Wolfman:
Today dear readers, we finally have a chance to meet a
member of the legendary team that works with Len Durrant
and Gary Simonds, master Strat baseball card builders so
good at their craft that Strat-O-Matic has made
available, as computer-based teams, legendary teams from
the National Association (pre-MLB), Negro Leagues,
Japanese League, Cuba, and more. We are very happy to
speak with Ken Wenger, who will give us some insights
toward what it takes to make these special seasons of
cards into Strat-O-Matic form.
In this first section of our newsletter, we have a short
interview with Ken so our members have a chance to get
to know him a bit better. Then, we will share an amazing
article he sent to us describing his experience as a
member of the development team.
Ken, I welcome you to the Ultimate Strat Baseball
Newsletter and thank you so much for answering our call
to know more about how these special teams are being
created for all Strat gamers to enjoy!
Ken:
Thanks for having me as a guest. I’m happy to have the
opportunity to give some recognition to some people with
whom I’ve worked over the last twenty years.
Wolfman:
Before we share your article, what part of
the world do you herald from?
Ken:
I was born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, but have lived in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania, since 1958. My wife and I have
lived near Lititz, Pennsylvania, since our marriage in
1976.
Wolfman:
When you were younger, did you always have
an interest in baseball?
Ken:
I became interested in baseball when I was about 10
years old. I began collecting baseball cards in 1961. My
earliest memory of watching a baseball game is Game 3 of
the 1962 World Series. The first time that I ever
attended a major league game was a doubleheader between
the Pirates and Phillies in 1963. The game was played at
Connie Mack Stadium.
Wolfman:
Were there any teams you rooted for when
you grew up and has this changed as you got older? Who
are your most favorite baseball players that you root
for?
Ken:
I’ve always been a fan of the New York Yankees. Some of
my uncles used to tell me how great the Yankees were and
I started following the team. I suffered through the
Yankees’ futile years from 1965 through the early 70s,
so I guess that is the test of true devotion. In the
early 60s, I discovered that New York also had teams in
the other sports and I began following the Giants,
Knicks, and Rangers. I don’t pay much attention to
basketball and hockey anymore, but I still follow the
Yankees and Giants. Some of my favorite players were Tom
Tresh, Mel Stottlemyre, and Thurman Munson. Derek Jeter,
Bernie Williams, and Andy Pettitte were among my more
recent favorites.
Wolfman:
How did you hear about Strat-O-Matic
Baseball?
Have you ever participated
in any leagues or tournaments?
What is your favorite season or seasons of teams for SOM?
Ken:
I became aware of Strat-O-Matic through the
advertisement in Baseball Digest. One of my
friends bought a selector set of five teams from the
1964 season and that provided my first experience at
playing the game. I bought my first selector set in 1966
(cards from the 1965 season)—Dodgers, Giants, Phillies,
Twins, Orioles, and Yankees. My first purchase of a
complete season was after the Yankees won the pennant in
1976.
I’ve never competed in a tournament, but I was a member
for five years of the Stat-5 Baseball League that still
operates in the Manheim, Pennsylvania, area. I won the
league championship in 2011, using a team drafted from
National League cards from the 2010 season.
Wolfman:
How
were you able to become part of the development team
that Len Durrant
and Gary Simonds formed?
What is the history of these two gentlemen
coming together?
Why did they ask for volunteers to help them?
According to Terry, who I interviewed
before, people could ask Len and Gary to get copies of
the computer rosters that were created, which he did.
Ken:
I don’t know how Len and Gary began interacting with
each other. My first involvement was with Gary Simonds.
I enjoyed browsing his website in the early 1990s. In
1995, Stat-O-Matic Baseball introduced the as-played
feature—the game could be played using the actual
lineups and rosters for the games of the 1994 season. I
began experimenting with the feature and created
as-played files for the 1951 season. I sent them to
Gary, offering them for posting on his site. Gary
responded with an email asking whether he could send my
contact information to Len Durrant. I was acquainted
with Len through his messages on the Strat-O-Matic Forum
and was happy to have the connection made. From that
point, we began collaborating on some projects.
The need for volunteers to help came about to ease the
workload. There were some tasks that each of us became
pretty specialized in doing. There were other tasks that
others could be taught to do. Having a group of
volunteers to work with us enabled each of us to
concentrate on the work that had become our specialty.
Wolfman:
Also
I think when I played in a league on the now-renamed
Baseball 365, with the All Time Greats, I saw several
Negro League players and some National Association
players who were part of this set?
So, it seems these new players and their
card images are becoming a key part of our game – your
comments?
Ken:
I think that I can speak for all of those involved in
developing the cards that we are pleased and honored
that our creations have been so well received by the
community. We are also appreciative of the trust that
Strat-O-Matic Game Company has for our work. Frankly, I
have not heard anything about our work being
incorporated into Baseball 365, so perhaps these player
cards were developed by employees of the game company.
Wolfman:
Are you still working with this team?
Any ideas of what new carded teams/rosters
the development team is planning to work on in the
future. How long does it take from the decision to make
a new team until the cards are done?
Ken:
I am still part of the group that Len Durrant has
assembled to create 19th century seasons,
Negro League seasons, and Japanese seasons. The work on
these seasons consumes most of a year, with it becoming
more intense in the fall as we test the seasons that
will become available with the new release. I know most
of the seasons that Len would like to make available for
the next version of the game, but I don’t think the
final decision on the seasons has been made by the game
company. As I’m sure you and your readers are aware,
information about the seasons to be released always
comes from the game company.
Wolfman:
If any of our members wanted to contact
you and had further questions, is it possible and what
would be the best way to do so?
Ken:
Posting something on the Strat-O-Matic Forum or sending
me a private message through the Forum is probably the
best way to get my attention. Keep in mind, however,
that I’ve signed a confidentiality statement with the
game company, so I’m not free to answer all questions
that people might have.
Wolfman:
Thanks
Ken for answering our questions. Below, you will find
the article Ken sent to us that describes in more detail
his experiences working with Len and Gary and making all
these great teams to expand Strat-O-Matic Baseball.
Creating Past Seasons of
the SOM Baseball Cards
along with Foreign Baseball Teams
with Ken Wenger
(a volunteer of the
Durrant & Simonds team)
I’ve been
working with Len Durrant and Gary Simonds on various
Strat-O-Matic Baseball projects for over 20 years. Our
work began when I sent Gary the files for a 1951
as-played season that I created myself —this was for the
Chevy version of the 1951 season. By Chevy version, I
mean that this version of the 1951 season didn’t have
the benefit of the research that is put into creating a
super-advanced season with the lefty-righty sections of
the card. The research into making the lefty-righty
splits for the 1951 season hadn’t been done yet and the
cards were computer-generated in terms of lefty-righty
performances. So, seasons such as 1946, 1947, 1949, and
1952 are still seasons with this minimal-level of
research underlying the card creation. (A few years ago,
the 1951 baseball season was released in super-advanced
format, which means that it now includes all current
features of the game.)
Gary responded to my email by asking whether he could share my contact
information with Len Durrant—Len had seen my work with
the 1951 season and was interested in collaborating on
some things. I knew who Len was from some of the
messages that he posted on the Strat-O-Matic Forum and
was happy to have this connection made.
Even though I have worked with Len and Gary over all
these years, I don’t actually know much about them in
terms of their personal lives. For example, I still have
no idea what Len does for a living, but I know that he
travels to other countries as part of his job and that
he is very knowledgeable about computers. Len has
exceptional organizational skills and "manages" several
groups that try to improve the game experience for
players of Strat-O-Matic Baseball. The "U-team" updates
the rosters, making corrections for errors on player
cards, adding missing player ratings, and adding
additional players. He also oversees the creation of the
19th century, international, and Negro League
cards. Len creates the cards for the Negro League
seasons, the 19th century seasons, and the
Cuban great players. (I’m not sure of the extent to
which others are involved in the creation of the cards.)
I know that
the Strat-O-Matic Game Company provides some of the
ratings for these cards; so, there is collaboration and
coordination with the game company. Len does a lot of
reading about the players and the seasons—the seasons
that he creates incorporate his personal research. He
also has found many of the images that are used for the
ballparks that are made available within the gaming
community.
During the
1990s and into 2000, Gary Simonds operated one of the
foremost Strat-O-Matic community baseball websites. It
was called something like "Gary’s Strat-O-Matic
Happenings." The site made several Japanese, College
World Series, and minor league rosters available to
Strat-O-Matic Baseball players. (Editor’s Note:
This is how Terry Bartelme found out about these teams.)
Again, I don’t know much about Gary’s career, but I have
the impression that he has pretty advanced technical
skills. Gary is pretty knowledgeable about Japanese
baseball and does most of the work in creating
Strat-O-Matic’s Japanese season rosters.
As
mentioned, some of our earliest work was on as-played
seasons. The lineup and transaction files allow the
games to be played following the real-life lineups for
each game, as well as having the actual players
available for each game. This means that players are
automatically traded on the correct dates. As mentioned,
the first season for which we made the as-played files
was 1951. Other early seasons for which this as-played
system worked included 1908, 1920, 1927, 1930, 1934,
1941, 1950, 1956, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1978,
and 1987. (It should be noted that during this time we
established a working agreement with another baseball
game community and shared files, particularly those for
player transactions—this material we collected would
have to be entered into text files that could be
interpreted by the Strat-O-Matic Computer Baseball
Game.)
Len and I,
along with some other volunteers, would work on the
additional players needed to create rosters of all the
players for the season on which we were working, and
Gary would post the work on his site. Gary and Len also
were involved in creating various leagues. The
international leagues at this time were mostly Japanese
League teams—I can’t recall whether Gary had Cuban teams
available on his site or not. Also, Gary and perhaps a
few others created college teams and minor leagues
linked to MLB franchises. Entire seasons for the
International League and American Association were
created. Gary also created some independent leagues,
such as the Atlantic League. One of my favorites was a
league containing the greatest minor league teams of all
time. I don't think that these leagues are still
available at any of the Strat-O-Matic fan sites.
There were some other people making contributions back
in those days, particularly the late Rob Ratliff, whose
first work was the as-played files for the 1956
season—he was a fan of the Reds and had a particular
interest in seasons in which the Reds fielded a strong
team. Rob was very skilled in using spreadsheets to
create as-played files from data available on the
Retrosheet website. (Retrosheet is a volunteer
organization not at all affiliated with Strat-O-Matic
that gathers data from scoresheets of games from all
major league past seasons. Their careful analysis of the
scoresheets has, in several cases, allowed Retrosheet to
provide information enabling Major League Baseball to
correct errors in the statistics from past seasons.) The
research done by Retrosheet has also yielded information
about players’ performances against left-handed and
right-handed opponents, as well as information about
players’ tendencies to hit groundballs as opposed to
flyballs. So you can see how important the data of the
scoresheets of the games played is for new card
creation.
I don’t know
the techniques used to create the early cards, but they
might have been created using formulas similar to those
developed by the legendary Bruce Bundy. Many of the
original Strat-O-Matic seasons, even those that are
advanced, only contained 24 or 27 players per team.
Volunteers have created additional players in order to
flesh out the rosters with all of the players who
performed during a season—these players are necessary
within an as-played season. In our earliest attempts to
create the cards necessary to complete major league
(computer) rosters, volunteers would use the
fringe-player creation tool included within the computer
game to create the players.
For those of
you unfamiliar with the fringe-player creation tool, the
game contains a feature (found under Player on the menu
at the top of the game screen) that enables you to
create additional (maximum of 12) players for a team.
You enter the player’s statistics and ratings and the
computer will generate a Strat-O-Matic card for that
player. Since they are computer-generated, these cards
are not as accurate as the cards created through the
company’s research, but they are perfectly acceptable
for players who only had a minor role in the season.
At some
point early in the process, we began to provide complete
packages for the major league seasons. In addition to
the as-played files, picture packs were included. A
picture pack is a set of pictures of the players, broken
into sets of batters and pitchers. The computer game
allows pictures of the batter and pitcher to appear as
the game is being played. I particularly enjoy using and
viewing these pictures of the baseball players who
appear as the game is played. I collected baseball cards
as a boy and seeing the cards brings back memories and
makes the players come alive for me, at least as I knew
them, back in those years. Many of these pictures of the
baseball players were originally housed at MyOpera and
are now available at the Shack (see
http://lendurr.tumblr.com/).
The Shack
acts as a host for all of these downloadable features
that add greatly to the Strat-O-Matic Baseball
experience. These include the colorized pictures of
ballparks, pictures of the players (many of which have
been colorized), plus sets of team and league logos. Len
also includes some of the pictures and articles that he
finds as he researches the seasons we create. The site
also includes some specialty teams and leagues. For
example, some Japanese, Dominican, Venezuelan, and Cuban
leagues have been available for download at various
times. Some Cuban winter leagues from the 1920s in which
major league and Negro league players participated have
been available, too. A few barnstorming teams have also
been featured.
Len (and, I
believe, Gary) had some connections with employees at
Strat-O-Matic Game Company. I don’t know at what point
or in what context the communication began, but a
trusting relationship evolved between the company and
our particular subgroup of the game community. I can’t
overemphasize the importance of this trust in this whole
process. Len and those in his work group developed trust
in one another in terms of the ability to develop
quality materials and in terms of the dependability to
complete projects. The company developed increasing
trust in the quality of the work produced by Len and his
volunteers. The trust that Strat-O-Matic developed in
the volunteers’ work eventually led to materials
produced by the volunteers being incorporated within the
annual releases by the company.
The fact
that Len, Gary, and some of their volunteer group became
play-testers for the computer baseball game probably was
a factor in the growth of this trust. The team of
volunteers is very appreciative of the opportunities
that Strat-O-Matic has given us to make our work
available to the community—and I’d like to think that
our relationship has been profitable in various levels
to the company.
The 19th
century seasons now include the National Association
teams (1871–1875) , the American Association
(1892–1891), the Union Association (1884), the National
League (1876–1900), the Players League (1890), and the
1900 American League (which was a minor league). These
were the first full seasons developed by our team with
the understanding that those seasons would be offered
for sale by the company. Len and Gary have quite a bit
of experience at developing player cards—then and as is
still the case, they are the creators of the cards.
My
responsibility has always been with doing multiple
replays to test whether the cards produce realistic
results, both in terms of individual and team
performance. There have been others involved in the
testing over the years. Ed Williams has been a great
addition to our testing team as he became involved in
2015, helping to test new seasons that were released
this year (2016). When I had eye surgery last August
(2015) and my vision was greatly diminished due to the
surgery, Ed took over my role in testing. There is
another member of our group who has collected a
tremendous amount of data about the lineups that were
used in the 19th century, and he has created
the lineup files. Until this year, when my work was
limited due to eye surgery, he and I had done the
primary work on the transaction files—the files that
automatically make trades on the correct dates and
promote/demote players so the correct rosters are
available for each game.
It must be
noted, however, that the transaction files are not
"exact." In many cases, the information is simply not
available to know exactly which players were eligible
for each game. In some cases, particularly for very
early seasons played in the history of baseball, the
teams had very limited rosters in an effort to cut the
expense of operating a team. This was especially the
case when a team travelled to another city. There were
probably some cases in the 19th century for
which a team had only nine players
available—substitutions weren’t allowed unless a player
became injured during the game. (I believe there were
some cases in which a person was literally taken out of
the stands in order for a team to complete a game when a
player became injured. This would have been a former
player who happened to be in attendance or a local
person with a degree of baseball ability.) In any event,
we often keep players from these early seasons active
for longer periods of time in order to increase the
playability of the roster—it provides a few more options
for the person replaying the season.
Allow me to
speak a bit about how the use of the players’ pictures
was integrated into the SOM computer baseball game. In
2004 (2003 major league season), Strat-O-Matic Baseball
included a new feature in which it was possible to show
pictures of the batter and pitcher as the game was being
played. (I have no idea what was involved on
Strat-O-Matic’s end in order to make this feature
possible though.) For me, this was a dream come true,
because I had long wished to be able to see baseball
cards of the players as the game was being played and
now, with the work of finding the cards, it was now
possible to do so.
We have done
everything that we can in order to provide player
pictures for the seasons that we create, whether 19th
century, Negro League, Japanese League, or Cuban League.
Generally the process begins with a list of the players
on each team or a preliminary roster showing the player
names. I usually do the initial search for the pictures
(using the Internet). This might include using Google
Images or a browser to search the player’s name. For
Japanese seasons, I usually do a Japanese language
search for players whom I can’t otherwise find. Google
Translate is used to translate the name into Japanese
and I then search that name. I found several pictures in
this manner. Of course, the pictures of modern Japanese
players can be found on the official Japanese League web
site.
I’ve had
some connections with other game players over the years,
and these people have been very helpful in finding
pictures of players from baseball’s early years. After
I’ve found everybody whom I am able, I send the set of
pictures to Ken Zionce. Ken, who claims to have been a
substandard art student while in high school, does a
marvelous job in colorizing the player pictures, which
add so much enjoyment to those who use these seasons and
enhance the realism of playing these early games. I
generally give Ken the number of at bats or innings
pitched so he can set priorities for the colorizations.
Ken then does his own research, and in many cases finds
a better picture, before doing the colorization. He then
returns that completed set to me and I upload it to the
Shack website. The pictures become available to the game
community when Len creates the necessary link.
About five
years ago, Strat-O-Matic began providing complete Negro
League seasons, and about three years ago, Japanese
seasons became available. There are unique challenges
associated with creating these seasons. Unlike the 19th
century seasons, there is no major league context on
which to base the cards for the Negro Leagues, Japanese
Leagues, or Cuban All-Stars. The decision was made to
base these cards on major league equivalencies, i.e.,
projections about how well these players might have
performed if they had been playing major league baseball
during those seasons. (I don’t know the specifics of how
the equivalencies are developed and I wouldn’t be able
to share the specifics even if I did have that
information—it is the intellectual property of those
creating the equivalencies.) My sense is that there is a
belief that the best players in the Negro Leagues had
abilities equal to the best players in the major
leagues. That understanding provides a basis for how
good the cards for the best players should be in these
other leagues. After you have a sense of how good the
best players should be, you can then develop an
understanding of how the other players should be carded
in order to provide realistic performances within a
season played just with the Negro League players. When
the equivalences for all of the players are developed,
they are usually sent to a few of us for a check on
whether any of the statistics appear to be unrealistic.
When the complete set of cards is in a near-final form,
a few of us do multiple replays to confirm that the
cards are performing realistically. This enables Len and
Gary to compare, for example, real-life (or the
projected equivalency) batting averages with those
obtained during multiple replays. Similarly, they can
see at bats per doubles, or at bats per home runs, and
various pitching statistics per nine innings. I am not
the only person involved in the testing, so I don’t know
all of the information other people might be providing,
but I do have some idea. Sometimes, these replays have
taken various forms for the same set of cards.
By this I
mean that in some cases we test the Negro League teams
by just replaying the Negro League teams against each
other. There are other times when we create integrated
leagues, so we can see how the Negro League players
perform as they compete against the major league players
of the same season, since we believe that the best Negro
League players were just as good as the best major
league players of that time. Ideally, the league leaders
in the various categories will contain a mix of Negro
League and Major League players. When Len and Gary see
the results of the replays, adjustments can be made for
players whose performances were different than expected.
Additional replays are sometimes done if significant
adjustments were necessary.
Another
problem is that the historic Negro League seasons are
being "stretched" in length to make them 154-game
seasons. Most of the Negro League teams played a league
schedule, along with a great number of non-league games.
These additional games, often against white
semi-professional clubs, provided additional income for
the teams. We wanted to create teams that have enough
characteristics of a major league team so that they can
be combined into a league with major league teams. The
Negro League teams generally carried a minimal number of
players in order to limit the team’s expenses.
So, for
example, we needed additional players to enable a solid
rotation for the starting pitchers. Other players might
need to be added to give managers flexibility during
games—utility players and additional pitchers for relief
had to be available. I’m not sure how the additional
players are selected, but I know that in some cases
players are added from another Negro League team that
has not been carded for that season. (In other words,
some Strat-O-Matic Negro League teams represent a
combining of players from two actual Negro League
teams.) In other cases, players are added who played
with that specific Negro League team either a year prior
to or a year after the season that was being created.
Japanese seasons include 144 games, so it wasn’t
necessary to add additional players for them.
It is
necessary to understand that all of these seasons are
developed with the authorization of the Strat-O-Matic
Game Company; however, there isn’t a significant amount
of time or other resources allocated by the game company
to do these projects. I don’t know whether some people
believe that instead of diverting resources to Negro
League and international seasons the company should be
providing more past seasons. It is simply wrong to
believe that we could have a season such as 1949 or
another Heroes set if the company wasn’t spending time
on the seasons created by our group. John Garcia and
Steve Barkan were our main contacts we dealt with at the
game company. (Note: Even though Mr. Barkan has now
retired, he is still working behind the scenes on some
special projects.) Most of the work that Steve used to
do is now being done by John Garcia, however. In this
interaction with the game company, they provided for us
some of the ratings we needed to make the cards, but the
final carding (card images) is still done by Len and
Gary.
The seasons
that we’ve produced for Strat-O-Matic have been only for
the computer; so, Bob Winberry, who is the main
programmer overseeing the SOM computer baseball game, is
also involved. I met Bob Winberry at the 50th
Anniversary Opening Day in New York City, but I can’t
give a good impression about him just based on
interacting with him for only a couple of minutes. From
association with him, as our seasons are being tested
for the new release of teams, I know him to be very
professional in his dealings with us. He is very
gracious and very supportive of the testers. He has been
patient in answering our questions and is very
appreciative of the work that we the volunteers are
doing. I don’t think that I’ve ever uploaded a file
where he has failed to thank me for doing so.
I will close
by stating that I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction from
my involvement with my fellow volunteers. Although I may
never meet in person any of these special individuals
with whom I’ve collaborated, I consider some of my
coworkers to be close friends--well, at least as
friendship might be defined in terms of speaking to
someone through the Internet. Also, I’ve shared some of
the joys and heartaches of my life with some of the
other members of our group. Other elements of my
satisfaction with participating in this team are:
--I enjoy
the creative process, which is somewhat weird because I
am more left-brain oriented than right-brain oriented.
Unfortunately, the time spent in creating things for the
game limits the amount of time that I can spend playing
the game.
--It gives
me satisfaction knowing that I’m helping to create
things that other people enjoy. Somehow it feels less as
though I am "wasting my time on a hobby" when the
results of my work are being shared.
--I think
there is a sense of justice for the Negro League players
in having their names and talents being brought back to
memory. I know that what was taken from them can never
be restored, even if for those who are still alive. I
also realize that those still living are likely unaware
that a community of game players are remembering and
celebrating their exploits and those of their teammates
through Strat-O-Matic Baseball. My guess is that if you
would have told a Negro League player back then that
people would remember them in the 21st
century, the player probably would get some satisfaction
from that knowledge and would probably find it
incredibly ironic because his achievements went largely
unnoticed in his own time. He probably would also think
those future players would have to be nuts to devote so
much time to playing a game involving his card.
Thank you and
welcome to my world,
Ken
Wenger
-----------
Final Comments from the Wolfman:
It is very apparent from Ken's article that there is definitely a
special art to making the SOM computer cards of past
seasons and international teams. That it takes possibly
up to a year shows the tremendous dedication the
creation team has. Also, that there is a strong team of
people to support this project speaks very highly of the
team leaders, Mr. Durrant and Mr. Simonds. Although we
are unable to speak to both of them directly yet (due to
their busy schedules), we want them both to know that
our members appreciate so much all of their
efforts. What an amazing community of people we have who
are helping Strat-O-Matic to create the greatest
baseball game out there!!
