I made a few last cuts to my 1977 Strat-O-Matic team. The pitching staff after Mark Fidrych is even weaker than it had been, but the offense and fielding is a little better, I think, increasing the chances for every fifth game to end with the Bird bounding off the mound like a happy kid, a vision at the center of my reasons for venturing into this simulation in the first place. I have other reasons. Maybe one of those can be seen in the biggest of my final cuts: dropping Fisk for Munson. The kid I was in 1977 would never have done this. Never. He loved Fisk and hated all Yankees. But I have my reasons. For one, the Start-O-Matic game has an $80 million dollar salary cap, and Munson fit into that a little more easily than the very expensive Fisk, and Munson is still very good at everything. For another, I remember Munson grousing about Fidrych’s mound antics in 1976, and I like thinking about him growing to respect the Bird, his passion, his fire. And I’ve got some things to work out with Munson, which you may know about if you read my Cardboard Gods book. Finally, I feel like this whole fantasy I’m embarking on might be about the tangle of joy and death.
Last night my older son couldn’t sleep because he was worrying about death. He’s a little older than I was when Lyman Bostock died, a little younger than I was when Munson died. I told him I knew how he felt, that I felt that way too, that my brother read me Star Trek books in the middle of the night to keep me from freaking out. I told him things always seem better in the morning. In the morning he’ll have his Lego figures, his Star Wars books, just like in the morning when I was a kid I had my baseball cards, my Strat-O-Matic scorecards and dice.
So the season starts tomorrow. I’ll be letting you know how it goes. I’ll also be reading a lot about that era and these players. My reading list thus far: Stars and Strikes and The Captain and Me, authored and, respectively, co-authored (along with Ron Blomberg) by my friend Dan Epstein (who will figure into an upcoming post on why I’ve set the Bird’s return in Shea Stadium); Singled Out by Andrew Maraniss (who wrote a great book on basketball at the 1936 Olympics); South Side Hitmen, by Dan Helpingstine; The Negro Leagues Are Major Leagues, edited by Sean Forman and Amy Tan (I’m looking for insight into the experiences of, among others, the fathers of three players on my team: Luis Tiant Sr, Lyman Bostock Sr., and Sam Hairston), Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, by Jonathan Mahler; and, for the billionth time, The Wrong Stuff, by the great Bill Lee.
What else should I read?
Cardboard Gods 
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