Cliff Aliperti

Sorry gang, it’s been a little while since I’ve posted here and this one’s a bit of a cheat in that it’s basically a photo post, but to be honest my business has kept me so busy recently that I haven’t had time to post anywhere for about a week now. Heck, I even [...]

Fun, fun:

At least the main site is up, as are apparently individual item pages:

Images taken from the awesomely helpful Down for everyone or just me? site.

Search is another story, that is unless there’s nothing featuring Valentino for sale on eBay right now, which there must be since I have 5 items for sale myself.

Actually, eBay is on top of the search problem, as they posted on the System Announcements board about an hour ago:

We are experiencing some issues with a delay in search being displayed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing. We are working to get this resolved as quickly as possible.

From here it appears to be more than a delay, it is in fact no working at all (insert Best Match joke here).

Oh well, just posting this because, 1) without access to my store I can’t do what I was going to do, so I’ve got nothing better to do; 2) if your sales are dead today perhaps this post will help explain why.

Happy selling …

Lots of Edward G. Robinson released this week... but where's the affordable collection? A varied collection of 24 releases from Warner Archives in late November includes the usual batch of 1960's-80's Made for Television movies, a few vintage holida...

I’m still pressing forward with my BuyItSellIt (BISI) store having recently added my 1,000th item to the shop and spent a weekend figuring out how to customize my theme.

There’s been some downtime this week, but it appears all was back to normal tonight as I was inside working for 45 minutes or so on adding a few more items. While I was working I noticed a new tab in my workflow–and if you’ve yet to try BISI it’s the easy workflow which really sold me in the end–”Discount Rules”.

As a seller of unique goods, “Discount Rules” actually falls under the does not apply heading for me, but I’m always happy to see my chosen platform adding features. Problem is, if I wanted to use “Discount Rules,” if it did apply, I really would have a hard time implementing it and would most likely have to backtrack to update all of my items individually.

BISI needs bulk editing features. Technically they’re there, you just export a CSV file, make your changes and import the new file back in. I’ve tried this a couple of times and encountered the same problems both times: 1) My images don’t export; 2) My updated file doesn’t overwrite the old items thus there are duplicate listings until you get around to deleting the earlier items.

Frankly I’d like to change all of my shipping rates. To do this with 1k+ items even with the method mentioned above would take quite a bit of time. The alternative is editing each individual item listing, which isn’t very realistic. So what have I done? Nothing. In fact, to keep my rates consistent I’m still importing new items at the higher rates that I want to eventually abolish working under the hopes that bulk editing comes soon.

Obviously bulk editing would help in other areas as well. Despite BISI being the closest thing to a perfect e-commerce solution for my set-up I have to admit it’s somewhat ludicrous that it lacks this one very basic function. Anyway, until I have bulk update any other new features, no matter how exciting they are to read about, are rendered useless to me as I have no way to implement them across my entire stock on the platform.

Gene Tierney Fox Movie Channel classic movie schedule for week of November 9-15 A big week of classics from Fox Movie Channel this week including a total of 25 different pre-1960 titles including 6 on Wednesday alone! That said, my favorite block...

Insert photo caption or credit here Happy birthday today, November 9, to Marie Dressler. Turner Classic Movies celebrates by airing films featuring Dressler throughout their entire daytime schedule today. You'll find the entire schedule listed bel...

Gordon Scott as Tarzan on this 1955 trading card Gordon Scott's Tarzan films highlight latest Warner Archives releases 17 new films were released to DVD by the Warner Archives this week including all 6 Gordon Scott Tarzan movies, 3 classic musical...

Vivien Leigh No Scarlett O'Hara on display today, but "Gone With the Wind" actress Vivien Leigh was born on this date in 1913 (d. 1967). Also celebrating a birthday today is Joel McCrea (1905-1990) and while you can't see his Sully of &qu...

Vivien Leigh No Scarlett O'Hara on display today, but "Gone With the Wind" actress Vivien Leigh was born on this date in 1913 (d. 1967). Also celebrating a birthday today is Joel McCrea (1905-1990) and while you can't see his Sully of &qu...

See Jane Darwell as Ma Joad tonight at 10 pm EST Turner Classic Movies airs classic films based on the work of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist John Steinbeck throughout the evening of Tuesday, November 3. The night begins with the big thre...

See Jane Darwell as Ma Joad tonight at 10 pm EST Turner Classic Movies airs classic films based on the work of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist John Steinbeck throughout the evening of Tuesday, November 3. The night begins with the big thre...

Wow, this started as a postscript to the article I posted on the Examiner going over tonight's schedule of John Steinbeck films airing on TCM, but even though I like to inject a little of myself into my writing over there this just seemed far too opinionated and personal for what I consider a news site. But even after I reached paragraph three and realized this I just kept on writing figuring I'd have someplace to post it. Here you go:

...and now for a little editorial note. Despite suffering through "The Pearl" and "The Red Pony" back in junior high, over time John Steinbeck would emerge as my own favorite writer. While lacking the overt masculinity of Hemingway and the pure artistry of Faulkner, contemporary Steinbeck wrote with a voice which spoke very clearly to me, almost as if he was somebody's Dad down the block who I admired.

In my late teens and early 20's I managed to read every word he had ever written which was available in print up until that time. No small task in terms of collecting in the late 80's/early 90's as I only had my choice of a few local used book stores in those pre-internet days for the tougher out-of-print titles.

Yes, I devoured the marine biology of "The Sea of Cortez," as well as his war correspondence from "Once There Was a War," his posthumous work about the Knights of the Round Table, "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights," and perhaps enjoyed two volumes of his journal entries more than anything else he'd ever written as they offered an incredible peek into his mind and were an inspiration to me as a fledgling writer.

At the time the only Steinbeck film adaptations I really liked were "Of Mice and Men," and that was because it was taken from a very short novel and most of the elements were included, and "The Grapes of Wrath," which despite some differences in the novel was obviously molded by John Ford into an outstanding film on its own merit.

Though I must admit I've recently viewed "The Grapes of Wrath" for the first time in several years and was blown away by how good it was leading me to believe my younger self may have had some problems with it. It saddens me that as the years go past I've allowed the original novels which I loved so much to cascade from memory, as I now, like I'd imagine most do, consider the film the definitive version of "The Grapes of Wrath."

I struggled with "East of Eden" for a long time because despite some of the soap opera elements throughout this massive novel the morality tale had really connected with me. I was very upset that the movie featuring James Dean only included a small sliver of what Steinbeck had actually written, just one tale of what was a multi-generational epic. In time I came to grips with that and now I don't hesitate to praise Kazan's "East of Eden" in the least...though it is a case where I really do wish I'd seen the movie before I read the novel because it always does feel kind of incomplete to me, despite its greatness.

I dislike "Tortilla Flat" passionately because it was a novel I'd really enjoyed and again, while the details are now dim in memory, the film did not live up to expectations. I also don't care for Spencer Tracy when he attempts to spread his wings like this and play with an accent. I feel he spoils this as well as the more popular and prestigious "Captains Courageous" and "The Old Man and the Sea," because I just find his speech too jarring and for me, unbelievable. I'm sure that's an unpopular view but I'd have much rather seen a Paul Muni attempt these roles and leave Spence to more typical parts showing him off as anywhere from hard-boiled to crotchety depending upon the date of release.

Confession: If I've ever seen "The Red Pony" it was probably back in that junior high class that I mentioned earlier, I don't recall the film at all and am hazy on the book as well. I should really make an attempt to catch it tonight.

TCM could have spiced up the schedule by including the rarely seen "The Moon Is Down" (1942) and "The Wayward Bus" (1957), but these are both 20th Century Fox releases and so I understand and turn my gaze towards Fox Movie Channel with faint hope.

It's also not airing, but another Steinbeck favorite of mine is "Cannery Row," which while made into a movie in 1982, starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger, was another sore disappointment for this Steinbeck fan. While I unmercifully complain about remakes, here's a movie that could really use another shot.

The Steinbeck title I'd most like to see adapted? It's not even a novel, but a travelogue, and while I wouldn't call it my favorite it ranks up there among them: "Travels with Charley," which Steinbeck wrote in the 1960's after he and his dog, the Charley of the title, climbed into a motor home and drove across America and back noting conditions of the time and more interesting, people of the time. Perhaps this is a case of being better off not getting what I wish for because I do realize the title may stand all the more higher in my recollection just because it has yet to be tainted by any film adaptation.

Sadly, as I went to my shelves to find a Steinbeck title to refer to tonight I could not find one. They're all here somewhere but they've grown distant to me. Possibly even distant enough to have been packed out of sight in boxes to create space for titles spotted along my shelves which have brought me nowhere near the enjoyment that John Steinbeck's work has through the years.

I think I'm going to have to find that box. I haven't read fiction in recent years, preferring non-fiction titles about film and business, and I admit I haven't the patience at this point to crack the spine on a monster like "East of Eden" anytime soon, but Steinbeck offers gems in all sizes, surely I could work Charley or Ed Ricketts back into my day sometime soon. I hope so, I largely wrote this hoping to urge myself to do so.

This past summer Mary Weil posted a story about forgotten bookmarks over on his widely read ephemera blog. The post talked about Michael Popek, a used and rare bookseller in Central New York who came across so many neat items marking the pages inside books that he started his own entertaining site under that very name, Forgotten Bookmarks.

Just today I came across an article by Graceann MacLeod on Wordworth.com titled Unexpected Literary Treasures. In her well written piece Ms. MacLeod talks about her fascination with more traditional bookmarks before moving into a section called "Accidental Ephemera" that talks about ephemeral bookmarks as well.

Bookmark collectors take note: The Bookmark Collectors Virtual Convention will be held February 20-21, 2010. More to come on this event as we get closer to it.

This second article recalled the first to me, and now I feel compelled to admit that I too have found myself loosely collecting ephemeral bookmarks. It wasn't a plan but more of part of the general sickness with me--I can't throw anything away, especially old paper. It doesn't take up much room so why not just create another stack?

I don't typically sell books, though I've collected enough myself that I don't believe I'm exaggerating to say I have about two dozen large boxes of (currently) irrelevant titles tucked away throughout my living quarters in addition to those lining the shelves across nearly every imaginable portion of otherwise exposed wall space. Books have yielded some of my collection, though my main source are the vintage magazines I sell.

But this bibliophile has a dirty little secret, as I'm sure many others do as well. Sure I've got lots of books, in fact I'm confident that unless you consider yourself a book collector or have a job at a university that I have more than you do. Back before I spent so much time online I'd fill bags at fairs and church sales, carry them around book stores til the pile reached my chin, even, ahem, as I once described on Marty Weil's aforementioned ephemera blog, dumpster dived for them.

In recent years my gathering has been more controlled, but basically any topic of interest that I bump into ... and that's a lot when you're online all day ... leads to seeking out a used title on Amazon. But the secret? I don't read them all, heck probably not half. Buying on a whim and awaiting delivery often leads to waned interest for one. And back when I was buying by the pound, well, come on, sure I'd read 2 or 3 titles out of an overstuffed shopping bag, but I bought those others just because, well, you never know when you might need them.

With old magazines, they're my stock, and so in composing listings for them on eBay and other online venues I take the time to page through each issue. No, I'm not reading them, though I do often become distracted by an interesting headline, but I'm making sure all the pages are there and that they're undamaged. And that's where the bulk of my own stack of ephemeral bookmarks have come.

Some finds are interesting, others mundane. Some I shake my head at for saving. The two greeting cards above are a couple of items and immediately below you'll find a few more examples of what I've come across:

Brief notes are exactly that, just some stream of consciousness thoughts from my most recent viewing of The Story of Louis Pasteur starring Paul Muni.

Brief notes are exactly that, just some stream of consciousness thoughts from my most recent viewing of The Story of Louis Pasteur starring Paul Muni.

Fox regular Tyrone Power is back in full force this week. Fox Movie Channel classic movie schedule for week of November 2-8 Fox appears a little hung-over after it's three-day Planet of the Apes marathon, only treating us lovers of the oldies to 1...

Fox regular Tyrone Power is back in full force this week. Fox Movie Channel classic movie schedule for week of November 2-8 Fox appears a little hung-over after it's three-day Planet of the Apes marathon, only treating us lovers of the oldies to 1...

Karloff Happy Halloween! While this classic film buff still thinks your movie day should revolve around the old Universal classics, Turner Classic Movies does it's best today to work around not having their rights and delivers 24 pretty good hours ...

Karloff Happy Halloween! While this classic film buff still thinks your movie day should revolve around the old Universal classics, Turner Classic Movies does it's best today to work around not having their rights and delivers 24 pretty good hours ...

A summary of the various movie cards and premiums sent to our eBay Store throughout October 2009 including a sample image of each.

A summary of the various movie cards and premiums sent to our eBay Store throughout October 2009 including a sample image of each.

Lili Damita with Warren William in The Match King Turner Classic Movies winds up it Life in the Depression selection of movies with a half-dozen pre-code films airing between 8 pm and 4:30 am Thursday night, October 29. This is the one I was waiti...

Lili Damita with Warren William in The Match King Turner Classic Movies winds up it Life in the Depression selection of movies with a half-dozen pre-code films airing between 8 pm and 4:30 am Thursday night, October 29. This is the one I was waiti...

Great news, Classic Movie fans, TCM is teaming up with Universal to give us access to more classic gems! From the Turner Classic Movies press release: Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Universal Studios Home Entertainment (USHE) have entered into an...

Great news, Classic Movie fans, TCM is teaming up with Universal to give us access to more classic gems! From the Turner Classic Movies press release: Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Universal Studios Home Entertainment (USHE) have entered into an...

Great news, Classic Movie fans, TCM is teaming up with Universal to give us access to more classic gems! From the Turner Classic Movies press release: Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Universal Studios Home Entertainment (USHE) have entered into an...

"Captive Wild Woman" (1943) from Universal has definite roots in one of that company's staples, the classic "Frankenstein" (1931). At heart it's a tale about an obsessed scientist performing experiments on humans and creating a m...

"Captive Wild Woman" (1943) from Universal has definite roots in one of that company's staples, the classic "Frankenstein" (1931). At heart it's a tale about an obsessed scientist performing experiments on humans and creating a m...

Warren William is The Match King. Hardie Albright is about as close as he has to a sidekick. Lili Damita is certainly his love interest, though then again so are Claire Dodd, Juliette Compton, and Glenda Farrell, though I guess those three are really more of a business with pleasure interest for him.

Note: “The Match King” airs on Turner Classic Movies just a few days from when I’ve originally posted this. If you see this post in time catch it late Thursday night, October 29, 2009 at 3:00 am EST (technically very early Friday the 30th), as part of their Life in the Depression schedule of movies airing throughout October.

“The Match King,” released by First National Pictures at the very end of 1932 is a star vehicle for one of Warner Brother’s latest stars, having already established himself as the leading man of power on screen in the midst of the Great Depression in “The Mouthpiece,” “The Dark Horse,” and even on loan out to MGM for the classic “Skyscraper Souls,” each of which dates to previously that very same year. Warren William towers above everyone else in this part based on true life match magnate Ivar Kreuger.

After impressing relatives in Holmtide, Sweden with his fictitious success in America, they beg for him to come and save their little match company. But William’s Paul Kroll wants much more than a little Swedish match company. He tells his assistant, Erik (Albright), that he plans to sell matches all over the world. “And with them,” he says, “I’m going to buy the world.”

As familiar as pre-code fans are with Warren William’s portrayals of top executives with traits running from dedicated to criminal, we’ve also come to admire William the Wolf, and in “The Match King” he’s at his caddish best relying on a line of beautiful international socialites including Dodd and Compton to maneuver state secrets from nations in need of financing. Kroll charms these ladies with his full attention until he wrangles the necessary information from them and then he’s off in a flash offering money, and sometimes proposing a little blackmail, to governments in exchange for the rights to their national match concession.

If you think October 2009’s Turner Classic Movies spotlight on movies depicting Life in the Depression is timely, well inclusion of “The Match King” really hits the bulls-eye! For instance if you’d like to learn more about the true-life Match King BBC news published “Kreuger: The Original Bernard Madoff?” in March of ‘09.

Kreuger’s Wikipedia page presents a fine biography, though the true story probably has more movie spoilers than even I provide here, so you may want to check out “The Match King” before reading! From what I can tell, the real Kreuger may have been even shadier than Warren William’s Paul Kroll, despite a little murder on Kroll’s part!

What I didn’t see in Kreuger’s biography were Paul Kroll’s more humble beginnings shown to us in “The Match King.” We open with Warren William in a white uniform sweeping up outside of the Chicago Cubs’ ballpark. He quickly establishes his oft-repeated catch phrase: “Never worry about anything until it happens. And I’ll take care of it then,” before scheming with his supervisor to create a roll of ghost employees whose salaries go straight into their own pockets. Kroll then plays upon the affections of his boss’s wife (Farrell) who happily hands their bank account to him under the pretense of running away to California together. As soon as Farrell’s Babe is out of sight, Kroll is in a cab and a few minutes from First Class passage to Sweden.

Paul Kroll’s business practices are some of the most despicable we’ve seen Warren William act out on screen. While his David Dwight of “Skyscraper Souls” and Kurt Anderson of “Employees’ Entrance” are business sharks who rule their enterprises with iron fist, “The Match King’s” Kroll is actually a criminal who’s knowingly drawn himself into a pyramid scheme of the grandest levels. He tells Erik he’ll always be in debt, but that “when I circle the world. When I own it all. I’ll only be in debt to myself.”

Privately, despite his use of women, Kroll is a more sympathetic character than Dwight or Anderson, who use women simply for pleasure. Paul Kroll actually falls in love! And in love he’s willing to step away from the business to chase actress Marta Molnar across Europe trying to win her. Lili Damita as Molnar, despite one very sexy bath scene, is extremely annoying in a part Hollywood Reporter claims was originally intended for Greta Garbo. But for a high powered man such as Kroll his emotions were likely more wrapped up in the chase than in Molnar herself as he’s easily enough corralled back into the office once Erik manages to track him down.

Kroll isn’t just crooked on paper either. What he has done to the inventor that his agent Nyborg discovers, a man who could potentially crush the entire match trade with his creation, as well as his actions against the counterfeiter Scarlatti, who delivers $50 million in forged Italian bonds, are far more chilling actions than we’re used to seeing even from the slimiest Warren William characters!

“The Match King” is one of an handful of pre-code era Warren William pictures that best defines the cult of William. It’s not to be missed.

An interesting coincidence is that just a few months prior to “The Match King’s” release movie fans were treated to a kindly Warren William in “Three on a Match.” In “The Match King” it’s William’s Kroll who comes up with the plan to sell more matches through propaganda. He hatches the story that it was bad luck to share a match in the trenches and starts a publicity campaign based around the idea that if three cigarettes are lit from the same match one of those three men wouldn’t make it back alive. The “Three on a Match” scare tactic was used by the real Kreuger and so “The Match King” naturally uses it as well, but how odd that Warren William’s previous starring vehicle would take it as its title and incorporate it into its story as well.

Note: The Claire Dodd, Juliette Compton, and Glenda Farrell items are all tobacco premiums from Uruguay. I picked up a few hundred of these recently and singles can be found in my shop at MovieCardsForSale.com.

It's been awhile since I've done a boxing birthday over here, but tonight when I was on the IMDb of all places, taking a look at which movie stars celebrated a birthday on October 26, I was surprised to find not one, but two, classic Heavyweight champions born on this date just 4 years apart. All the more interesting, the Heavyweight crown changed hands when they fought each other, though not in late October but June 29, 1933.

The gigantic Primo Carnera, born October 26, 1906, wrested the crown from Jack Sharkey, born the same date, 1902, in Sharkey's first defense of the title at the Long Island City Bowl. James P. Dawson of the New York Times reported in the July 30 edition:

Jack Sharkey's first defense of the world's heavyweight championship was his last. The Boston ex-sailor was knocked out in the sixth round of what was to have been a fifteen-round struggle last night in the Long Island City Bowl, by Primo Carnera, Italian giant. As a result, for the first time in ring history, the crown which has come down from Sullivan, Corbett, Fitzsimmons and the rest of that illustrious line to Dempsey and Tunney, is worn by a son of Italy. A terrific right hand uppercut to the chin which almost decapitated Sharkey brought Carnera the title in a bout held by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.

Here's the action from the 3rd round on:

Complete fight by fight records of the fighters can be found on the Cyber Boxing Zone where of Sharkey they say, "When he was good, he was very good but when he was bad, he was awful," while of the equally flawed Carnera, the CBZ writes that he "was quite mobile for such a large man; However, his chin was vulnerable to the type of power punch that the top heavyweight fighters were able to deliver."

Boxing was still huge during this period and so there were many card sets produced featuring great fighters, past and at the time present. A couple of excellent sites I bumped into tonight on the subject were Boxing Card Digest and America's Great Boxing Cards, whose owner, Adam S. Warshaw, has published what appears to be the book to own for boxing card collectors, America's Great Boxing Cards.

Beyond the cards boxing offers many opportunities to collect from autographs to fight specific collectibles such as boxing posters, programs, tickets and ticket stubs.

Search all of eBay for Jack Sharkey and Primo Carnera cards and collectibles.

It's been awhile since I've done a boxing birthday over here, but tonight when I was on the IMDb of all places, taking a look at which movie stars celebrated a birthday on October 26, I was surprised to find not one, but two, classic Heavyweight champions born on this date just 4 years apart. All the more interesting, the Heavyweight crown changed hands when they fought each other, though not in late October but June 29, 1933.

The gigantic Primo Carnera, born October 26, 1906, wrested the crown from Jack Sharkey, born the same date, 1902, in Sharkey's first defense of the title at the Long Island City Bowl. James P. Dawson of the New York Times reported in the July 30 edition:

Jack Sharkey's first defense of the world's heavyweight championship was his last. The Boston ex-sailor was knocked out in the sixth round of what was to have been a fifteen-round struggle last night in the Long Island City Bowl, by Primo Carnera, Italian giant. As a result, for the first time in ring history, the crown which has come down from Sullivan, Corbett, Fitzsimmons and the rest of that illustrious line to Dempsey and Tunney, is worn by a son of Italy. A terrific right hand uppercut to the chin which almost decapitated Sharkey brought Carnera the title in a bout held by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.

Here's the action from the 3rd round on:

Complete fight by fight records of the fighters can be found on the Cyber Boxing Zone where of Sharkey they say, "When he was good, he was very good but when he was bad, he was awful," while of the equally flawed Carnera, the CBZ writes that he "was quite mobile for such a large man; However, his chin was vulnerable to the type of power punch that the top heavyweight fighters were able to deliver."

Boxing was still huge during this period and so there were many card sets produced featuring great fighters, past and at the time present. A couple of excellent sites I bumped into tonight on the subject were Boxing Card Digest and America's Great Boxing Cards, whose owner, Adam S. Warshaw, has published what appears to be the book to own for boxing card collectors, America's Great Boxing Cards.

Beyond the cards boxing offers many opportunities to collect from autographs to fight specific collectibles such as boxing posters, programs, tickets and ticket stubs.

Search all of eBay for Jack Sharkey and Primo Carnera cards and collectibles.

Loretta Young stars in "Come to the Stable"Tuesday morning at 6 am on FMC Fox Movie Channel classic movie schedule for week of October 26-November 1 Wow, what a terrible week for fans of older movies on Fox Movie Channel. Nothing airing...

Loretta Young stars in "Come to the Stable"Tuesday morning at 6 am on FMC Fox Movie Channel classic movie schedule for week of October 26-November 1 Wow, what a terrible week for fans of older movies on Fox Movie Channel. Nothing airing...

Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler TCMs Life in the Depression series continues Thursday night Only four movies airing under the Life in the Depression banner on Turner Classic Movies tonight, and of those two are actually from the 1980's, which is a littl...

Top billed as J. Lawrence Bradford, WW leaves the singing to little brother Dick Powell in the Depression era classic musical, Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) featuring William, Powell, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee, Ginger Rogers and more.

Obviously a full write-up will take place here at some point, but for now just a programming alert–it airs tonight, October 22 at 8 pm EST on Turner Classic Movies as part of TCM’s Life in the Depression feature. You can see the tonight’s complete Depression schedule on TCM by clicking the title of this post and heading over to my entry on the Examiner which also includes a slideshow featuring 7 Gold Diggers stars.

Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler TCMs Life in the Depression series continues Thursday night Only four movies airing under the Life in the Depression banner on Turner Classic Movies tonight, and of those two are actually from the 1980's, which is a littl...

Brief notes are exactly that, just some stream of consciousness thoughts occurring during my most recent viewing of The Invisible Ray with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

Brief notes are exactly that, just some stream of consciousness thoughts occurring during my most recent viewing of The Invisible Ray with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

I was surprised and excited to come across a picture of a gentleman holding up a couple of Strat-O-Matic cards in this past Tuesday's edition of Newsday. The gentleman it turns out is Hal Richman, who invented Strat-O-Matic as an 11-year-old in 1948 and unleashed what I believe is the most realistic and most fun baseball simulation game ever on the world in 1961.

From the product Announcement page at Strat-O-Maticmedia.com:

Strat-O-Matic Negro League All-Stars will be available on Nov. 1, 2009 on both CD and as a traditional Strato dice game. It includes 103 of the greatest players in Negro League baseball history including Gibson, Paige, Bell, Chino Smith, Ray Dandridge, Martin Dihigo, Rube Foster, John Beckwith, Buck O’Neil and many more. The set brings to life every Negro League player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, well known players who were candidates for the Hall during the special election of 2006, plus a few special players recognized by the Cuban and Mexican Halls of Fame.

I first came to Strat-O-Matic by sort of an accident. I remember when I was very young my cousins had the 1978 or '79 APBA game which I loved playing with them. Similar to Strat in that each major league player has a game card which decides the results of their at-bats by the toss of dice, at the time it was pretty basic, though I have played since then and see more of the complexities of that game now than I did when I was, what, 7.

Another game which comes streaming back as I write this was my Dad's old Sports Illustrated game, which just had a folded sheet of paper for each of the 1969 teams with each player listed on it and results also dictated by the die. In fact, I recall looking for that one on eBay awhile back, and I believe they're quite collectible now as are the APBA cards.

But way back when in 1984, when I finally had enough paper route money together to buy my own first game I couldn't find APBA or a modern version of Dad's SI game, but I did run into something I'd never heard of called Strat-O-Matic on the Toys-R-Us shelves. Well what I got just blew the other games away. To this day what I remember about APBA were the cute nicknames they applied to each players cards; what I remember about the SI game was quality time with Dad; what I remember about Strat-O-Matic was the realism.

Righty-lefty splits, ballpark factors, more info on each card and as I began playing out a season what I found to be a very realistic picture of the stats. While it was fun to play the more basic versions of the cards such as those shown above--they made the 1983 version of Rance Mulliniks an MVP candidate and Steve Lake a must at catcher--I also had the option of flipping my cards over to the Advanced side, playing the splits and turning those two players back into their far less than spectacular selves (But Rance sure did rake on his half of the platoon, plus he's the last person I've ever run across named Rance! If your name is Rance please comment below so I know you're out there.).

Anyway the point here is that during that summer, age 12, I was obsessed with this game. I made up scoresheets for each game I played, rolled my dice through a full season of an 8-team league. I made trades between the teams as they were issued and grabbed all the players I only wished my real Yankees had traded for. I wrote out leader boards and standings. While always proficient in math I noticed that I stopped gaining ground in the advanced classes around the same time the mathematical concepts pushed beyond the realm of relevancy to baseball stats--man, if only sabermetrics were a little further along then!

So it was paging through the local Long Island paper that this all came streaming back to me this week. The Strat-O-Matic company is local, based in Glen Head, Long Island, which may explain why I found a copy so easily 25 years ago. This Negro league set is based more on the idea of their Hall of Fame set, which rather than basing the card results on a single years worth of stats (like my old '84 set) the results are based on a compilation of the main 5-7 years of a player's career. According to Richman this is something the Strato company had been looking to do for a long time, but they just didn't have access to the proper date to create the cards. Then along came Scott Simkus of Chicago, a customer with access to more than 3,000 Negro League boxscores, who made the Negro League game possible and will be rewarded with royalties for his contribution.

Great game, great idea, great company. Thanks to Newsday for bringing me back to 1984 (or yeah, really 1983, those are my stats) and to Hal Richman for continuing to bring this fun and involving game to new generations and collectors alike.

PS: There's a pretty fun version of Strat-O-Matic that can be played online through the SportingNews.com. You can get yourself though a season in a few weeks and become as involved as you want with setting lineups and match-ups. I play regularly during the baseball off-season when I'm suffering from Roto withdrawal.

But if you like rolling the dice and playing the way I used to play, you can pick up the latest edition of the Strat-O-Matic Baseball game on Amazon.com (and yes, that's an affiliate link).

I was surprised and excited to come across a picture of a gentleman holding up a couple of Strat-O-Matic cards in this past Tuesday's edition of Newsday. The gentleman it turns out is Hal Richman, who invented Strat-O-Matic as an 11-year-old in 1948 and unleashed what I believe is the most realistic and most fun baseball simulation game ever on the world in 1961.

From the product Announcement page at Strat-O-Maticmedia.com:

Strat-O-Matic Negro League All-Stars will be available on Nov. 1, 2009 on both CD and as a traditional Strato dice game. It includes 103 of the greatest players in Negro League baseball history including Gibson, Paige, Bell, Chino Smith, Ray Dandridge, Martin Dihigo, Rube Foster, John Beckwith, Buck O’Neil and many more. The set brings to life every Negro League player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, well known players who were candidates for the Hall during the special election of 2006, plus a few special players recognized by the Cuban and Mexican Halls of Fame.

I first came to Strat-O-Matic by sort of an accident. I remember when I was very young my cousins had the 1978 or '79 APBA game which I loved playing with them. Similar to Strat in that each major league player has a game card which decides the results of their at-bats by the toss of dice, at the time it was pretty basic, though I have played since then and see more of the complexities of that game now than I did when I was, what, 7.

Another game which comes streaming back as I write this was my Dad's old Sports Illustrated game, which just had a folded sheet of paper for each of the 1969 teams with each player listed on it and results also dictated by the die. In fact, I recall looking for that one on eBay awhile back, and I believe they're quite collectible now as are the APBA cards.

But way back when in 1984, when I finally had enough paper route money together to buy my own first game I couldn't find APBA or a modern version of Dad's SI game, but I did run into something I'd never heard of called Strat-O-Matic on the Toys-R-Us shelves. Well what I got just blew the other games away. To this day what I remember about APBA were the cute nicknames they applied to each players cards; what I remember about the SI game was quality time with Dad; what I remember about Strat-O-Matic was the realism.

Righty-lefty splits, ballpark factors, more info on each card and as I began playing out a season what I found to be a very realistic picture of the stats. While it was fun to play the more basic versions of the cards such as those shown above--they made the 1983 version of Rance Mulliniks an MVP candidate and Steve Lake a must at catcher--I also had the option of flipping my cards over to the Advanced side, playing the splits and turning those two players back into their far less than spectacular selves (But Rance sure did rake on his half of the platoon, plus he's the last person I've ever run across named Rance! If your name is Rance please comment below so I know you're out there.).

Anyway the point here is that during that summer, age 12, I was obsessed with this game. I made up scoresheets for each game I played, rolled my dice through a full season of an 8-team league. I made trades between the teams as they were issued and grabbed all the players I only wished my real Yankees had traded for. I wrote out leader boards and standings. While always proficient in math I noticed that I stopped gaining ground in the advanced classes around the same time the mathematical concepts pushed beyond the realm of relevancy to baseball stats--man, if only sabermetrics were a little further along then!

So it was paging through the local Long Island paper that this all came streaming back to me this week. The Strat-O-Matic company is local, based in Glen Head, Long Island, which may explain why I found a copy so easily 25 years ago. This Negro league set is based more on the idea of their Hall of Fame set, which rather than basing the card results on a single years worth of stats (like my old '84 set) the results are based on a compilation of the main 5-7 years of a player's career. According to Richman this is something the Strato company had been looking to do for a long time, but they just didn't have access to the proper date to create the cards. Then along came Scott Simkus of Chicago, a customer with access to more than 3,000 Negro League boxscores, who made the Negro League game possible and will be rewarded with royalties for his contribution.

Great game, great idea, great company. Thanks to Newsday for bringing me back to 1984 (or yeah, really 1983, those are my stats) and to Hal Richman for continuing to bring this fun and involving game to new generations and collectors alike.

PS: There's a pretty fun version of Strat-O-Matic that can be played online through the SportingNews.com. You can get yourself though a season in a few weeks and become as involved as you want with setting lineups and match-ups. I play regularly during the baseball off-season when I'm suffering from Roto withdrawal.

But if you like rolling the dice and playing the way I used to play, you can pick up the latest edition of the Strat-O-Matic Baseball game on Amazon.com (and yes, that's an affiliate link).

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Brief notes are exactly that, just some stream of consciousness thoughts occurring during my most recent viewing of Murders in the Rue Morgue with Bela Lugosi.

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