Issue #2, February - March 2013

Comments from the Wolfman

I want to welcome all of our readers to our second issue of the newsletter.  We had a rough go of it trying to get the newsletter out in February due to some personal challenges, but hopefully the wait was worth it.  Since the end of January, many new activities and contacts have happened behind the scenes which I believe is going to tremendously help our newsletter (by this I mean this newsletter is all of ours) to go to some amazing new levels in the next few months.

Of course, we have seen the new cards sets that Strat-o-matic released in February along with a new version of the computer game. For those of you who are in draft leagues, you probably already have completed your draft. I know for myself it was an interesting time as between moving to a new apartment, I had to find time to prepare for the draft and I used some new sources of information that I had not done before besides drafting mostly young players for the future instead of players who had great cards or filled holes for our Skokie Wolfmen team.

But the real surprise and joy of doing this newsletter, is the wondrous individuals I have had a chance to speak with and interview since we started and to those who have decided to offer support in one way or another for this mad experiment. But before I discuss some of the new contributors for Issue #2, I want to acknowledge a few special people for their help and guidance in getting this newsletter put together. And of course again, I thank all of our readers for your patience to finally completing this second issue. :-)

First and foremost I want to thank Marc Wasserman, who not only has helped with several key aspects of this newsletter with his suggestions and contributions, but will be coming onboard as a key partner (co-founder) for the newsletter as we move forward.  Marc is of course doing the column about life as a Commissioner and has helped with the Baseball Card Quiz we are doing, but also he setup the Bryan Swank interview for this issue and helped with giving us a chance to speak to Bruce Bundy, who is one of the most well known and respected individuals linked with the Baseball Game.  So you will be hearing more about Marc who is very dedicated to the success of this newsletter and helping to make sure we are able to share with you the very best information we can. Further, Marc also setup finally our domain name, which as of the release of this newsletter is linked to our Introduction and Signup Sheet.  So if you like what you see and want to send people to a page to learn more about the newsletter, share with them this:

http://www.UltimateStratBaseball.com

Now I have already mentioned Bruce Bundy, who most likely many of you have heard of him before. He is one of the kindest and giving individuals I know and just as dedicated to making the SOM Baseball world as interesting and exciting as he can. He brings to us a new column called "Strat Thoughts" which will provide his one line insights.  Now not only a good friend (and fellow manager in the CBA) but he has become another key advisor for the newsletter making some great suggestions of other people we should talk to in the future and new areas linked to the baseball game to explore. So I wanted to thank Bruce for all of his insights and sharing with us his wisdom and experience over the years. Let's all give Bruce a big SOM applause as we welcome him to the newsletter as a new columnist.

Of course, we continue to receive help here and there from many people - so its kind of difficult to be able to list everyone here. However as we have stated previously, the success of this newsletter is going to be through the contributions of many people and not just the support team but will include our readers as well.  And I am constantly thinking of ways to get our members more involved with the newsletter like the vote we took about whether to release a part of this newsletter early or wait. We would like you to be more then just a passive reader if this is possible. 

Next I would also like to acknowledge Nick Flory for a special contribution he made. I recently met Nick through Mike and Larry of the Ted Williams SOM League. Nick has created websites for over 60 baseball leagues. Not only did Nick place our logo on his website but he very generously sent out information about the newsletter on our behalf to all of these leagues which is why we have over 500 members now and continue to grow day by day. 

Another example of help we are receiving is that another member in the Chicago is going to help us do an interview with John Dewan who created Stats, Inc. - a key company that helped SOM in developing their baseball cards and the ratings which is continued to be supported by John's new company.  So it's like we are one big family here and what the future of the newsletter will be about is only limited by our imagination. Anything and everything is possible.  So we will continue to do our best to introduce you to the most interesting people in the SOM World and to share great stories and insights.

Ok, lets focus more on what goodies we have to share with you in this issue. First, some of you already have probably read the interview that Marc conducted with Bryan Swank the son of Tom Swank. I believe Tom Swank was probably the first person to totally support the game company with all of his heart and soul and was constantly trying to get more people to play the game as well as developed all kinds of public tournaments.  Tom Swank is also mentioned in Guzzo book but in this interview, through his son, we get a chance to learn more about this amazing man.  Next Mr. Bundy shares some keys to be successful in your game playing and how pitchers with 3 day rest are calculated.  Then we have "rezzdogg", the founder of the Stratomatic Baseball Village sharing with us another article from their forum that deals with his father and the game of baseball.

Next we get the chance to interview Dan Patterson, if you don't know him by name you know him from the creation of the most popular SOM on-line forum known as the Strat-o-matic Fan Forum which has existed since 2001. In his interview we get a chance to a little more about about his motivation to create the forum and about some of his experiences. Marc Wasserman comes back with his second installment of Commissioner's Corners and talks about how to deal with challenging situations that can come up in your Baseball League. Yours truly pulls out another one of my previously posted pages from years before, a report of the 1973 SOM Convention held in Brooklyn co-sponsored by the game company and SOM Review. Plus, I found an interview I did with Mr. Richman via email in 2006 and added this to this column.

Next we shares the answers to our first Baseball Card Quiz (again also posted early) with an Interview with the Winner and now have some new questions to test our members.  And I would say there are probably about 10 new entries in our recommend on-line resources we added since January that you may want to take a peek at.  Also we have a new page that is going to be linked to special baseball (or SOM) related books we recommend which at the moment are ones published by Acta Sports in Chicago who offers all of our members a 10% discount. Both of the Glenn Guzzo books are included plus a few from the legendary Bill James.

So this should be enough stuff to satisfy our members for another month or so before we release Issue #3.  Now, if you aren't sure where to go to find Issue #1 of our newsletter which came out in two parts, feel free to head over to:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/USBN-1-2013/USBN-Issue1-P1.htm
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/USBN-1-2013/USBN-Issue1-P2.htm

Again, as gentle reminder, through the service we use to announce our newsletter and the bulletins, everything is archived, so if you miss an issue or bulletin or you are not sure if you have, just go to our newsletter archive page and check it out at:

http://archive.aweber.com/stratbaseball

As always, we remain open to any suggestions you may have to improve this newsletter. Or if you would like to contribute something, that would interesting or benefit our other members, feel free to contact us.  For those of you that we haven't been able to share yet your contribution, we will eventually get to it and will definitely let you know when it will appear. At the moment we have more information than we can publish which is a good place to be in.  During our poll in February, a few members felt we were offering too much content, but since everything is being done as a webpage, you don't have to read the whole newsletter at once of course. Take your time, its not going anywhere.

Due to the delay in releasing Issue #2, we still haven't had time to get a PDF version of each issue but this should be corrected by April or Issue #3.  With the PDF version you won't need to be connected to the internet to read the newsletter.

So thanks everyone for having faith in us and being a member. This is a very rewarding experience for me to be involved in the creation of this newsletter and to give back to the community and the game for all the years of enjoyment.  We would be very grateful if you could help us by sharing to your other friends and Strat buddies about the newsletter. It is ok to give them access to Issue #2, even if they are not members. But, if they join (for free), emails will be sent directly to them to alert your friends when the new bulletins come out which contain timely information and news that may not always be shared in the newsletter. We suggest to share with them the new website ( www.UltimateStratBaseball.com ). In addition, they will know when the next newsletter is released. There is a link for those who want to become members at the bottom of each page of this issue too if you forget our new domain name.

So everyone have a great 2013 in your game play and leagues and tournaments. Again we wish to express our great gratitude for your interest and support. So what do you think, is the "Ultimate Strat Baseball Newsletter" the place to be or not?

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 BRYAN SWANK SOM Gamer, league member.
(Sharing about his father, Thomas Swank)

♦  STRAT THOUGHTS with BRUCE BUNDY, SOM Gamer, Creator of Baseball Card Formulas, Baseball Strategy Advisor, Beta Tester for the Game Company
(A new monthly column of "Strat Thoughts" from the mind of legendary Bruce Bundy)

♦  ARTICLE with "REZZDOGG", Owner/Moderator of Stratomatic Baseball Village
(This Article is entitled "Fathers and Sons: Diamonds are Forever".)

♦  INTERVIEW with DAN PATTERSON, Founder of Strat-o-matic Fan Forum
(This forum covers all of the sports games offered by Strat-o-matic)

♦  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 how to deal with challenges from league members when there are heated disagreements or communication breaks down.

♦  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 second national Strat-o-matic Convention in 1973 held in Brooklyn, NY and co-sponsored by the Game Company and the Strat-o-matic Review. Wolfman will be taking us through the first nine conventions going through 1980 of which he was present at each one. From 1974-1980 Wolfman along with his friends from Chicago held these conventions in Illionies. We will continue to share one new convention in each future issue till all of these early ones are shared.

♦  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 #1, interview our first winner (Art) and have two new questions to ask for Quiz #2. Who will be our next winner?

♦  RECOMMEND ON-LINE SOM RESOURCES -- Those On-line Strat-o-matic and Baseball related websites that offer amazing information, special tools and products to improve your game play that we recommend and which we have had personal contact with and agree with our idea 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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