FREE Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online
By Glenn Guzzo
Strat-O-Matic’s first free online baseball game is scheduled to launch in the last week of February, according to the game’s hosts at The Sporting News web site (www.sportingnews.com).
The free “public game” is a limited-time offer, and the length of the offer is “purposely unclear, depending on its effects on sales,” TSN’s Jeff Gerttula said.
Typically, it costs $24.95 to guide one only SOM team through a draft and a 162-game season (but only $99.95 for five teams).
The public game is intended to spread the word, both about Strat-O-Matic computer baseball and about The Sporting News site. It ought to do so both because of its price, and because of its fantasy-baseball-friendly features, such as the new Live Draft.
“We have a loyal following of Strat-O-Matic players now,” Gerttula said. “We want to create interest among other fantasy baseball players.”
Fantasy leaguers, Gerttula noted, are accustomed to drafting in March, hence the public-game launch schedule.
“We believe the whole experiment will be well-understood in the baseball community by Opening Day,” he added.
Live Draft is intended to become a standard option for all the online Strat-O-Matic leagues run by The Sporting News. (The pay-service online options permit gamers to play with current-season players, the 1969 season, 1970s-decade players or 1980s-decade players).
In the public game, managers will participate in 12-team drafts choosing 1986-season players. In Live Draft, they will meet in an online chat room and have 90 seconds for each pick. That means teams will draft in serpentine fashion (1 through 12, then 12 through 1 and so on) instead of the customary salary-cap drafts of other SOM online games.
The Sporting News’ Bernie Hou estimated that most drafts should last no longer than three hours. Gamers will see each other’s picks. While waiting their turns, gamers also can use the TSN software to prepare a “watch list” that ranks the picks they want next, speeding the process.
Interest in
drafting 1986-season players likely increased thanks to the Take Two SOM game
currently running on The Sporting News web site with such celebrity managers as
Curt Schilling, Doug Glanville and
You can track that project at:
http://sportingnews.com/baseball/1986/
In a 1986 draft, gamers will have their picks from a rich selection of superstars in their primes.
The pitching stars include Roger Clemens, Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden, Fernando Valenzuela and Mike Scott.
The big hitters include Mike Schmidt, Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, Tony Gwyn, Gary Carter, Darryl Strawberry and rookie star Jose Canseco.