Vol. III,
Issue #1 - March 2015
**
The Billy Sample Challenge, February 7th,
2015
**
(This report discusses the
ex-major league ball player, now movie producer of "Reunion
108",
Billy Sample as he accepted our challenge last year to play one
of our members in SOM Baseball,
this report covers what happened when Bryan Swank, son of Tom
Swank answered the call!!)
(Above we have Billy to your left in his Texas Ranger Uniform,
and Bryan on your right. We
are not sure if Billy's smile and Bryan serious look indicate
what happened on this day but we
can tell you that this photo was taken after this epic series
was finished at Bryan's home ...)
An Introduction:
(Note:
As this report may be shared by other sources outside our
newsletter, I
wish to apologize to the members of our newsletter, as I will have to
write this report a little bit differently than normal so that any
visitors who come to these pages won't be lost.)
Hello, my name is Wolfman Shapiro, and I am the editor for this newsletter which
is completely based upon Strat-o-matic Baseball and Major League
Baseball.
In the September Issue, 2014, we had a second time to
interview Billy Sample {note below are the links to the two
previous interviews we did him, one last year and one the year
before}. During that interview, I had an intuitive urge to just ask Billy
if he would be open to play strat-o-matic baseball against one
of our members and his memorable answer was:
Billy:
Bring it on!
(He says with faux confidence!)
Well as I soon learned in my various correspondences and live
chats with Billy on Facebook he is an amazing individual, not
your normal type of ex-ball player and a
very learned person as well. It has been a great joy
having contact with him as he has been the most warm and
friendly ex-baseball player we have dealt with in our over 2
years of existence. So this is how the Billy Sample Challenge
was born. Then we had to figure out how to actually make it
happen as well as find a
member of our newsletter who lived closed to Billy in the northeastern part of
the U.S.
You may know this or not (as you will clearly see in our photos
for this report) but Billy is also a movie producer at the time
of the writing of this report. He just landed a deal with Amazon
to have his film sold as a DVD there. We will share a bit
more about this interesting film a bit later. So because
Billy was quite busy arranging distribution for his film, it
took us quite a while to organize this challenge!! First
of all we had a little trouble finding a member from the
newsletter who lived in Billy's area plus had time in their busy
schedule to play a face-to-face series. However, as with all
things in life, life eventually leads you to the right person,
which turned out to be Bryan Swank who agreed to do so.
For those readers who might not be familiar with Bryan, he is the son of
the legendary gamer, Tom Swank. Mr. Swank was given a
whole section in the book about Strat-o-matic written by Glenn
Guzzo several years ago, which is the most comprehensive book
about the game
we all love. Also Mr. Guzzo was one of the first individuals we
interviewed for our newsletter. Now not to brag but I also
was briefly mentioned in the Guzzo book, it was just a small note linked to the 7 National SOM
Conventions, a group of us created in Illinois back from
1974-1980. Anyway, we did have a chance in a past issue to
speak about Tom Swank with Bryan's help who did an
interview with our publication (again a link is shown below
for this interview to give you a chance to know Bryan a bit better
too). So as with all
things, when the timing is right everything comes together, yes?
Due to
Billy's busy schedule at the end of 2014 and into the early part
of this year, it took us a good 4 months or more to get
everything setup to make this day a happening. Our next
challenge was which version of the
Strat-o-matic Baseball game to show Billy, the table
or computer game? Well I don't know about most you, but I
would say that most Strat gamers probably started with the table
game, where you can hold and see the cards (also called cards &
dice) plus, you have better control of the
action of the game with the dice. Unfortunately, Bryan only
played the computer game and sold his board game and all his
teams (the cards). So somehow we had to find a person who we could borrow the table game
from to play the series, as we believed this would be easiest
way for Billy to learn the game. Then, the next question was
which teams would Billy and Bryan play with and how to get the
cards for those teams.
Well two
miracles happened that made this all possible. First steps
forward Chris Rosen of Moonlight Graham Marketplace (http://www.moonlightgrahamsmarketplace.com)
who probably has every card Strat that has ever been printed (Right
Chris??). I forget who told me to contract Chris but as soon as
I explained our situation to Chris, he was mailing the 1983 Texas Rangers
cards off to Billy. It was my opinion that this was Billy best all around
year in his career so he would enjoy playing with this team and remember all
of his teammates. Then we wanted to find a comparable team
in 1983 record-wise to the Rangers so Bryan choose as his team, the 1983 Boston Red Sox.
These two teams had almost the same records that year with Texas at 77-85
and Boston at 78-84. So there was Chris again sending
Bryan the 1983 Red Sox. This is how our community can achieve
anything we set our minds to do, when we all help and work
together - Go Chris!!
OK, now that we had the cards
-- where could we find the board game with the dice (3 die and the 20 sided) plus all the
charts? We thought the basic game would be too easy for Billy so
we decided to go with the advance game of SOM
Baseball, using the lefty-righty factor and most of the advance
features to make the games in this series as realistic as
possible. Well, I followed my intuition, and I sent an
email to the game
company (www.strat-o-matic.com),
to see if we could just get a
donation of a single game without any teams. As the editor of
our newsletter, I have had some dialogues with the game company
in the past, so they knew of me. And without batting an eye, SOM came
through and immediately mailed the table game with all the
accessories to Bryan. So I would say by the middle of
December, the teams and game parts were received by the
respected parties. Therefore, at the
end of last year, we had Billy's opponent, we had the teams and
the game, we just needed a date. We hoped it would take
place in January sometime but Billy was still working hard to get his
movie out.
 |
 |
Here is the
version of the game that Strat-o-matic Sent out to Bryan to play
this series. We gifted it to Billy!!
Anyway,
finally this February (during the month this
report was written as well) Bryan asked if Billy if he was free for late
Saturday morning on February 7th and offered his home to play the games.
Then, a few day later after I sent Bryan's invitation out to Billy
via Facebook, I got word from Billy that he would be there
and the wheels began to move quickly. He was only five minutes late
at the agreed to time, arriving at 11:35 AM ET but he stayed
till after 4 PM. I unfortunately was on the west coast, so
I couldn't be there but I can tell you I was praying that morning
that everything
would turn out ok and it did (thank you Billy, thank you Chris,
thank you SOM, and thank you Bryan and Marc!!).
Joining the
two combatants, was our cameraman for the
day, Marc Wasserman to help make sure
that this special day would be recorded with some live video as well as photos.
So all the great photos you see in this report came from Marc.
Billy, of course, granted us the right to make these recordings
and had no problem being photographed or videoed.
And I also requested that scoresheets be completed so we could
describe the games played afterwards for this report. I
learned later, via the photos that an associate of
Bryan's (you will see him in the photos next to Bryan) --
Ken Mackay, his father's
best man and a former strat player
also came to
observe the
contest.
We weren't
sure how many games would be played but on the day, Billy and Bryan decided
to do a best of three game series
and to not spoil this report, I won't say who won and how.
I was able to receive the following week personal comments about this series from both Billy and Bryan.
Also, Marc
actually called me during the playing of the match from Bryan's
home so I could hear in the
background as our two participants were playing that there
was a lot of conversation going on between them. Anyway, Marc and Bryan
told me how thoroughly enjoyable the day was, how personable
Billy was and how they all got along fabulously. It was a stunning
success.
So now it is
my job dear readers to put together this report from all the information and
visuals I received from Billy, Bryan and Marc so that you too can try to
feel as if you were there as well. Now to make sure this page
isn't so
long, I have decided to divide the report of the day's
activities into two full parts.
You will see below there are links for each of these sections. Part
I is about the series itself with a boxscore and a summary for
each game including various photos taken. Part II are the
comments made by the contestants about the series from their
individual perspectives that I received shortly thereafter. Also
at the end of Part II, is a section where any video we have,
that Marc took from the day's action will be a link to it as we
store this on the Youtube Video channel we have for the
newsletter ( Note: a link to our channel is also given
as we have other great videos there and plan to continue adding
in this year!! ).
Now, for the
readers of our newsletter, you may recall in our December issue
last year (2014), I did have an opportunity to play Strat against a
former ex-ML Tony Brizzolara. Tony was a pitcher for the
Atlanta Braves around the same time as Billy was in the major
leagues. But in Tony's case, he is one of the few major league
ball players we know who has played Strat since he was young and to
not be bored when he was in the minors he played against the
Mahler brothers. Then he states in Guzzo's book, when he was in the
majors that he played against other Brave players, some of who you would know by
name. So Tony is, to put it mildly,
already a very talented strat brother.
Anyway, Tony
defeated me four games to two in our series using the Netplay
version of the computer game and we played with teams that we have had in
our respective computer leagues. In an email I wrote to Billy, he said
about Tony:
"and
I remember Tony, probably faced him in Instructional Ball.."
So before this report, the tally was ex-Major Leaguers 1,
Strat Fanatics 0. Thus, we were hoping Bryan could tie this series up
for us this time however.
Below are the links to both of our prior interviews with Billy
Sample (that you may want to read before seeing how he does with
Strat) for those readers who are not familiar with our newsletter (or
for our members who missed them). Additionally, the interview we did with
Bryan about his Dad, can also
be found below:
http://www.ultimatestratbaseball.com/USBN-4-2013/BillySample-April2013.htm
http://www.ultimatestratbaseball.com/USBN-10-2014/BillySample-September2014.htm
http://www.ultimatestratbaseball.com/USBN-3-2013/TomSwank-March2013.htm
Here we go,
Wolfman Shapiro, the editor.
VISITING BILLY SAMPLE'S STRAT CARD LINKED TO THE
CHALLENGE
Before moving on to the main
two section of this report, to talk about what actually happened during
the series between Billy and Bryan, I thought it might be good
idea to show Billy's Strat Card from 1983 as well as one of his
baseball cards, showing how Billy looked as a Major League
Player, see below:
(Billy Sample's Advanced Strat-o-matic Baseball Card for the
1983 Texas Rangers, apparently he had more
power this year vs. Right Handed pitching - good fielder, good
stealer, a bit better on-base vs. RHP --
this card was a gift to the editors of the newsletter by Chris
Rosen, Moonlight Graham's Marketplace. )
|
(Elementary Version of Billy's 1983
Strat-o-matic
Baseball Card)
Wolfman:
Here we see all of Billy's
stats for this year. Of course he was one of the
best base stealers in 1983 being rated a "AA". A
good runner and as well as a good fielder in
left with a normal throwing arm.
|
According to Billy in his new interview just after the series was played,
during this season he not only started most games but he placed
in every batting position in the lineup although he did hit
leadoff quite a bit.
Also Billy was talking up a storm for Bryan and our cameraman
(Marc) as
he was telling his stories when he played for the Rangers with as
well as stories on some of the players on the 1983 Boston Redsox which
Bryan was the Strat Manager for. |
(Note
from the Wolfman:
- Below we share some of the videos we discovered on youtube
where Billy
is shown during his playing days and also doing an interview, when he was
a sports caster with the great Willy Mays.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0rm_aEw8JU
(Billy hits a home run for Texas against the Chicago White
Sox)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwmw29WVIaE
(Billy first hit in MLB ...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9cxQjPlLss
(Billy interviews Willie Mays during Spring Training of
2004)
Wolfman
Again:
If after reading this
report, you might like to speak with Billy directly, he is
available via his facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/billy.sample.75
Now lets get
on to the Billy Sample Challenge .....
**
The Billy Sample Challenge, The Report
**
(In this next section, you will
find links below to the two parts of this report.
Part I is about the actual games that were played and Part II is
the comments
from the participates with tons of photos throughout -
enjoy and remember
to those of you not familiar with our newsletter, this is an
example of the special
activities we try to create and support linked to SOM Baseball
-- enjoy ......... )
Here we see Bryan to your left and Billy on your right as they
get ready to play their series
being conduct in the dinning room of Bryan's home with plenty of
water available for this match.
Bryan began the session by explaining to Billy how to read the
cards, as they get ready to start.
Part I:
Its
Billy's 1983 Rangers vs. Bryan's 1983 Red Sox
(summary of what
happened during the games, illustrated)
Part II:
Comments from the
Participants in the Series
(hear what Billy
and Bryan had to say about this historic match plus video)
