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”. 

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 crest the partition with the 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 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 in 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  refer to the pcs native drive if it has one, but I recommend an external drive. Mounting and enabling pass through for a native 64 bit player 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 ofiice 2003? No

problem. 
 

People who do this stuff for a living is probably facepalming 🤦‍♂️ but for guys like 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

“Game On!” The 1975 National League for Statis-Pro Baseball

The Heart and Soul of The Big Red Machine, and an Icon of Seventies Baseball - Pete Rose (76 WS)

Statis-Pro Baseball ⚾️ Cards for the 1975 NL: 

1975-National-League.pdf

"Game On" The 1975 National League for Statis-Pro Baseball

(A Merely Good Pennant Race Effort)

These teams are indeed compatible with the 1975 AL published earlier.

This league is pretty much spot on:

75-NL-Pitch-Analysis_1.xlsx

Pitchers Batting Cards

Other Links to Statis-Pro Baseball content

Elton John played two “Game On” Concerts in Dodger Stadium in October, 1975

City of Angels 

The defending National League Champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, had the pitching and the lineup seemingly to repeat every year.  They had won 102 games in 1974 but they had lost the World Series to the A's Dynasty.  But in the spring of 1975 the Dodgers still had all of their formidable pieces in place- Steve Garvey, the 200 hit machine at 1B, Ron Cey, the main power hitter at 3B, and Dusty Baker and Reggie Smith in the outfield. Their moundsmen as a staff were the league's best in 1974, deep and talented, and they would be once again in 1975. None of these truths would turn out to matter by August. 

On the Banks of the Monongahela

The League's Eastern Champions, the Pittsburgh Lumber Company, may have played partly in the shadow of their NFL brethren, the Steelers, who would win their third title in the fall of 1975. While the Steelers lost Steve Blass as an effective starter, they gained John Candelaria, another tremendous pitcher.  To stalwarts like Wille Stargell, Manny Sanguillen, Al Oliver and Richie Zisk the Pirates now had 24 year old Dave Parker, who hit 25 homers, drove in 101 RBI and batted .308. Returning to the NLCS for the fifth time in six years, they looked to add another World Series crown to the crown they won in 1971.  Unfortunately for them, it was not to be. 

They both faced a significant impediment to their NL pennant chances- Cincinnati.  The Cincinnati Reds came into the 1975 baseball season having been one of baseball’s best teams for the previous five years. They had won the NL West three times in that span and the pennant twice. One thing they hadn’t accomplished was to win the World Series, and it was an omission that seemed to grow increasingly more significant as the great core talent of The Big Red Machine got older. In 1975, the Reds finished the job when they won one of the great Fall Classics of all time.  

Joe Morgan won back to back NL MVPs in 1975 and 1976. 

Their great lineup included legends in catcher Johnny Bench and third baseman Pete Rose, who each finished in the top five of the final MVP voting.  George Foster was an emerging star in left field and Tony Perez was a reliable clutch hitter at first base. But in 1975, no player in baseball was better than second baseman Joe Morgan, who easily captured the NL MVP award.  Morgan posted a stat line of .466 on-base percentage/.508 slugging percentage and stealing 67 bases. Bench hit 28 home runs and had 110 RBIs, while Perez had 20/109. Rose’s OBP was .406.  Nor was the Cincinnati lineup top-heavy. Ken Griffey played rightfield and had a .391 OBP and great speed on the basepaths. George Foster, who would eventually win consecutive NL MVP awards in 1977-78 was coming into his own and hit 23 home runs in 1975. Cesar Geronimo in centerfield and Dave Concepion at shortstop weren’t big offensive threats, but each could run and each was a superior defender at a position where that was the most important quality.

The key move manager Sparky Anderson made was in early May, when he transferred Pete Rose, a Gold Glove outfielder, to third base in order to make room for Foster, a power hitting left fielder.

Before Cincinnati could think about October, they had to get back on top of an NL West that the Los Angeles Dodgers had won in 1974. The Dodgers were led by first baseman Steve Garvey. Andy Messersmith, a starting pitcher was in a nasty struggle with the front office that eventually led to an arbitrator’s decision which ushered in the era of free agency. But it didn’t stop Messersmith from having a good year in ’75. By the regular season’s first turn at Memorial Day, the Dodgers held a 3 ½ game lead over the Reds. The Giants, getting good years from shortstop Chris Speier and starting pitcher John Montefusco were four back. And the San Diego Padres, with Cy Young runner-up Randy Jones anchoring the rotation, were five games off the pace.  Cincinnati obliterated them all and did it in an astonishingly short period of time. An early summer blitzkrieg vaulted the Reds not only into first place, but by a 12 ½ game margin at the All-Star break. The NL West race was blown wide open and the margin only got wider. Cincinnati won 108 games and clinched the division with several weeks to spare.    

“Jaws” was first released on June 20, 1975

The 1975 NLCS

The Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates were two teams that had already gotten familiar with each other in National League Championship Series play. The two teams met in 1970 and the Reds won in a sweep. They met in 1972 and the Reds won a thriller. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh got together one more time in the 1975 NLCS. And one more time, the Big Red Machine asserted themselves.  The NLCS opened on a Saturday in Cincinnati’s old Riverfront Stadium. Each team had its rotation lined up, and the aces—Don Gullett for the Reds and Jerry Reuss for the Pirates—ready to go. Don Gullett won the game with his arm and his bat. The fifth inning broke the game open. Three straight singles from Tony Perez, George Foster and Dave Concepion loaded the bases with no one out. A productive ground ball out from Griffey made the score 5-2. Cesar Geronimo hit a sac fly to add another run. The coup de grace came from Gullett—the pitcher hit a two-run homer to make it 8-2, and the game ended with an 8-3 final.

Cincinnati came back on Sunday in Game 2 and didn’t take their foot off the gas. Pete Rose singled to lead off the home half of the first inning. Pittsburgh starter Jim Rooker was able to get Morgan and Bench, but Perez took it deep for a 2-0 lead.  For the second straight game, a Cincinnati pitcher helped himself at the plate—Norman picked up a run with a sac fly and it was 4-1. And for the second straight game a Pittsburgh starter didn’t make it through five innings.  Perez later delivered an RBI single in the same inning, and the 6-1 final put Cincinnati on the brink of a pennant.

No team had rallied from on 0-2 deficit since LCS play was instituted as a best-of-five in 1969, but Pittsburgh would get the rest of the series at home in Three Rivers Stadium. They sent John Candelaria to the mound, and the lefty did what he could to keep his team’s season alive.  Fate was cruel in the eighth though. Leading 2-1, Candelaria got the first two batters out. Then, after having controlled the Big Red Machine’s lineup of future Hall of Famers all night long, he walked pinch-hitter Marv Rettenmund. It flipped the lineup to the top and Pete Rose homered. Griffey got one more Reds rally going in the 10th, with a leadoff single. He moved up to second on a balk, and took third on a ground ball out by Geronimo. A sac fly from Ed Armbrister brought in the lead run. For all of the firepower the Reds had, they also could move baserunners and execute in key spots, and it gave them the last lead they would need in the 1975 NLCS.  Reds reliever Pedro Borbon set the side down in the 10th  . The 5-3 win gave the Cincinnati Reds their third National League pennant in six years.

So far, the 1975 baseball season was following very familiar storylines. In each of the three divisions discussed, the traditional power took control of the race in June and rolled into October. If form would have held, that would point to the Baltimore Orioles, with five AL East titles over the previous six years, as the team taking control. But the AL East in 1975 would be different.  The Orioles were still good, to be sure, with staff ace Jim Palmer winning the Cy Young Award. The Yankees had high expectations, with the addition of Hunter to a team that contended to the final weekend of the 1974 season. New York’s lineup was anchored by one of the game’s best catchers, Thurman Munson.

But the team that emerged was the Boston Red Sox. A consistent contender since their pennant run in 1967, the Red Sox had not made it back to October since that magical season. In 1975, they added two electrifying rookies to the lineup. Jim Rice began a Hall of Fame career in leftfield and he finished third in the MVP voting as a rookie. The greatest rookie season of all time, at least as measured by MVP votes, belonged to centerfielder Fred Lynn. With a mix of power, grace and spectacular defense, Lynn became the first—and thus far only—rookie to win the AL MVP award.

Boston had a four-game lead on New York at the All-Star break. The surprising Milwaukee Brewers were within 4 ½ and Baltimore seemed to be having a down year. The Yanks and Brewers both faded. The Orioles made a move and got into second place by Labor Day, within six games. The race got as close as 4 ½ games, but Boston held off the division’s reigning power and became the new AL East champ.  

If you’re writing a novel from the perspective of the Reds, you would certainly make them face the reigning dynasty from Oakland as the way of getting their championship breakthrough. But the real world requires that you simply play the best team left. And in the ALCS, the Red Sox did their own dismantling of the A’s.

Defensive mistakes from Oakland in Game 1 opened the door for Boston to pull away late and win 7-1. The Red Sox were getting good hitting from shortstop Rick Burleson, catcher Carlton Fisk, first baseman Cecil Cooper and the legendary Carl Yastrzemski in left. Even with Rice missing the postseason due to a broken hand, Boston could still produce.  And in a surprising development, Red Sox reliever Dick Drago did more than pitch well—he outpitched Fingers over the next two games. That was the difference in Games 2 & 3 and Boston closed out a sweep. 

Dick Drago was the Sox closer in 1975 and 1978.

A Fall Classic for the Ages

To this point, the 1975 baseball season hadn’t produced much drama. No hot pennant races. A couple of sweeps in the LCS round. No showdown among any of this decade’s established powers to look forward to in the World Series. Little did anyone know, the Reds and Red Sox were about to play a Fall Classic that has since become the subject of books, documentaries and been intertwined into popular culture.  Cincinnati was a solid favorite, but Boston ace Luis Tiant baffled the Reds in Game 1 at Fenway, spinning and twirling his way to a 6-0 win. Red Sox lefty Bill Lee had Cincinnati on the ropes, holding a 2-1 lead into the ninth. But the Reds, playing with desperation, punched across two runs and got a 3-2 road win.

Game 3 was an extra inning classic, replete with a controversial umpire’s call that to this day sticks in the craw of Red Sox fans of a certain age.  Cincinnati won 6-5 and it seemed the favorite was getting control of the series.

17 game winner Bill Lee in 1975.

Tiant went back to the mound for Game 4. What he did was a display of guts and a vivid demonstration of how much baseball has changed over the ensuing decades. Tiant wasn’t sharp, but he threw 163 pitches and held off the Reds in a 5-4 win. Even though Cincinnati got an easy win in Game 5, the Red Sox were taking the Series back to Fenway Park.

Three days of rain added to the drama and allowed Tiant to take the mound in Game 6. But the gutsy ace finally started to run out of gas about halfway through. Cincinnati took a 6-3 lead into the eighth inning.

Boston put two runners on. Pinch-hitter Bernie Carbo stunned everyone with a three-run homer to dead center. Tie game. In the ninth inning, the Red Sox had the bases loaded with no one out and couldn’t score. In the eleventh inning, Morgan ripped a drive to right that should have scored a run, but Dwight Evans made a spectacular catch. One of the greatest games in baseball history went to the 12th inning. Finally, Fisk won it with one of baseball’s iconic home runs—a long fly ball that bounced off the left field foul pole, with the TV cameras showing Fisk “waving the ball fair”.

The two teams still had to come back and play a game the next night and Game 7 was a classic in its own right. The Red Sox took a 3-0 lead. Lee held that lead into the sixth inning when Perez hit a two-run homer. The Reds tied it in the seventh. Game 7 of the World Series was tied 3-3 going into the ninth inning.  With two outs in the top of the ninth, Cincinnati had a runner on third base. Morgan was at the plate. A nasty breaking ball went to the outside corner. Morgan got the bat on it and looped a single into center. It was a soft hit, but it was enough. The Reds had the lead, they got three more outs and finally, at long last, they were World Series champions.

Fred Bobberts

Initial Date of Publication 8-19-2026

1974 Washington, or why I don’t care how many “replays you run”.

 

Sonny Jurgensen 

Editorial: 

Simply put, there’s nothing you can teach me with 8 or 12 uncontrolled replays of one of my seasons that I won’t have already seen in the hundreds I would have run to test scenarios alongside the guys who made the CMs.  This was not done in silos, not in my case, it was done as a team, with Scotty, and in the case of the 1983 or 1984 USFL, HOF Ed.  In the case of one season I had in prototype, I had to chuck the model and try again because the midpoint itself of the model itself was an issue. I had to push it to the next year. 

HJ you’ve never understood or chosen to ignore the fact I’ve told you my metrics- I am concerned about the overall balance of net yards per ball control play and turnovers per ball control play first and foremost, not overall numbers.  Overall numbers are dependent on things like the pace of the season in terms of plays and the pace of the teams themselves within them; the 1957 Rams are simultaneously not as good on offense and better on defense than their overall numbers might suggest because they simply run more plays per game. 

Play calling matters.  In our game every coach can choose to “up” their average gain per play by taking more risks and they can choose to try to Buddy Ryan the ball downfield, using conservative end runs and flat and short passing.  Both approaches can work, but they would look different in replays.  If you play the run more against teams with variable fumble chances you should force more fumbles, but your interception totals will suffer.  In the testing we did we focused mostly on that balance- are the teams penalized as correctly as we can penalize them based on prior precedent?  Can they attempt to play different strategies and if they do will the trade offs work well?  What you don’t want to do is give a team a “cheat code” player that allows them to go against the team’s* or season’s outcomes.  I also have constraints, the consistency of patterns or approaches used in prior seasons.  

We ran hundreds of replays. All of us are engineers. We know the data.  There is nothing you can show me with a cursory replay set under an unknown and undocumented rule set that we have not already seen. You can hate that response but I’m not going to debate it. 

Rules changes and game flow change results; I don’t chase results with new cards. That would be silly. That goes against the approach of applying prior precedent to the data, which is how all seasons are made. 

Now in terms of 1974 Washington, they pose a dual set of questions you have to try to answer from prior precedent.  One - while Jurgensen has the better stats, Kilmer is the starter. So you have a team with a good relief pitcher.  You have a relief QB with better stats but on fewer attempts. 

There are a couple of examples of this in prior seasons. In 1972 Griese was clearly the better qb on the Wideboys than Morrall, who had the better stats.  This reflected the fact that he was the starter to Don Shula.  Griese did play the tougher opponents and was the one called upon for the Super Bowl.  On the narrow cards, the reprints, the two QBs are closer together.  There’s room for more than one interpretation. 

The same is true with the 1970 Raiders, where Blanda actually received AFC player of the year votes because he won games at the buzzer with either big drives in relief or game winning kicks. But Lamonica is the starter. Here Blanda’s ints are higher, so it’s easier to card to his other stats.  

For 1974 Washington Kilmer is carded as the starter. The interpretation I chose was George Allen’s. 

The other item specific to 1974 Washington is a game flow question.  They have a runner who had 144 carries at 3.0 yards per carry.  This kind of a runner has a tendency to bring down the whole offense and that card poses a real problem for the whole team.  Again, I won’t get into the specifics because I am not obligated to, but in such cases I am very concerned with how the team is performing overall and there are some constraints that must be met.  

TLDR:  the results you quoted don’t really surprise me at all. And I ran controlled experiments not replays, I am an engineer trained in DOE. If I could find a handful of scenarios that covered the data I expected to see; to me; that was good enough even if that was not the CM model chosen for the final baseline. And playcalling changes results. 

Now the best part! I had already talked to The Game Co. about this last week.  My Statute of Limitations for my seasons is up, and so if you want to see new versions send those suggestions to them or Mike. I don’t have the time or inclination to rework stuff from ten or more years ago, so go ahead and forward those ideas on to them. If the potential future sales might support it you might have some luck!

Meanwhile I have replays to run! 

-Fred

* Original rulebook from 1960s.  Last line there on page 19.  Applies to 1974 Kilmer and Jurgensen. 

“The Long Ball” The 1975 American League for Statis-Pro Baseball

 

“The Long Ball”. The 1975 American League for Statis-Pro Baseball

1975 American League as pdfs

Pitchers Batting Cards

Other Links to Statis-Pro Baseball content

(A Merely Good Pennant Race Effort)

You can play these against the 1975 NL straight up, but for best results in AL replays I would resolve 2-5 pitchers as 2-5,11,12 and 2-6 pitchers as 2-6,12.  This will give replay results that are nearly spot on. This is a refinement that seems to help in version 1 DH seasons. 

1975-AL-Analysis.xlsx. (Analysis of the season, by team)

For over a decade prior to 1975, Major League Baseball seemed stuck in a stubborn recession, living a dull and archaic existence in an era of counterculture and future shock. Few appeared satisfied with baseball’s state of affairs; the casual fans increasingly turned away from the abundant low-scoring games and snail-like pacing, while diehard purists detested the advent of artificial turf and the designated hitter.

As major league attendance stagnated, baseball’s ego was bruised by the rise of pro football, which became king of American spectator sports by the mid-1970s. But the NFL represented only a modest slice of baseball’s external worries, given the sudden glut of pro sports competition from the NBA, NHL, ABA, WHA, NASL, WFL, PGA, LPGA, NLL, NASCAR, Muhammad Ali and World Team Tennis. Baseball, which used to have the summer all to itself, now had to market the sport far beyond the bland signage outside the gates announcing, “Game Today.”

The National Pastime’s savior came in what many now consider the greatest World Series ever played. A thoroughly exciting seven-game set between the Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox in October 1975 re-awakened America’s passion for baseball, giving the sport a shot in the arm in the purist of ways: By selling the game itself.

Playing solid baseball for eight years since winning the 1967 American League pennant at rustic, loveable Fenway Park, the Red Sox had long since found little difficulty reconnecting with their loyal legions in Beantown and beyond. Their consistent winning was matched, however, with a consistent frustration of not reaching that next level, always finishing second or third with eighty-some wins and seventy-some losses.  

Usually the East winner in the early Divisional Era was the Orioles, who won five out of six AL East titles between 1969 and 1974. This year the Orioles had their usual nonpareil starting pitching led by twenty game winners Jim Palmer (23-11 with 10 shutouts) and Mike Torrez (20-9), but they lacked the sock they needed at catcher, shortstop, and centerfield, where glove men Mark Belanger and Paul Blair roamed. They missed the sock of former slugger Boog Powell, who moved to the Indians and won Comeback Player of the Year. Still the hitting of outfielders Don Baylor and Ken Singleton kept them relevant.  The Orioles were in it until a Yankees sweep in Shea Stadium 3-2 and 7-3 in a double header on the second to the last day of the year. 

Jim Palmer won the 1975 AL Cy Young Award

Two other East teams also had lineups that were emerging.  The Yankees were sound everywhere but shortstop and centerfield (after Elliot Maddox’s knee injury suffered at Shea Stadium in June), and their pitching was as good as anyone’s but Baltimore’s.  To this foundation they added California’s Ed Figueroa and Mickey Rivers prior to their 1976 Pennant. Already players such as Chris Chambliss, Thurman Munson and Graig Nettles were stalwarts, while Catfish Hunter led the 1975 moundsmen with 23 wins. 

Catfish Hunter very nearly won a 2nd Cy Young Award in a row, leading the league in wins

Kansas City, in their seventh year of existence as the Royals, won 91 games behind the hard-nosed play of George Brett and Hal McRae and the pitching of Steve Busby, Al Fitzmorris, and Dennis Leonard.  They didn’t quite have enough overall talent to challenge Oakland in the AL West; at least, not yet, as the A’s still had Vida Blue and Ken Holtzman to pair with Gene Tenace, Sal Bando, and Reggie Jackson.  The A’s won 98 games to lead the 1975 AL. 

Four in a row was a tall order

But seemingly out of nowhere in 1975, the Red Sox were blessed by the arrival of not one, but two blue-chip rookies who would instantly rise to stardom and put Boston back on the top shelf.

Fred Lynn and Jim Rice had destroyed International League competition through 1974 to the point that the Red Sox figured they’d had enough of the minors. The hot young prospects agreed, given how well they performed during the September call-up period at Boston. Given starting jobs to begin 1975, neither Lynn nor Rice would skip a beat facing major league pitching, resulting in one of the most memorable dual-rookie performances the game has ever seen.

Rice and Lynn, 1975

An All-American at USC, Lynn not only looked like a young Carl Yastrzemski—Fenway’s reigning superstar—but also played like one. The left-handed slugger produced one clutch play after another at the plate, while throwing himself at every fly ball in the outfield that seemed out of reach—and usually coming up with the acrobatic catch. If Lynn’s 20-game hit streak or his place among AL offensive leaders didn’t grab anyone’s attention outside of Boston early on, then his June 18 performance at Detroit certainly did: Three home runs, a triple, a single, 10 RBIs and an AL record-tying 16 total bases in a 15-1 Red Sox romp.

By the end of the year Lynn’s name had reached household status, and he became the first player to win both AL Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year honors at once with a .331 batting average, 21 homers and 105 RBIs. Additionally, his work in center field earned him a Gold Glove to round out his résumé as a total top-notch package.

Rice quietly emerged in Lynn’s shadow as very much his equal. His power was already something of a talk—he would once break a bat checking his swing—but he was also a loyal student of Ted Williams’ hitting techniques, which helped make him a complete batter as his .309 average, 22 homers and 102 RBIs in 1975 would attest. In the AL MVP vote, Rice would finish third behind Lynn and Kansas City’s John Mayberry.

John Mayberry

Boston’s everyday lineup featured plenty of youthful promise beyond the star rookie duo, including Dwight Evans (23 years old), Cecil Cooper (25) and Carlton Fisk (27), a burly brawler of a catcher who hit .331 after missing the first two months with a broken arm suffered during spring training. On the mound, three veteran starters kept the Red Sox well balanced; Rick Wise (29) humbly led Boston with 19 wins; Bill Lee (28), named Spaceman for his loony yet sharp, arid dry wit that threw sportswriters off-balance, added a stellar 17-9 record; and there was Luis Tiant, the flamboyant 34-year-old Cuban with his trademark 180-degree pitching delivery. Tiant’s 18-14 record was continued proof of his success as a reclamation project after his arm was considered dead four years earlier.  Luis Tiant’s rollercoaster career ride took him from a stunning 1968 star turn as the 1968 AL ERA champion with the Indians to the minors in 1971—and back to the top with the Red Sox in the early 1970s.

With everything in the lineup and the rotation   more solidly in place, the Red Sox managed to accomplish in 1975 what they could not do in 1974—hold off a furious late-season rally from the Baltimore Orioles to win the AL East. But they paid a price; Jim Rice busted his hand a week before the regular season wrapped, reducing his postseason status to that of a spectator.

The Red Sox wouldn’t need Rice in the ALCS against the Oakland A’s, who with a 98-64 record remained strong despite the free agent loss of Catfish Hunter. But Boston impressively put an end to Oakland’s turbulent three-year championship ride, steamrolling the A’s in three straight games.  Even a healthy Rice wouldn’t sway prognosticators into giving Boston any hope against their World Series opponent: The Cincinnati Reds.  But that story belongs to the Reds, who had persevered as a contender since 1970 and during that period had lost two previous Series prior to 1975. The two teams were on a collision course, and when they finally met, baseball had its Agincourt for the Seventies. 

Fred Bobberts

Initial Date of Publication 

7/26/2026

Postscript:  This is a very nostalgic effort for me, as a kid in the summer of 1979 or 1980 I made a 1975 set just like this one following the Great Pennant Races method- but on index cards, and using long division.  I remember them because the Red Sox were in red ink; I kept that team for years until I finally lost the box in a move. I practically wore the spots off of those hand-made cards.  

A real 1975 set is very hard to come by

For a long time I wanted to buy a real 1975 set off eBay, a Midwest Research season, but these are generally prohibitively expensive. So I decided to make my own set the same way I made the 1964 AL, adding on some prompts using Barnes’ 1977 season data. They have that look and feel of a mid-Seventies Statis-Pro set.  Enjoy them !  Fred.