Issue #3, April 2013


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Comments from the Wolfman about Issue #3, the Best Yet.

April is the month of my birthday which means I am born under the sign of Aries, the RAM.  Us Rams like to do things in a unique and sensational way so in honor of my 58th year of being on this world, I have gone overboard with sharing more information this month than normal.

To our newest members who haven't seen a version of the newsletter yet, we welcome you (look below for details how to view the prior issues and bulletins). 

There are two objectives I had for "Year One" of this newsletter and in April, both of those objectives has begun.  Objective 1: In addition to including the very best information that we can about the game we love, Strat-o-matic Baseball, I wanted to share profound and amazing information linked to professional baseball. The best way to do this is to interview people who are connected with this game from the players, to managers and coaches, to owners, to sportcasters and newsreporters, to the groups who are involved with the statistics, to people connected with Baseball who have played strat-o-matic and to also offer special items and services linked to Baseball as well. 

In this issue using the great on-line services of Facebook and Twitter, experimenting if you well, you are going to hear from three such individuals very involved with Baseball.

Objective 2: To bring back in some kind of form the idea of hosting a National Convention, offering various baseball tournaments.  The easiest way to do this is by creating a version of tournaments that can be played on-line through the internet.  How about a whole weekend of such tournament play?  But as we were exploring on the net what already exists we discovered several groups who are already offering each month an on-line tournament which goes on for a month till they crown a champion.  Within this newsletter you will meet more directly one of the groups known as the STAR Tournaments. 

At this moment this recreation of the on-line International (because there are strat players all over the world) Baseball Convention (its name not yet known) is underway as we are beginning to dialogue with the existing tournament organizations who already have the expertise how to run such types of tournaments for such a weekend.  We intend to use both the Netplay software linked to the baseball computer game; another method discussed in the STAR interview to use Skype and maybe a 3rd type of tournament where you would switch teams with your opponent as was done in the early conventions we are reporting from 1972.  A tentative date of September 20th through the 22nd has been proposed.  In a future bulletin we will discuss more details how it will work as we have over five month to prepare. Nothing like this has ever been done before and we hope to make it the most remarkable weekend of SOM game play the world has ever seen.  We hope you will join us and will offer a way for people to sign up.

Well here we are again, as you will find Issue #3 filled with all kind of interviews.  As always, below are the links to each page of amazing information we offer for your perusal for this month.  Just a few hints of what you will find in the April issue:

1) have you ever seen what the original cards look like issued in 1961 and 1962, you may be surprised - thanks to the card collector Tom Nahagian

2) If you had a chance to be a baseball columnist what would that be like or how about a chance to be a major league baseball player?

3) What does it take to be a Tournament Baseball Champion - why don't we ask someone who won what is called the WORLD's Tournament?  How did a rag tag group of gamers create the first National SOM Convention?

and lots more via the columns, interviews and on-line resources shared within this issue ....

Note: One of the most important webpages linked to the newsletter is our archive page.  If you haven't added this to your favorites on your browser you might want to do so. On this page is a link to all the previous released newsletters and the bulletins, so if you ever miss an issue or bulletin this is where you can find it at:

http://archive.aweber.com/stratbaseball

Special Request:  We see this newsletter as a special place for any member within our community to offer insights and information.  Therefore we are sending out this request if any of our members have some special articles they would like to submit (that are already written or a new one you would like to do), please feel free to send them to our email below. 

Also, if anyone is interested in helping us with the creation and running of the tournaments we intend to offer during September, again just send us an email.  It is possible we may need a few extra tournament directors who could be compensated for their time. If anyone has a personal contact with a key individual connected to Baseball who might be open to be interviewed this would also be of great interest.

So we hope you enjoy this issue of our newsletter and we will you continued success and enjoyment with your game play, leagues, replays and tournaments. Again we wish to express our great gratitude for your interest and support. So have fun in your exploration of issue #3!

Wolfman Shapiro
 
 

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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 JEFF POLMAN, Writer, SOM Website Columnist, Replay Expert.

♦  INTERVIEW with JIM CALLIS and KEN DAVIDOFF, Jim is Executive Editor of Baseball America and Ken is a baseball columnist for the NY Post

♦  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 third national Strat-o-matic Convention in 1974 held in Champaign-Urbana, IL, at the University of Illinois as the Wolfman and his buddies organize their first convention. Wolfman will be our guide through the first nine conventions going through 1980 of which he was present at each one. We now begin the era from 1974-1980 when the conventions moved to Illinois. We will continue to share one new convention in each future issue till all of these early ones are published.

♦  INTERVIEW with PETE NELSON (STAR), Board Member of the Star Tournaments Association, discusses what the Star Tournaments are all about.

♦  INTERVIEW with WILLY DOMINQUEZ, January 2013 STAR Worlds Champion

♦  INTERVIEW with TERRY BARTELME, SOM Gamer, Discusses his experiences with the Negro and Japanese Players working with private developers.

♦  INTERVIEW with BILLY SAMPLE, Ex-MLB Player (TEX,NYY,ATL), Sportscaster

♦  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 discusses the early development of a League's Constitution, League Themes and Economics.

♦  SOM BASEBALL CARDS QUIZ - our test of your knowledge of the SOM Baseball Cards, questions and answers provided by Marc Wasserman. In this issue we give the answers to Quiz #2, explain our new format for this column, introduce some early SOM Baseball cards from the 1960 and 1961 seasons thanks to Tom Nahigian who is also interviewed in this issue in his own section.

♦  INTERVIEW with TOM NAHIGIAN -- SOM Gamer, Baseball Card Collector

♦  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.

♦  BOOKS TO DIE FOR and Become a BASEBALL GURU -- This page is a new page we are adding for the newsletter that 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.  At the time of the release of this newsletter we have a special arrangement with Acta Sports to offer our members a 10% discount. We hope to add more books in the future.
 

 

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