** Welcome to USBN Issue #7 **

Comments from the Wolfman about Issue #7, as we approach the end of
our first year of the newsletter, along with some special interviews

As we come to the end of our first year, now being able to release our seventh issue of the newsletter, all I can feel is gratitude. First I want to acknowledge a few very special people who gave us support during this most interesting first year, which for any new organization is usually the most difficult time. Although you have mostly been reading my words and thoughts, being the editor, you need to know that behind the scenes is my partner, Marc Wasserman, who you should have met via his Commissioner's Column each month. He is basically the business manager and is the one to provide the resources for our website as well as is opening up many new doors for us.

Stratogists.com and Stratomatic Baseball Village were the first two groups to support us even before we printed one word and we must strongly acknowledge these two groups not only for their support but the great job they are doing to support our community. As of this month, Mike SanClemente, the founder of Stratogists.com, is now an advisor for the newsletter and we look forward to continue to work with him and his team at Stratogists.com (you all are aware of the joint project we are doing with them for the Rookie Review, which is coming out very soon!!). We also welcome Bruce Bundy as a new advisor as well, who does his "Strat Thought" column. Bruce is also known for his Projection Sheets, and we thank him for his confidence in granting to us the chance to help provide these powerful strategy sheets for our members. 

We give thanks to our partners with the Strat Alliance, Star Tournaments and Pure Strat, from whom we learned a lot about how the modern face-to-face and online baseball tournaments are being run. We most definitely are big supporters of their pioneering work. A special thanks to Larry Braus, my old friend from Chicago, who has been a behind the scene assistant and to all the great individuals you have met through our various issues that allowed us to interview them or submitted an article (too many to name but you know who you are!).

As it should be obvious, a project like this newsletter can not succeed without the help and support of a good team of people. We feel fortunate and blessed to have such.

But also let us not forget each of you, our readers. Without our readers there is no newsletter, so you also are a part of the force to make the "Ultimate Strat Baseball Newsletter" a reality and we are forever grateful. Plus, as this issue comes out before Christmas, we want to wish to each of you, not only our heartfelt thanks but we hope that you have a most wonderful holiday time with friends and family and of course during this off time, get in enough strat baseball to satisfy you before the new cards come out - right?

In reviewing last month's issue, I see I was totally off on my predictions for the World Series and once again, just as the S.F. Giants won in 2012, it was the hot team, the Boston Red Sox who won, what their 3 world series in 10 years. Anyway this is a shorter issue than normal but still packed with some interesting interviews and columns.

We feel very honored to have in the same issue a chance to speak to probably the two key individuals, who helped make the game company a success, by supporting Mr. Richman with his dream. That would be Steve Barkan (interview done by Bruce Bundy, thanks Bruce for permission to share this amazing interview) and James Williams, Mr. Richman's two key lieutenants in the early 1970's. We have though, James retiring in 2011 (but still connected with the game company) and Steve getting ready to retire shortly as well.  So you have your chance to meet these two remarkable people, who gave each, what over 40 years of their lives to make SOM a success and in my opinion the best sports game around!

Next we have our normal three columns back, with Marc Wasserman (call him "Wass") doing the commish column and introducing his first SOM Baseball League; Bruce Bundy with "Strat Thoughts" but this time sharing photos of the game company and key people with us (due to working on some project) plus, there is a small discussion on his newly released "Projection Sheets", with a short review by myself of what the sheets are like. I was one of the first to see them (a small gift for being the editor I suppose).

Then of course I discuss the 7th national SOM convention which our gang of fanatics in Chicago setup in 1978.  Finally we bring back Mike SanClemente, who we interviewed in January, to provide for our readers a better idea what the "Rookie Review" is about as he describes what is contained in the Review. Also he gives us a short preview of what the Review looks like as he rates the following players: Xander Bogaerts, Alex Torres, and 2 others. This Review is coming out any day now which again just before putting up the newsletter I got an early peek and can confidently say his crew did an awesome job.