Strat-O-Matic Fanatics: The Unlikely Success Story of a Game That Became an American Passion
Glenn Guzzo
Rocco Scotti was involved again—singing the anthem live this time—when the Strat-O-Matic fervor reached its zenith as the substitute for the Major League All-Star game at Cleveland Stadium. The theatric event was the brainchild of WKYC-TV news producers Jon Halpern and Jim Schaefer, and it earned both them and Strat-O-Matic a national stage.
A card table was set up at home plate. The stadium scoreboard was lighted to tally the results. Strat-O-Matic’s James Williams was the “umpire,” complete with chest protector. Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Dan Coughlin was the official scorer. Scotti sang. Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller threw out the first dice and then coached the American League team (which lost, 15-2). The lineups were chosen by fans from ten Major League cities, who voted by dialing the pay-per call Sportsphone line.
Sportsphone, a sports score service, had been wounded badly by the strike. However, it said it received nearly 35,000 calls for this event and another All-Star contest. Fans could “hear” the game by calling in for thirty-second updates over three and a half hours. Fans in each of the ten cities heard the updates in the voices of their baseball teams’ broadcasters. The Detroit Free Press reported that the chance to hear Ernie Harwell report on this make-believe game attracted 4,846 callers—nearly five times the number Sportsphone had been receiving from Detroit on other days during the strike.
In Cleveland, Newsweek estimated the live “crowd” at thirty-five, while the Associated Press counted “fifty-eight diehards in the lower sections” of the nearly 80,000-seat stadium.
When the game was over, Halpern and Schaefer packed up the artifacts and carted them to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Pictures from the Cleveland Stadium contest, including overhead photos of the home plate action where all the participants were gathered, were displayed for a year or two. The exhibit also had an enlarged Strat-O-Matic game board, player cards, and other materials from the game.
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