And in SOM
Baseball, we are all sitting on the edge of our seats, waiting
patiently (are you?) for the new cards to arrive and the new
version of the SOM computer baseball game which will come with
all kinds of enhancements. At least we have access to the Rating
Book or spreadsheet file.
We are very excited to share
this issue with you as we begin our second year of this mad
experiment and our memberships approaching 1000 members. We are
very grateful to all the amazing people who agreed to be
interviewed last year and the alliances that we formed. In short
we have a lot to look forward to as we continue to grow and
expand for this year of the Ultimate Strat Baseball Newsletter.
So briefly, let me give you a
heads up in what you find in this next issue. It is with great
excitement and a great honor to announce that finally we were
able to get in contact with Del Newell, the former editor of the
"Strat-o-matic Review", the very first publication dedicated to
the SOM games. Well actually I should say, he contacted us as he
became a member of the newsletter at the end of December of last
year. We know you will enjoy meeting Del and hearing some
stories linked to the Review. Also we welcome Del as an honorary
advisor for the newsletter as to a degree, what he and brother
Warren did for over 20 years is a pattern we are following.
As usual we have the normal
columns, Bruce Bundy - "Strat Thoughts", answering a members
question about the philosophies of creating the baseball cards;
Marc Wasserman with his commissioner's column and of course
yours truely, giving the report on the 1979 National Convention.
Then Mike SanClemente of Stratogists.com gives us a deep type of
article ("Koji vs. Bill Gates"), we also included our on-line
resource pages and suggested book page. Two new items that
are added is a book review on the very popular "Bill James
Handbook" and another page with some interesting news from the
SOM Baseball World.
Finally, with many SOM
baseball leagues excited to get their next season going, waiting
for the new cards to arrive, I felt inspired to spell the beans
on the strategies and information sources I use to build my team
in the CBA, the Skokie Wolfmen. This article is basically for
people who are in a draft league, who keep their players from
year to year and will be using the next card set. How to
decide which players to draft and what players to trade for.
Note (as always): Once
again if you have just joined us recently or haven't had a chance to
read all of our bulletins and prior newsletters, you can find
everything you desire by visiting our archive webpages at:
http://archive.aweber.com/stratbaseball
So again, we hope you enjoy
this first issue of our newsletter for 2014
and that it
can provide some new insights and fun stories to keep you busy
till Februay 18th, when the game company officially releases the
1973 and 2014 card sets, the new computer game and all the new
foreign baseball teams. As always, we are always open to ideas
for new articles and columns. We continue to seek to interview
key individuals linked to SOM and MLB. And we will continue to
be creative in offering new projects and sources of baseball
linked information.
Finally, we
continue to run with our campaign called "Support the
Cause". If any of our members are inspired and wish to help
us out with some costs we endure to keep this fine publication
going, we are very grateful for such help. Thank you all for
being a part of our newsletter. As always, the links to all the
sections of the newsletter are shown below.
So to another
great year of Strat Baseball in 2014,
All the best and enjoy your
game play via your leagues, replays,
face-to-face and tournaments,
Wolfman Shapiro
on behalf of the team at USBN
|
Support the Cause
If you are enjoying
the content and information our newsletter shares with you, why
not support us with your helpful contribution for our minor expenses
and time?
|
Contained inside this exciting issue of Ultimate Strat
Baseball Newsletter:
(to view the various interviews, articles, columns and special sections click on
the links {underlined}
and this will take you to the appropriate
webpage)
♦
INTERVIEW with DEL
NEWELL,
retired
Editor
of the "Strat-o-matic Review"
♦
SOM BASEBALL WORLD NEWS,
a new page to share interesting news related to
Strat-o-matic Baseball.
♦
STRAT THOUGHTS with
BRUCE BUNDY,
SOM Gamer, Creator of
Baseball Card Formulas, Baseball Strategy Advisor, Beta Tester
for the Game Company
(Continuation of his column of "Strat Thoughts", one of our
members has some great questions for Bruce about how the
baseball cards are created to show realism.)
♦
ARTICLE with MIKE
SANCLEMENTE,
founder of Stratogists.com
(Mike takes us on a delightful journey with his article "Koji
vs. Bill Gates" and then discusses how using Excel spreadsheets can take you far with your league's team
strategy)
♦
EARLY SOM
CONVENTIONS COLUMN with WOLFMAN SHAPIRO --
editor of
"The Ultimate Strat Newsletter" and 2012 CBA Champion.
Wolfman takes us back in
this article to the seventh national Strat-o-matic
Convention in 1979 held in Champaign-Urbana, IL, at the
University of Illinois as the Wolfman and his buddies organize
their sixth convention. Wolfman will be
our guide through the first nine conventions happening through 1980
of which he was present at each one. This particular column now
moves into the 1974-1980
era when the conventions moved to Illinois. We will continue to share one new convention in
each future issue till all of these early conventions are published.
Also we hope this column will inspire our readers to help us
create a SOM On-line Baseball Convention
in the near future.
♦
COMMISSIONER's CORNER with MARC WASSERMAN --
commissioner of the Cyber Baseball Association (CBA) continues
his column about what it is like to be a League Commissioner.
In this article he turns his focus to how things wok in the CBA
and via the Strat Alliance introduces us to another baseball
league that has existed for 43 years.
♦
ARTICLE with WOLFMAN SHAPIRO
--
Wolfman discusses his strategies
how to build a very successful team
in a draft SOM
baseball league where you keep your players form year to year.
♦
RECOMMEND
ON-LINE SOM RESOURCES
-- On-line Strat-o-matic and Baseball related websites that offer amazing information, special tools and products to improve
your game play
that we strongly recommend. In most cases, we have had personal contact with
these sources who agree with the principle to work together and help promote each other.
♦
BOOK REVIEW with WOLFMAN SHAPIRO
Wolfman takes a peek at the
"The Bill James
Handbook
2014" created
by Bill James and John Dewan through Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) and
why if there is one book on baseball you must have, this is it!!
Also speaks to Ben Jedlovec of BIS to discuss the book a bit
more.
♦
BOOKS TO
DIE FOR and Become a BASEBALL GURU
-- This page
is
specifically about special books we are finding that either will
expand your insights about the game of Baseball, help you in the
creation of your current league teams or with your replays and
learn more about the Strat-o-matic Base Game and Game Company's
history. We
have a special arrangement with Acta Sports, who is a publisher
of a number of great baseball books (including Bill James
Handbooks) to offer for our members
a 10% discount. We will continue to add more books to this page in the future
as we uncover other gems our members should know about.
