Every Village Needs An Idiot

“He’s gonna go all the way!”

And I see someone has a “chip” on their shoulder on interception returns again, calling them an “inferior product”. *  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about just which one of us that idiot might be. 

SOM PRO FOOTBALL LINKS

(This has been going on for fifteen years; I’m not interested in debating him. I haven’t seen as many complaints about Mike’s returns and he’s been doing this calculation now for at least five years.  The sensible thing would be to ask Mike nicely about looking at possible revisions of seasons that you might have disagreement with. But, no it’s easier to be just a hero, and complain.)

I’ll just drop these here (again), so you can see the full history- how the feature was designed, how it should be tested, how well it fits certain situations, it’s limitations, and why seasonal data will vary: 

https://onfredswatch.blogspot.com/2022/09/team-specific-interceptions-for-som-nfl.html?m=0

https://onfredswatch.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-second-of-three-parts-on-team.html?m=0

 https://onfredswatch.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-last-of-three-parts-on-team.html?m=0

https://onfredswatch.blogspot.com/2024/02/one-last-time-with-team-interceptions.html?m=0

On the surface a suggestion of just rolling for interceptions and then returns is stupid. Looking at 2025 Data: 

(Click on it)

Does it make sense, with a typical int return for a TD being about 40 yards or so, for a team like New Orleans which is in the bottom quartile of yards and average to be more threatening than the New York Giants, who had returns of 68 and 56 yards but did not score? Same for Tennessee, a little better average but still half of the number of the average for the New York Football 🏈 team? 

Let’s reorganize the data: 

(Click on it)

Well - now we see teams over 20 yards a return will probably get about 14 pct of those returns taken to the house.  Teams below 10 yards per return will score about 5 percent of the time. 

So the fact that New Orleans scored on 1/10 of their returns is to me not meaningless, but it’s a more or less random act of luck. Do we card to that?  If you look at the TDs for 1997 Barry Sanders (11/335 carries), and 1997 Tommy Vardell (6/32) do you card for Vardell to arbitrarily score from anywhere on the field one fifth of the time? 

No we don’t. We card for the attempts and yards and we presume gameflow or coaches choices will take care of the rest. We card to the threat.  Barry Sanders had 2000 yards that year. 

TD pcts on returns are proportional to the natural log of the average, that is, they are a hockey- stick graph going up at both the team and seasonal level. But that does not mean every season will track exactly to that line. Some will be above, and some below. 

(Note that 1977, The Season Of Much Hatred, had 28 TDs / 562 ints for 5 pct. That would imply an average below 10 yards per return- but 1977 averaged about 12.8 yards per return, which should be closer to 7 pct.  That would be 39 TDs.  Discussion of 1977 ignores the 1961 AFL or 1967 NFL, seasons where the league actually tracked higher than predicted. You could change the average, but Strat didn’t sign up for that.)

And every time SOM gets these complaints, I send them the data and that pretty much ends that. 

Now could Mike - who now works for them- improve on my prior work? Well yeah, maybe! He’s a pretty smart guy! But I’d ask nicely. 

Fred 

* It’s amusing because clearly the above data shows the method to be vastly superior to the original chart. His solution, therefore, is to just call both the feature and the original chart piss-poor.  Well you’ve got 69 (+3) seasons to propose, there, chip, but you might come up with a better idea than the one you have. That dog’s not gonna hunt. Neither is this one: 

-Fred

“Younger Than Yesterday” - The 1967 National League for Statis-Pro Baseball

 

Bob Gibson won 3 games in the 1967 World Series

“Younger Than Yesterday”

Statis-Pro Baseball ⚾️ Cards for the 1967 National League:

1967-National-League.pdf

(A Merely Good Pennant Race Effort)

It’s probably useful to think of these teams as clones, to use a term from RPG rules. They are a new effort, but intended to augment Jim Barnes’ 1967 American League teams from Great Pennant races. They use his carding methodologies as determined through AI observation and calculation, rather than merely what was stated in the rules.  They are what the 1967 National League might have looked like if he had included it with Great Pennant Races.  

How good is the cloning?  Similar to the original 1967 AL you can play these teams as they lie, but with a little adjustment- here 2-5 becomes 2-5,11 and 2-6 becomes 2-6,12 - they are spot on. The one caveat becomes strikeouts.  You do not want to try to play station to station solely as an offensive strategy or you will hit into a lot of double plays or leave men on base. You need to move baserunners on occasion to get the most out of your teams, and this is true of most Statis-Pro baseball from this era. 

Analysis_1967NL.xlsx

Batting cards: 

Pitchers Batting Cards

Other Links to Statis-Pro Baseball content

“Younger than Yesterday”

The 1967 National League season saw a changing of the guard, as more and more stars of the Fifties retired or moved to part time roles, and new players thrived. Sandy Koufax, the foremost pitcher of his era and a player who could count himself as a player in the 1955 World Series retired at 29 in 1965; Dick Groat, Bob Uecker, Don Larsen,  Vern Law and Charley Lau all joined Frank Bolling and Don Blasingame, who had retired in 1966. In their place came players like Tommy Helms, Sonny Jackson, Tito Fuentes, Randy Hundley, Jerry Koosman, Tom Seaver, and Cleon Jones.  1967 wasn’t just The Summer of Love, it was the Summer of Change, and as Youth was served it would soon bloom across many Senior Circuit rosters, perhaps flowering nowhere more than the Mets.  Their time would come, and but soon. 

But even now there are many Cardinal fans who believe the 1967 Redbird squad might be their best Championship team. On offense, the batting order was led by left fielder Lou Brock, who slammed 21 home runs and stole 56 bases in one of his best years, and first baseman Orlando Cepeda, who had come over from the Giants in May, 1966 in a trade for Ray Sadecki.  Cepeda won the 1967 NL MVP by batting .325, slamming 25 home runs, and driving in a league-best 111 runs. Curt Flood also chipped in a .335 batting season and a Gold Glove in centerfield.  The pitching was in the capable hands of Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, reliever Joe Hoerner and newcomer Dick Hughes (16-6, 2.67 ERA), who finished second in the NL Rookie of the year voting to the Mets’ Seaver. 

The team was led by Red Schoendienst, who had been a player as recently as 1963.  Schoendienst had played for Eddie Stankey in the Fifties, and he had inherited the same firebrand spirit and confrontational style as his mentor. On the field his teams attacked on the base paths and they were always in motion; his pitchers, led by Gibson, were not afraid to knock down the power hitters on opponent rosters. The Cardinals felt they had been short changed after their seven game 1964 win dethroned the M&M Yankees,  and two years of looking up in the National League standings at the Dodgers did nothing to improve their collective temperament. The team was deep and talented, and they won 101 contests and the pennant by 10.5 games.  

The team they defeated, the San Francisco Giants, won 91 games, and it had much the same core of players that it had throughout the mid-1960.  Pitchers Juan Marichal, had an off year with only 14 wins and Gaylord Perry, finished only 15-17. Willie McCovey slammed 31 homers and drove in 91 runs;  Jim Ray Hart hit 29 homers and drove in 99 runs, and Willie Mays hit 22 home runs and won another Gold Glove in centerfield.    The team had added a fine pitcher in former Cardinal Ray Sadecki, and another fine left handed starter in Mike McCormick, who won 22 games and the NL Cy Young Award.  But the off years by Mays and Marichal really cost the Giants their shot at the pennant, and they really missed Cepeda’s leadership and right-handed bat. The team would finish close to the money in the years 1968-1970, and most of this core was still present when they won the NL West under divisional play in 1971.  

Orlando Cepeda was the unanimous 1967 NL MVP

Two teams rose to competitive prominence in 1967, the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds.  Each gained newfound success in the same way; they found pitching staffs.  In 1967 the Cubs set the foundation of a very good group of moundsmen, anchored by 20 game winner Ferguson Jenkins, Rich Nye and left-handed newcomer Ken Holtzman, while later starter Bill Hands would work as a swing man in Chicago in 1967 with a 2.46 ERA.  On the field the team was led by three Hall of Famers, Ron Santo (.300, 31 HR, 98 RBI), Billy Williams (28 HR) and Ernie Banks (95 RBI) with middle infielders Glenn Beckert and Don Kessinger getting on base and fielding opposing blue darters.  This team would remain competitive until 1972, when the old guard would start to fade; Banks retired after the 1971 season, and Williams was traded to Oakland in the American League to serve as a DH in 1973. 

Ron Santo

Cincinnati also had an excellent staff, finishing tied for second in the National League.  It was their pitching veterans who let them down, as Jim Maloney, Sammy Ellis and Bob Lee missed time due to injuries or inconsistency.  On the field the team had Pete Rose (.301) and young Tony Perez (.290, 26 HR, 102 RBI) and holdover Vada Pinson, one of the best players of that time not in the Hall of Fame. Help was on the way; Johnny Bench wowed everyone in a late call up, and by 1969, the team would be known as The Big Red Machine. 

Elsewhere the Phillies wasted a good year from their pitchers in spite of good years from Tony Gonzalez (.339 BA) and Dick Allen (.307, 23 HR), as Jim Bunning finished a tough 17-15 with a 2.29 ERA. The Pirates had excellent production from their first two hitters, 34 year old shortstop Maury Wills (.302, 29 SB) and shortstop Gene Alley (.287 batting average, pretty good for a middle infielder) along with the incomparable Roberto Clemente, who clipped a league- leading .357 with 23 HR and 110 RBI and played a Gold Glove level right field at the age of 32. But the Pirates had exactly half of a great team, as their pitchers faltered and Pittsburgh allowed as many runs as they scored; fittingly they halved their schedule at 81-81.

The Dodgers sorely missed the incomparable Sandy Koufax.  As a squad, starters Claude Osteen, Don Sutton and Don Drysdale finished a collective 41-48, but the real culprit was a lineup that collapsed and scored only 21 runs more (at 521)  than the league’s worst hitting team, the Mets. 

Henry Aaron in 1967

Elsewhere the league’s oldest team, the Braves, got older and so did Hank Aaron, but you wouldn’t have known it.  At 33 he swatted 39 HR and drove in 109 RBI while batting .307.  Yankee expat Clete Boyer settled in at The Launchpad, clipping 26 HR while batting in 96 runs; he would play a key part in the Brave’s resurgence in 1969. Houston obtained great performances from their troika of Joe Morgan (.275, 29 SB), Rusty Staub (.333 and a league-leading 44 doubles) and The Toy Cannon, Jimmy Wynn, who spanked 37 HR and drove in 107 RBI.  But while Houston set team marks that would take twenty years to erase, the team actually had to rally to pass the Mets, allowing the most runs in the National League in spite of playing half their games in the Astrodome. 

Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson, Ed Charles, Cleon Jones and Ron Swoboda, stalwarts of the 1969 champs, dotted this Mets roster but under a tandem of so-so managers they bore little resemblance to that opportunistic squad.  Tom Seaver won 16 games and Rookie of the Year, but the real help was coming with the off-season hire of ex- Brooklyn Dodger Gil Hodges to lead the club. 

The Cardinals emerged to play the Red Sox, who showed surprising pluck and power to take them to seven games before Sox ace Jim Lonborg succumbed, at last, to the Redbirds’ relentless lineup and Bob Gibson, who won three complete games in the Series - only the fifth man, at that point, in baseball history to do so. True to form the team was hardly magnanimous in victory, as Schoendienst opined after the Series that the Red Sox had been lucky to make it as far as they had.  

We know this to not be true; the truth is the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox made it to the Series led by the American League’s two best players at their positions, AL Cy Young Award winner Lonborg and left fielder and MVP Carl Yastrzemski, and the Cardinals saw enough of both men to know they were both very challenging to overcome. It wasn’t Schoendienst’s Eddie Stanky style of gamesmanship that beat the Sox, in the end their individual excellence was only overcome through a concerted team effort by the St. Louis club.  El Birdos would win another pennant in 1968, and would very nearly win another Series. 

Fred Bobberts

Initial Date of Publication September 18, 2026

Statis-Pro Baseball History

Other Links to Statis-Pro Baseball content

Here is (more or less) Jim Barnes and Avalon Hill Statis-Pro Baseball history from Midwest Research to 1988: 

That’s an eye chart, so I’ve included the main spreadsheet: 

Statis-Pro-Baseball-History.xlsx

The essence of this history is that the game went through several eras of basic card design prior to a complete redesign in the early Nineties I don’t really cover here. The advent of PC Strat Baseball ⚾️ killed this game for me until the last ten years, when the idea of possibly improving the game started to appeal to me again. But the original card designs would be the Midwest Research teams,  which predate the card creation conventions in the ruleset Avalon Hill published in 1979 with the 1978 season; the version 1 cards which would be 1977-1979 and the Great Pennant Races Teams, the 1980-1985 LeSueur Teams, with improved pitching, the 1986 set, which is its own odd duck, and finally 1987 on which had customized BD cards and 1-4 CD ratings. For the most part I prefer either the early sets or the 1987 methods the most. 

But my preference is not really the point, the point is the game went through many iterations to find a good solution it could use for each season or retro season, and when you look at these solutions in detail it becomes obvious someone pretty smart was looking at this design every year. When you consider that I have Chat GPT, SQL and excel and can really look in depth at a baseball season’s data in a morning or two in 2026, their ability to craft a pretty good working model in 1978 or 1979 with the tools they had was an incredible achievement. 

Design Elements: 

The main changes were the pitchers cards, which changed in 1981 (1980 season) with the LeSueur model in All Star Replay. He pointed out the existing method in the rules would overstate hits on 2-6 type pitchers who also had high walks.  His examples became the basis for changing pitchers cards in the 1980s. Barnes had performed a number of changes with batters cards- the hit and run numbers changed a bit, he would use customized changes to minimize the effects of rounding, but the batters cards looked much the same over this era, at least until the 1986 season. 

Perhaps the most entertaining feature changes were the pitchers batting cards. Originally a set of ten cards that were referenced from the pitchers cards themselves, they changed to: 

Individual pitchers batting cards for the 1979 season but on a chart organized by team;

Team batting cards for 1980 and 1981 - with the All Star magazine printing a whole new set of 1-10 batting cards in 1982 and also printing a reference sheet to use with 1981’s pitchers.  The cards are completely different from the original 1-10 cards in Great Pennant Races;

1982 used these same 1-10 cards;

1983 went back to team cards; 

1984 -1987 went to printed individual pitchers batting cards with the fielding ratings on them, too. 

By the 1987 season the batters cards now had the 1-4 CD ranges and the customized BD extra base hits. These changes were more appropriate to the relatively  high run context of the 1987 season. I’ve used these features for a few of the seasons I’ve created, in particular for the Normalized sets. They produce pretty realistic results. 

Merely Good Pennant Races and the V1 Model

But a funny thing happened to me in late 2024- I managed to get a copy of Great Pennant Races and I was hooked on the three league’s Old School feel. I started replaying teams from the sets and I found I loved them, even if they didn’t quite meet the standard of the Leseuer pitching cards. When I looked at them closely the fact of it was they were close enough.  Barnes did a lot of sneaky things to get his seasons to work, and once you learned these tricks, you found his early work still had a lot of merit. While it’s true 2-5 and 2-6 pitchers are probably weaker, there are simple ways to adjust for these factors that can apply to these run contexts. 

Indeed the applicability of the early model is due to the run contexts of the time- 1950 is a very high run context, but the 1967 AL and 1967 NL work because their run contexts are around 4 runs per game. That seems to be the sweet spot, 3.8-4.0 runs per game for that old model. It will work well for most 1960s seasons, and the early Seventies, except perhaps for 1962, 1966, and 1970. 1968 and 1972 will card just fine internally, but may face issues versus neighboring seasons. 

I also found I loved playing the old game, with old cards for Vada Pinson and Norm Cash and Al Kaline and Brooks Robinson. Sudden Sam or Jim Lonborg on the bump. There was something very nostalgic about the look and feel and playability of those cards. 

So while the Game moved forward into new features, I actually moved backwards towards the cards and teams I’d had as a teenager.  I’ve carded several of these leagues now in The Barnes Style (go AI!) and they are fun to play! 

Will I ever return to the more complicated models of the later seasons? Sure- I don’t think you have a choice once you want to do teams from the Nineties or Oughts, or you want to revise 1950. But for now I’m enjoying my walk through the Sixties and Seventies with those old layouts. 

Fred Bobberts 

Initial Date of Publication September 3, 2026

Strat-O-Matic Pro Football Solo Systems

 

SOM PRO FOOTBALL LINKS

Strat-O-Matic Pro Football Solo Systems

By no means comprehensive, but I’ll try! Send along any comments or new systems. It struck me that every year they’re a scramble to find these, me included. 

Solo Cards System (Courtesy Rodney Miller)

FB_Solitaire_Cards_5x7_2016.pdf

This system has a series of cards based on offensive scenarios. 

Glenn Guzzo Strat Fan Solo System (Posted with Permission from Glenn Guzzo, all of his rights reserved) 

This is an excellent system, and the original scans from Strat Fan. Note the correction pages with some clarifications and corrections. 

Glenn-Guzzo-Solo-System.zip

Mike Kane’s F9 Random System (Courtesy Mike Kane)

This is kind of a fun automated system, made better by the fact he automated dice rolling. Has an elementary system too.  Files are old excel 2003 and modern. 

Mike-Kane-s-Solitaire-Calls.zip

NFL Ed’s Solo System System (Courtesy Ed Berro)

NFLedStratFootballSolitaireCardsDice.xlsx

This system is very well thought out, and I like it so much I adapted it to Canadian 12 man play and renamed it “CFLed”. 

Byron Henderson’s Solo Deck (Courtesy Byron Henderson)

Byronsolodeck1.jpg

Byronsolodeck2.jpg

Byronsolodeck3.jpg

 

One thing I like about this deck is it’s designed to be a timing system, too.  He uses 30 cards out of the 72 in a quarter. I love details like that. Really, any time you get something from Byron Henderson it’s going to be both a treat and a story.  He made these Solo Decks last year, had them printed, and played an epic game with the 1985 Cowboys and Giants only to realize he truly hates solo play. 

Since the man once rode a scooter all the way from Oklahoma to Chicago on backroads just to play FTF in a tournament, I think we know where his loyalties are. He is an SOM Warrior-Poet-Lunatic and he should be treasured. 

Unknown Author Solo System

Scribd-Unknown.pdf

This system is pretty simple to use and will distribute the ball nicely. Dave who runs the SOM Forum 2 found it and posted it. 

The SOM Football Utility

The-Football-Utility.zip

The utility operates the Advanced Game rather nicely, in this file are the two patches it needs. You can set up the utility to play Pro Football rather easily- I usually use three top runners regardless of position with a receiver in the fourth spot, usually to replace a runner who can’t catch. I’ll allow the opponent to swap cornerbacks to my best receiver while I can’t do that, and I’ll only allow my keys to work if there’s a lb in zone, which does not apply to the pc opponent. There’s no safety blitzing - that’s super advanced, no lb double teams, just you and your free safety and hope. It’s plenty tough. 

Only problem is- it doesn’t run on modern computers. You have to enable a 32 bit environment on your 64 bit machine, or find an old 32 bit win XP machine to run it. 

Using Virtual Box to enable a 32 bit environment:

Download an iso (installation disk type file) of the target 32 bit operating system ie win32 version of windows XP service pack 2 c86

https://archive.org/details/WinXPProSP3x86

And write down the serial number

X86 means 32 bit; the Utility will not work in 64 bit environments 

Download Oracle VirtualBox 

Download the Virtual Box Extensibility Pack 

Install Virtual Box

Pick a valid name, suggest my-server

Select where the iso file is for WinXP 32 bit

Select the sizing 

Ram 500k-2MB

Servers - 2

Partition size - 20 GB 

Add in your user name and a valid pass word if all are green advance and create the new partition with the old operating system. 

You can use the Utility files. You need them all including the dlls in one folder preferably on a usb drive.  
 

Download VirtualBox from oracle for your win64 operating system for your system - it’s free. 
 

wait until you fire up the environment to download the extension pack. You will need it. 
 

Now also download the ISO image for win xp here: 

https://archive.org/details/WinXPProSP3x86

Save the serial number that’s on here since the install will ask for it.

 

The x86 iso (which is the install cd image for the operating system) is the 32 bit version, This bears repeating 32 bit only. 32 bit Xp was still compatible with some dos based and 16 bit programs. (You could also mount WIN 98 or ME). 
 

This all sounds intimidating but it’s not. It takes just a few minutes to set up a partition on your system but the key is the parameters and here’s where I can create some value for once. You only need at most 20 Gig on your modern hard drive for an xp install with most programs unless you plan to go nuts. I was able to put civ 2 in there and a bunch of old vga games. The parameters are: 

 

select a valid system name format, like my-server

 

put in a user name and password, if you ever need to restart the virtual machine within xp for a program restart you will need these so for the love of god write them down! 
 

okay - RAM slider can be any number between 512 mb and a gig. 

Pick two processors. 
 

size is 20 gbs for the partition 

 

EFI is yes. 
 

You select the location of that ISO file with the xp image. 
 

Fire away. The virtual box will create a new partition on your 64 bit machine with an XP environment. It takes just a few minutes. You can start and stop the new xp environment from Virtual Box manager on your host (main) environment. 

You don’t know how much you missed this screen until you see it again! 

 

You can download the extension pack from the same site as virtualbox and this will also be an iso file. These are your drivers and you need them because some stuff you want to load will not load with the native drivers on your 64 bit architecture.
 

There are directions on the internet, essentially you mount that extension pack as a virtual optical drive, like a digital dvd or cd player, and then go to the “run” command in xp and execute it. It will install the Extensions, a set of drivers. 

 

Now your partition is ready to accept data. Seriously all this takes like twenty minutes. The hard part and I’m not gonna lie is to get it to communicate with the outside world. 
 

Turn the box itself off. Plug in a usb drive with those utility files on it. From the VM manager go to settings, the usb section and add a controller- it should show your USB’s manufacturer name. Select that and Add the 1.1 version- I know most usbs are 2.0 or even 3.0 but those drivers are about as stable as I am when someone brings up team Interception returns*.
 

The 1.1 driver version is stable - you might have to use a slightly older usb drive. Before you save the config edit the actual settings so that it has only three things -manufacturer, description and model number. The rest of the suggested config is not needed and can cause problems. Save it. Unplug the usb. Start the virtual drive and plug in the usb. The virtual drive should capture the usb and when you check the drives in XP- not the main machine - you should now also have that usb drive there alongside the c: drive.  Open it and there’s your files; create a folder on the virtual environments screen 📺 and copy into it, fire up the executable and boom 💥 you have the utility. You can start the program from there and it will open in xp: 

 

You can add a dvd player, a suggested 1.1 or 2.0 compatible usb one (they are cheap on eBay) the same way as the usb drive- from the usb add function in settings. The native optical drives it has in the main menu (mounted) refer to the pc’s native drive if it has one, but I recommend an external drive. Mounting and enabling pass through for a native 64 bit player in a 32 bit environment is a bit of a faff. 

 
Let me know if you have questions. 
 

Now-
 

XP load on a partition

 

The best things about this are: 

 

Its free. 

You no longer need to try to keep twenty year old Dell D610s running, (ask me how I know).

 

Once you configure your drive to accept stuff you can run programs your win 11 browser will deny you. Got Adobe X? Yup. I was able to install off diskettes (!) SAS JMP 3.6.2 which is a very powerful statistical program. A seat for SAS is not cheap. Want to run Office 2003? No problem. 

 

People who do this stuff for a living are probably facepalming 🤦‍♂️ but for guys on the test teams they could create a dvd iso of selected drivers they want to work with for testing old stuff.  Create a partition for different operating systems and you could mount those drivers and have a dedicated partition to test in on one machine for several generations of software. I’m sure they know this and I bet they’re  doing just that. 

-Fred Bobberts

Initial Date of Publication 8-27-2026

* That's a joke, Jumbo. Take your concerns to Iron Mike.  I will continue to do what I’ve done for fifteen years- nothing.