Rex Ryan Loved Strat-O-Matic Baseball

[Lil Bit Special]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/sports/baseball/before-football-jets-ryan-mastered-table-baseball.html?pagewanted=all

 

Before Football, Jets’ Ryan Mastered Table Baseball By BEN SHPIGEL

 

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Rex Ryan was concerned, genuinely and seriously concerned. About a man nicknamed the Killer Tomato.

“Who’s this Olmedo Saenz guy?” Ryan asked.

 

Saenz is a former baseball player from Panama who spent parts of nine seasons in the major leagues. Ryan, though, was less interested in Saenz’s background than in his high on-base percentage, which, he said, would look marvelous in his lineup for our game of Strat-O-Matic baseball.

This was how Ryan constructed his teams 35 years ago, when the popular simulation board game first reeled him in, one roll of the dice at a time. For hours, he would sit flipping the cubes, consulting numbers on 3-by-5 cards — one for the pitcher, one for the hitter — that had been calibrated to yield results that reflected a player’s season statistics. He played during lunch breaks at high school and at friends’ houses after the bell rang. He brought his cards to college and waged epic battles with his twin, Rob.

 

“I have sets, literally, of almost every single year of Strat-O-Matic baseball,” Ryan said. “That’s how huge I was into it.”

This revelation — that he engaged in a hobby he would call “a bit egghead-ish” — does not square easily with Ryan’s public image as the brash and swaggering coach of the Jets. The same guy who encouraged cheap shots while playing football with his two brothers and who recently ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, would also jockey to draft Manny Mota, a Strat-O-Matic superstar. By day, Ryan would plot aggressive schemes as one of the N.F.L.’s more creative defensive coaches. By night, in his slivers of spare time, he would scour the Internet for player-card sets that had eluded his collection.

 

It was bound to happen, what with being a head coach and all, but his obsession has waned. Neither of his sons was that interested. Names aren’t as familiar — certainly there is no more Saenz, who retired in 2008. Until our three-inning duel on a rainy afternoon last month, it had been a while since Ryan’s last Strat-O-Matic game. Perhaps not since his days at Southwestern Oklahoma State, where he and Rob would stay up late drinking beer, playing full seasons and keeping stats. They created their own scoresheets.

 

“Instead of studying,” Ryan said, “we were doing this stuff.”

His eyes narrowing, Ryan scanned a few player cards as if they were his defensive call sheet, reading the stats with great concentration. He deliberated his batting order and settled on a lineup that, yes, included Saenz. Or rather, “this guy Olmedo, the guy I’ve never heard of.”

Ryan looked up at me.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “Because I am. Let’s go.”

 

Captivated by Minutiae

I first learned of Ryan’s fixation with Strat-O-Matic when I started covering the Jets about two years ago, during an introductory chat in his office. Like many baseball-obsessed kids of his generation, Ryan played APBA, another dice game, but it was not realistic enough for him. Into that void rushed Strat-O-Matic, which also accounted for a player’s defensive ability. Ryan found himself captivated by minutiae: Roberto Clemente’s throwing arm was so powerful that it merited a grade beyond the traditional scale.

“That’s, like, impossible,” Ryan said. “The best is minus-5, and he’s a minus-6? Those are the things I would look at.”

It added to Ryan’s experience as a fan, intensifying his connection to the sport he adored.

“I love coaching football, don’t get me wrong,” Ryan said. “But I just love baseball.”

His parents, Buddy and Doris, were born in Oklahoma, as was he, and so Ryan rooted for the Sooner State’s finest: Johnny Bench and Mickey Mantle and Willie Stargell. When asked, Ryan knew that Bench hailed from Binger, Mantle from Commerce and Stargell from Earlsboro.

“Later, it was Andre Dawson and Dave Kingman,” Ryan said. “I hated Mike Schmidt, because he was a Phillie and he would often hit more home runs than Kingman, which I never liked.”

 

As the son of a longtime N.F.L. coach, Ryan traveled a lot during his childhood. Instead of being conditioned to support one team, he cheered for several. He liked the Mets, the Yankees and the Cubs, attending games during Buddy’s coaching stops in New York and Chicago. He was riveted when Tom Seaver faced Bob Gibson at Shea Stadium, but his most memorable moment in the stands came on April 7, 1977, when he was 14 and living with Doris and Rob in Toronto.

Ryan skipped school to sit in the bleachers at the Blue Jays’ inaugural game, at Exhibition Stadium. When he corralled about 10 balls during batting practice, he sensed it would be a good day.

“I can tell you anything about it,” Ryan said, and so he did. He remembers the volatile weather — “it was sunny, it rained, it snowed” — that Blue Jays first baseman Doug Ault clubbed two homers, and that Ken Brett was the losing pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in a 9-5 Toronto victory.

“I thought the Blue Jays were going to win it all that year,” Ryan said. “Oh, well. Whoops. Let me pick out my starter here.”

 

Dodgers vs. Phillies

Laughing, Ryan handed me three sheets of paper. It was the Wikipedia entry for Roger Freed, who logged 828 plate appearances across eight seasons and, among the Strat-O-Matic cognoscenti, is celebrated for having one of the most valuable cards ever: in 1977, used primarily as a pinch-hitter, Freed hit .398 in 83 at-bats for St. Louis with an on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.090.

“If you were drafting guys to play in a tournament against people who knew their stuff, that’s the No. 1 pick,” Ryan said. “Guys who are just starting, they’ll take the stars. So would I, and then in the later rounds, I’d take Roger Freed, and they’d all be like, ‘Huh?’ ”

Luckily for me, Ryan did not unearth his Freed card, packed away with about 35 full sets. We played with my set, from 2004, and the first card Ryan saw was that of Adrian Beltre, who hit .334 with 48 homers and 121 runs batted in for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ryan picked the Dodgers. I chose my hometown Phillies.

 

He bypassed Hideo Nomo and his 8.25 earned run average in favor of Brad Penny. For the sake of historical accuracy, I tabbed the left-hander Randy Wolf, who started the first regular-season game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia when it opened in 2004, and I instantly regretted it. With a runner on first and one out, Wolf plunked Jayson Werth.

“What are you doing?!?” Ryan said. “I’m not going to charge the mound this time, but another one like that, and maybe I will.”

Two on, one out for Beltre. Ryan rolled a 1-10. He glanced at the 1 column under left-handed pitchers on Beltre’s card, then checked to see what 10 denoted. Three-run homer. Of course.

“Yes sir, there it goes,” Ryan said, clapping his hands. “We’ll just trot around there. He has 48 dingers on the year, so really, it’s not that surprising.”

I escaped further damage and trailed by 3-0. As I sent out my leadoff hitter, Bobby Abreu, Ryan cheered on his pitcher: “Come on, Brad. Let’s go, babes. Throw strikes, stay ahead.”

Abreu popped out, and when Ryan noticed that I had batted the slugger Jim Thome second, he chided me. I rolled a 2-11. Home run.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything,” Ryan said.

 

Yes, He Stressed Offense

Almost five years ago, a man from suburban Chicago named Bill Meinhardt was on eBay checking his bid on a set of 1974 player cards. Not long before the auction closed, someone who went by the handle RRyan swooped in and raised the bid.

“I thought, ‘Oh, it couldn’t be,’ ” Meinhardt said. “Then I thought, ‘Maybe it is.’ ”

Meinhardt knew Ryan, two years his senior, from Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill. They lived in the same neighborhood, united by shared interests. They played Strat-O-Matic, whiffle ball and chess, and sometimes Meinhardt would watch Ryan, a power-hitting catcher with a loopy left-handed swing, smash homers for the high school team.

After Ryan graduated, they fell out of touch. Meinhardt tracked Ryan’s career arc, and from afar, Ryan did the same for his friend: Meinhardt became a three-time national Strat-O-Matic champion.

“When Rex was playing me, he was playing the person who went on to become the best,” Meinhardt said. “I’m not saying that to brag. I’m saying that to show how good he was.”

Back then, Ryan said, he would always choose a catcher with a strong throwing arm — often Bench, naturally, the pride of Binger, Okla. But Ryan believed in prioritizing offense over defense — “kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Meinhardt said — and tried jamming as many big hitters into his lineup, like George Brett at shortstop.

“I’m not a bunt guy, I’m a home run guy,” Ryan said. “I’m more the Earl Weaver type — try to hit a three-run shot on you.”

Meinhardt remembered Ryan as a fierce competitor but not obnoxiously so. Rob would take a loss hard, Meinhardt said, but “Rex would be like, ‘Oh, that was fun, that was great, you kicked my butt. Now let’s go again.’ He wanted to learn. He wanted to get better.”

As Ryan readily admitted, Meinhardt won most of their games, including the only Strat-O-Matic football game they ever played, when Meinhardt’s ’76 Raiders defeated Ryan’s ’63 Bears, 14-7. But there was this one time when Ryan summoned 1977 Bruce Sutter, a dominant reliever, with two outs in the first inning. Meinhardt never scored, and Ryan won, 2-0. Until I mentioned it to him, Meinhardt had forgotten about the loss. But he had not forgotten about Ryan; so, five years ago, his curiosity piqued, he sent a message to RRyan. As a way of confirming his identity, Meinhardt asked RRyan how many home runs he hit as a senior.

“He wrote back and said, ‘I think I hit two,’ and that was right,” Meinhardt said. “We got to talking, and then he outbid me for those ’74 cards.” He paused to chuckle, then added, “He paid more than I was willing to pay.”

 

Ryan by a Landslide

Top of the third inning. Ryan was still leading, 3-1, and the first two batters reached base for Jose Hernandez, who lashed a run-scoring single.

“Still nobody out,” Ryan said. “Oh, by the way, your pitcher’s horrible.”

And getting worse. Saenz — “who I had no idea existed,” Ryan reminded me — knocked in another run with a double. Beltre made it 6-1 with a sacrifice fly.

“There we go,” Ryan said. “Boom.”

The game ended with the Dodgers winning, 6-1, after Ryan called on his closer, Eric Gagne, to strike out Pat Burrell.

“I like these three-inning games,” Ryan said.

We shook hands and talked for a few minutes. He lamented some of the enhancements that Strat-O-Matic has made over the years, introducing advanced fielding charts, ballpark factors and updated base-stealing options. They took away from his enjoyment, he said.

“When all these things came up, I stopped playing it,” Ryan said. “I think the quality went down. Even the quality of the cards isn’t nearly the same. I never wanted to turn to this sheet or that sheet or whatever. Just the feel of it, it’s not the same to me.”

For the first time in our 45 minutes together, Ryan had turned wistful. But when I mentioned how those enhancements had not stopped him from whipping me after a hiatus of nearly three decades, he laughed.

“It doesn’t mean,” Ryan said, “that I forgot how to play.”

[JustInFudge]

As if there isnt already a million reasons why Rex is a terrible HC and should be fire, you post this.

[BurnleyJet]

I was more of a Statis-Pro man myself.

[JoeC36]

How can you pass up Hideo Nomo for Brad Penny? He just lost what little credibility he had left with me. 

[shawn306]

Obviously Rex never played the master game version of APBA.

 

Even now I love the sports sims. I played Madden for years but once you know the moves the game games would end up 73-10, 120-23.

 

I still play APBA's computer game. The game is probably 15-20 years old and just in the past year got its first upgrade in probably ten years but I still love replaying old seasons with the exact lineups and pitching rotations.

[TechJet]

holy chit this is unreal, instead of being a HC he's playing some boring game call baseball. this dude has got to go

 

am starting this chant first...REX MUST GO 

[Maxman]

Micro League Baseball is the greatest game ever invented.