Boys of Summer

I began playing Strat-O-Matic in 1979 at age 12 (feel free to do the math on where that puts me today).

My friends and I have always referred to it as “Strat” and others across the country call it “S-O-M”. I’ll use “Strat” for the purpose of today’s piece.

The Strat board game is a sports simulation that allows you to replay games with cards and dice. Football, baseball, basketball and hockey. I have owned and played all of them and I still do. It is my hobby, or as my wife, Ellen, calls it my obsession (I don’t think so, but let’s move on…).

Each sport comes out with new cards every season. It also has a computer game that I switched over to about 25 ago that is much faster, keeps the stats for me and means I don’t have cards and dice strewn all over the kitchen table.

I first owned the football game in 1979, but my mom bought me the deluxe baseball game in 1980, with its cards based on the 1979 season, so I was able to play my beloved St. Louis Cardinals with Hall-of Famer Lou Brock’s last season and my favorite player Keith Hernandez’s .344 hitting MVP year.

Back then, I was certainly obsessed. I played the game whenever I could and played so much I wore the ink off the cards. I tried to get friends and family to play, but they never could match my…enthusiasm…for the game.

I received a Strat deluxe football game with all of the NFL teams for Christmas 1981 and proceeded to wear those out as well and after the Cardinals won the 1982 World Series, I had to wait until the spring of 1983 to see what the cards for Hernandez, Willie McGee, Ozzie Smith, Lonnie Smith and Bruce Sutter would look like.

Fortunately, my Grandma and Grandpa Misner got me the Strat deluxe basketball game for Christmas 1982 and getting to coach Dr. J. for a few months was able to keep me busy until the baseball cards came out.

I played religiously through high school and took my set of board games to college. At Mizzou, I found friends from St. Charles and St. Louis who had played Strat and I was able to be in my first real league.

My sophomore GPA dipped a bit because I met Ellen that year, and because I was in multiple Strat leagues (I blame Ellen mostly).

As I took my first job at KHQA in 1990, there were a group of guys in Quincy who played and I was able to jump back in another Strat baseball league. Then, as that league faded and Ellen and I had kids, some of my Quincy friends had gotten into a different league. A really big league.

Dave Dohm, Matt Schutte, Sam Middendorf and Brian Heinze were in the Intercontinental Baseball League (ICBL) that started in 1990 and when I joined in 1999. Other Quincy guys have come and gone and Sam is the only one of that group left in the league, but two other Quincy guys, Brian Spencer and Paul Westerhoff, are still in it with us.

There are also guys from Springfield, Chicago, Macomb, Manito, New York and Florida in the league. There have been members from many other parts of the country who have also been in the ICBL.

It’s a 30-team league. That means we use every player’s stats in the game and you have to dig to make each and every player count. This is my 24th year and I’ve made three ICBL World Series, winning twice (ahem). I also play in a couple of Strat football leagues online, which are a lot of fun.

The ICBL meets every summer at our convention, which we call the “Get Together” and shorten to “GT”. Since a majority of the owners are in Illinois, that’s where we hold the event. It’s been in Chicago, Bloomington and Springfield, where we are this year and where I’ll head later this week.

It’s a computer game-based league, so we all haul our laptops (used to be PC’s and Middendorf still brings a monster screen in because he’s basically blind) into a hotel conference room and play dozens of games. I try to knock out between 80 and 100 games over a three-day period (it’s really not an obsession).

Craig Fritz used to live in Quincy and has been the Phillies’ owner since 1992. He was most recently living in Jacksonville and he was the heart of the league.

Fritz could play all through the night, fueled on cigarettes (stepping outside to smoke, of course) and Miller Genuine Draft back when it was made. Later, he pretty much drank whatever beer was cold.

This will be the first year in 30 years where Fritz won’t be managing the Phillies. He died on March 31 at a skilled nursing facility in Jacksonville.

He had been sick for about a year. Started feeling it just after last year’s GT. When I last saw him in January at our annual league draft in Springfield, the cancer had taken its toll. He drafted and put together a team he knew he wasn’t going to be playing this year.

I gave him a hug just before his daughter drove him back to Jacksonville and was really hoping that wasn’t going to be the last time I saw him.

Then, Mike Horvath, one of the league’s founding members, died on May 9. He had also been fighting cancer, but he had been in and out of remission the last few years. Mike was our historian who kept immaculate records of our league stats and manager/team won-loss records.

If Fritz was the league’s heart, then Horvath was its soul.

So as I head to the state capital later this week to meet friends old and new, we are going to take a few minutes away from the laptops to sit on the hotel’s back patio to remember the good times we had with these good guys.

There might be a drink or two. There might be a cigar or two. There might be a tear or two.

There are sure as Hell going to be dozens of laughs and memories about a couple of brothers gone too soon who were important parts of something special.

It’s just a hobby, Ellen. Not an obsession.

J. Robert Gough is the publisher/general manager of Muddy River News and he has been a member of the ICBL since 1999. Did I mention he has been to three ICBL World Series, winning twice?