Issue #3, April 2013


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** Jeff Polman, an extraordinary writer and
     Master of the Season Replay  **
      (interview conducted by the Wolfman)

(Notes from the Wolfman: Normally for an editor of a newsletter, you have to seek out and find interesting people to interview, or at least this is the way it works with a new publication. However in the case of Jeff, once he heard we existed, he contacted us. Now I have to humbly admit I wasn't sure who Jeff once when I received his first email but then I discovered that Jeff was the other person on the Strat-o-matic website that the game company was granting permission for articles to be published there along with Glenn Guzzo.  But what Jeff does which is amazin' dear members, is he is a time traveler.  He writes his blog and books about living in the past and writing as if he is experiencing some of the great baseball seasons from before. He has a book about 1924 and the his blog we have listed in our resource page covers 1958. So I am sure you are going to enjoying meeting Jeff, another unusual and unique member of the SOM Baseball community. Take it away Jeff!!)

 

Jeff Pictures from his Blog about re-living the 1958 Baseball Season, you will like it!

Wolfman:  Jeff Polman, thanks for this chance to interview you and also for joining our newsletter. So let's start at the beginning. How did you first get involved with baseball, at what age did you become a fan? Did you play baseball yourself, who was your favorite team and player or players? Jeff:  It all began in 1963, when I was eight years old, and my dad took me and my older brother to Fenway Park to see the Yankees play the Red Sox. It was a Thursday matinee, May 30. Maris and Mantle played, and the Yanks won the game 6-5 in ten innings. I was instantly hooked, and began following the awful Boston team. That same summer, my brother ordered the Strat-O-Matic game and the box arrived when he was away at summer camp. I opened it, checked out all the cool-looking cards, and played with him in earnest when he returned. We had a bunch of neighborhood friends in our western Massachusetts town we played wiffle ball with, and suddenly we were all playing Strat on the backyard porch, too. Mays and Aaron cards were always popular, but around 1967 (naturally), Carl Yastrzemski quickly became my all-time favorite player. It wasn't just because he was a Hall of Famer and had an amazing season in '67, it's because he singlehandedly made a generation of New Englanders Red Sox fans again. Their teams and attendances were awful for a long time leading up to that magic year.

And no, wiffle ball, a short, bad Little League career and later softball are the only times I've played the game. I am a fan first and foremost, though I do appreciate how extremely difficult it is to play the game well. Just look at Michael Jordan.

Wolfman:  What is there about baseball that catches your fancy Jeff?

Jeff:  The timelessness of the game, the way its history is reflected in practically every aspect, the peacefulness of the green field, the signature batting stances and windups of every player ever that never leave your brain, the vast, ever-growing library of wonderful baseball non-fiction, the endless compilation of statistics that makes it easy to compare one era to another, the daily standings, etc., etc. One reason there are very few great baseball movies is because the drama on the actual field is often better than anything you can invent in Hollywood.

Wolfman:  Now moving on to Strat-o-Matic Baseball, you mentioned in one of your emails that you first became involved in 1964 - how did you find the game? What is it about SOM that makes you a fanatic and also you called yourself an Ambassador?

Jeff:  Well, I mentioned a few paragraphs ago how I was introduced to the game. I think my brother clipped out a Strat advertisement from an annual baseball magazine. What makes me a fanatic is that I can't stop playing the sucker, and don't really want to. It's now tough for me to watch a ballgame on TV without playing a Strat one on my coffee table simultaneously. For a while I was a little ashamed of my excessive hobby -- it did wreck a couple relationships and my first marriage -- but I have been re-married to someone who accepts it for over twenty years, and I now see it as an honest part of who I am.

The "ambassador" comment has to do with my fevered desire to promote the game any way I can without actually working at the company, and the best way I've found, kind of organically, is to do it through my fictional replays. It really is the greatest tabletop game ever invented that not enough people seem to know about. I've been in a few Rotisserie-style fantasy leagues, and they don't hold a candle to Strat baseball as far as being fun, as well as a great learning experience. Stats guru Bill James has said there a handful of big league field managers now who wouldn't stand a chance in an expert Strat league, and I fully believe that.

Wolfman:  We asked Glen Guzzo in his interview if he had any tips on how to improve one's success at playing the baseball game. Do you have any play tips for our readers?

Jeff:  I would say #1 would be to learn the cards of your players as fast as you can, especially if you're playing with the advanced side. A lot of people I know write detailed safe/hit chances on the left and right sides of their cards to help them make in-game decisions. I never do that, because I've have been playing for so long I can now "eyeball" which side of the card is more productive with a glance or two.

#2 would be to put lots of time into setting your lineups. I do everything humanly possible to avoid grounding into double plays, which means putting guys with lots of walks right at the top, even if they're slow and have groundball A chances. The second hitter should have virtually NO groundball A's. Your best hitter is third, your most powerful fourth, another guy with no groundball A's is good fifth, sort of like starting another lineup cycle down there, and so on.

#3 is don't steal unless the chances are really good. I find stealing kills more rallies than it helps. And obviously, never steal with two outs if the guy coming up has a bad clutch rating. Of course, if you're playing with the 1965 Dodgers and it's the only way they can score runs, you have to give in a little.

#4 is don't yank a good pitcher unless he's fatigued. Sometimes you can get angry and treat the card like it's alive and hates you, and you want to get it off your game table as quick as possible, but it's important to keep in mind these are pieces of cardboard without feelings, and unless they're fatigued, they can calm down and pitch well again before you know it. I've played managers who burn through their entire pen by the sixth inning because they lose faith too quickly in their starter.

Wolfman:  It seems from your blogs and articles I have read you love doing replays? What is there about replays that gets you excited? I guess you wrote a book about your 1924 replay and invented some fictional people who were doing this replay as if it was really happening. Can you talk about this?

Jeff:  Certainly. I was doing a season-long write-up on the Strat Fan Forum of a "Best of 2007" replay, where I took the best 16 teams and played a full season with a 1930s schedule (fabulous fun project, by the way) and getting a lot of great feedback from the readers. So I thought, hey, maybe I should try to take this even further, and came up with doing a separate Web site blog for the new 1924 set.

"1924 and You Are There!" ran at least five days a week for a little over a year, and featured Vinny Spanelli, a 17-year old Phillies fan, reporting the NL action from old Baker Bowl, and Calvin Butterworth, a Detroit newspaper man, telling us about the AL games. Stories developed naturally, with most of the plot dictated by what happened on the Strat tabletop. It was really fun to write, and I received a lot of good attention from the blog. It inspired me to do three more of these replay blogs: Play That Funky Baseball (1977), The Bragging Rights League (1941 white all-stars vs. five teams of the "Negro Major League"), and Mystery Ball '58, a "baseball murder mystery" set mostly in San Francisco during the Giants' first year out there. "1924" is also available in book form now, and can be bought on Amazon.

Wolfman:  Have you ever met any professional baseball players? Have any of these players played SOM Baseball?

Jeff:  The only player I can say I've truly met is Bill "Spaceman" Lee. When he pitched for the Expos in 1979 (and won 16 games in their pennant drive). I was doing a newspaper interview with him after a game in Montreal, and we had a few beers together. He didn't play Strat. The only big leaguers I know who have played are Lenny Dykstra, Keith Hernandez, Curt Schilling and Morgan Ensberg (the online version) and ex-Expos hurler Denis Boucher.

Wolfman:  Since I am also a writer of books, and articles sometimes, when did you start writing? How did you develop this gift? Are there future writing projects you have linked to Baseball or SOM? What is there about being a writer that appeal to you?

Jeff:  I started writing short stories when I was around 13. First one was "Camp Hawkeye," a murder mystery set in a summer camp. This was well before the Friday the 13th franchise, mind you. I took creative writing courses in high school and college, but basically have always been working on something fictional. Wrote two novels when I was in high school and foolishly tried to get them published. They were pretty lame. Majored in filmmaking at college and after seven years or so as a journalist moved to L.A. to try my hand at screenplays. Wrote about twenty of those and had two low-budget thrillers sold and produced.

Aside from my monthly column for the Strat Web site, I do have some other SOM-related projects in mind, but won't reveal what they are yet. That would take the fun away.

I love writing because all you need is your brain and a pencil and pad to get started. If you have an imagination, there's no limit to where you an go. It gives you a sense of private, creative empowerment that few other things can do.

Wolfman:  Every SOM gamer has special moments or experiences, unbelievable games they were involved with. Can you share with our readers one or two of your special moments?

Jeff:  There's probably too many to remember. But my 2004 Curt Schilling did throw a perfect game against the Indians in another "Best of" full season I never finished. I had a Reds and Giants pitcher each throw no-hitters through nine innings in a 1978 game at Candlestick that I think the Reds won 1-0 behind Frank Pastore's no-no in ten innings. And I just rolled a game last Saturday in a new draft league I joined in which my team won 17-2 and hit nine homers, with Mike Trout going yard four times and Encarnacion three. Of course, it was in Cellular Field so it was a little tainted.

Wolfman:  You said you were involved with a league that has existed for 35 years - what is this league - if it is that old is it a face to face league or was it a mail league - how many
of the original members are still with the league?

Jeff:  The league is called the ECBA, or East Coast Baseball Association., though it is nationwide. I've only been in it for four years, but yeah, it started in like 1973. Not sure exactly how many original guys are still playing but it has to be at least four or five out of the 12. They meet up once a year at a very large country house in Maryland for a 4-5 day convention of Strat and wiffle ball playing. I've only been able to attend once so far, but did write a Strat column about it.

The ECBA uses the basic side of the cards, with the super-advanced fielding, and naturally doesn't bother with clutch/ballpark ratings or WP/PB/BALK stuff. Mainly this is because many of the games are played through the mail using the honor system, and lefty/righty instructions would get too time-consuming. We play a 160-game schedule and speed is pretty essential.

Wolfman:  Now, how were you able to get the opportunity to do posts on the SOM Game Company website? I know Glenn Guzzo also does this but he seems to be working with the game company to help them develop the cards. Are you supporting the game company in some way as well?

Jeff:  To be honest, I've forgotten how I got it started. I think I just sent an e-mail to the PR guy at the time with a column idea when I saw their site was growing.

Wolfman:  Have you had a chance to meet Mr. Richman? Can you tell us about your contact with the creator of the game we love - do you speak with him from time to time?

Jeff:  I met him on the air for the first of a short-lived number of Strat podcasts on the Seamheads network called "Tumbling Dice". Seamheads founder Mike Lynch and I interviewed Hal for about half an hour, and he was great. Then I met him personally for another quick podcast live interview during their 50th anniversary event in New York. Super nice guy, and still very sharp.

Wolfman:  Is there anything else you would like to share with our members, that you haven't been asked in a question from before that you think is important?

Jeff:  I realize Strat makes changes to their game very rarely these days, but there's a couple I'd love to see implemented. One is a clutch pitching symbol on the super-advanced pitcher cards. Just as there are hitters who perform better or worse with people in scoring position with two outs, the same can be said for certain pitchers. My 1941 replay had a Yankees team that badly underperformed, losing the pennant by four games when they were supposed to win by 17, and one big reason was a lack of clutch pitching. Yankee starters walked a LOT of people that year but were great at getting out of jams. Without any clutch pitching ability, this hardly ever happened in my replay.

The other fun addition could be HBP chances on pitcher cards, to honor the guys who do hit people more.

And of course, any time they'd like to overhaul the catcher's fielding chart again is okay with me.

Wolfman:  How can our members contact you if they would like to speak with you?

Jeff:  I don't give out my phone number, but Strat fans can email me at: jpolman54@gmail.com

(Wolfman's Note: Please note since Issue #2, in our recommended on-line resource page, we have links for Jeff's column on the SOM Game Company website and his blog, if you wish to read some of the other fine information Jeff shares as one of the early SOM ambassadors.)

Wolfman:  Thank you Jeff for this change to speak to you, and for our members to get to know you a wee bit better and find out more about yourself and who is sharing interesting posts on the SOM website, to our readers check out the wisdom of Jeff Polman there!