Glenn Guzzo

This book tells the history of Strat-O-Matic Baseball (and all the other Strat-O-Matic games). You would probably have to have played this game as a kid, or like me and a lot of people, still be playing it as an adult, to find much interest here. However, the book is very well written and in fact tells a very interesting human interest story. The games inventor, Hal Richman, grew up on Long Island as the child of a verbally abusive father who was constantly telling him how worthless and stupid he was. As a result, Richman retreated into his imagination and his love of both baseball and math to create a baseball game based on probabilities. He stuck with the game, constantly improving it and making it more sophisticated, until, as a young adult, he had something he could try to begin marketing. The story of his struggle, and the game's slow but sure growth as hobby for "kids of all ages" really does make quite fascinating reading, assuming one has a predisposition to care about the subject matter. Which I do. Honk and I'll tell you about my two Strat-O-Matic draft league teams, the Hackensack Freeloaders and the Marigny Dreamers!… (altro)