Super Advanced 1971 in the Works

 

By Glenn Guzzo

 

            With the newly printed 1957 baseball season cards in gamers’ hands, Strat-O-Matic already is at work on next January’s release: A remake of the 1971 season.

 

            The ’71 season has historical significance for Strat-O-Matic fans: It was the first two-sided season with lefty-righty detail and other Advanced features.

 

            But that was long before such developments as catcher throwing arms, error ratings and all of the Super Advanced features – ballpark effects, clutch hitting, supplemental stealing, pitcher hold ratings, closer ratings and more.

 

            The ’71 season also was the first with extra players available, expanding rosters from 20 to 24. But few gamers ordered them then and recent auctions of the set with 24 men per team have fetched hundreds of dollars. So there has been increasing demand for Strat-O-Matic to update this classic, which brings to life the seven-game World Series won by Pittsburgh over Baltimore and its four 20-game-winning pitchers.

 

            Strat-O-Matic previously has updated two other Advanced seasons – 1975 and 1978 – into Super Advanced format. SOM’s Steve Barkan cautioned that the decision on 1971 did not signal a new trend.

 

            “We’ll have to see how 1971 sells,” Barkan said, noting that he already is conducting an online poll (see the Baseball section at www.stratfanforum.com) to guide the company’s decision about which season to create for release in January 2008.

 

            A first poll conducted by Barkan narrowed the possibilities to 10 pre-1954 seasons: 1915, 1919, 1924, 1938, 1939, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1951 and 1953.

 

            Voting ends March 15. In very early balloting, no season had even 20 percent of the vote, but early voters liked seasons with historical significance: 1951 (the dramatic Giants-Dodgers playoff), 1919 (the Black Sox scandal and 1924 (the only Senators’ World Series win and Rogers Hornsby’s record .424 season).

 

            Barkan, who does the research on SOM’s baseball past seasons, said that after the choice for 2008, there is no roadmap. However, he said it is likely that 1958 will be created at some point – that season is the only one never created in deluxe form for the period 1954-present.