The Negro League All-Stars for Strat-o-Matic

by
October 22, 2009

Courtesy of our friend Scott Simkus, the Negro League All-Star set is now available for Strat-o-Matic:

I’ve spent the past several years working as a consultant to the Strat-O-Matic game company, focusing on their Negro League All-Star set. The opportunity is really the product of happenstance, lucky timing on my part.

The Negro League set couldn’t have been produced 30 years ago, as our knowledge of blackball then was mired in what fellow baseball researcher Gary Ashwill has called the “hazy netherworld of unverifiable myth, tall tales, gut feelings and subjective judgments.” Truth is the set couldn’t have been produced ten years ago, let alone thirty. The data, or more accurately, the access to raw data in the form of box scores, was still outside our grasp. The timing wasn’t right.

But it is now, and Scott talks about what went into it and why it was possible to do it today. Neat stuff regardless, but especially so if you’re a strat guy. Or girl.

The set can be found here. New Strat website too.


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Jeff Polman
14 years ago

Craig:

And you KNOW I’ve been planning to get these guys into my ‘24 replay…

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Steve Stein
14 years ago

And for those who are APBA (computer game) guys, Theodore Kerchner has created a Negro League franchise all-star disk here:
http://www.apba.net/zip/disk/HOF20T.zip

The APBA game company did a Negro League set in 1994, I think, but it’s no longer available, afaik.

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gbewing
14 years ago

APBA and Strat-O-matic have far different research standards- there is no superior to the research Strat does on individual seasons and projects like this and HOF set

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Dan Evensen
14 years ago

As much as I love APBA, I’ve got to agree with gbewing. Strat’s research methods are nothing short of amazing. I would say, though, that Tom Tippet-era DMB was a tad better, particularly on the fielding aspect of the game.

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