12 different stories about Strat (1984-1988)
This story will go in a different twist. I will write about 12 different stories about Strat that I think you would like to know about. This section will consist of three stories, which will be, Dave Kingman, the Strat newspaper article, and Steve Balboni famous game.
Just before the 1984 season started, Richard traded me Kingman. He was one of my favorite player with a great card. He was a reverse right hander with great power against right-handers. He had homeruns on 1-5 and 1-6, with 1-7 being a 1-9 chance. Against left-handers he was weaker with Homerun on 1-5 and 1-6 being a 1-9 chance. He ended up hitting the third highest homeruns in Roadrunners history, 47, but that's not the story.
There was a manager who joined the league that year named, Chris Brandt. He was a great manager and did a great newsletter. It so happen that Kingman owned him. During the first 15 games, Kingman had hit 7 homeruns. When Kingman hit a homerun, I had a special call, raising my hand and saying, “Kong”. In the last series, Kingman hit a homerun in game one. In game two he blasted a homerun in the first. Chris was upset and told me that if Kingman hit another homerun he would be walked every time afterward. Well it took until the 5th and Kingman went deep. And sure enough Kingman was walked every time afterward for the next two games. I don’t think Bonds had that much respect.
During this time, I was working for the Richmond Newspaper and was a free-lance photographer. The Richmond evening paper (remember when we had one) was running article called, Spare Times every Friday. They ran articles on local clubs and I personally talked to the editor about our Strat league and he like the idea. So I called Chris Brandt and we worked on the article. He wrote it and I did the photos. The photos were took at Steve Ennis house, where his room was a baseball museum.
The article was run on October 4th, 1985. I kept a lot of copies of the article. I hope to locate them and bring them to the winter meeting.
The last story was that in 1984 I took over an American League team. I was now running two teams. During the 1985 season I had the current hitting coach for the Wizards, Steve Balboni. He had homeruns on 1-2 to 1-4, with a chance at 1-5. His card was homeruns, walk or strikeouts. During one memorable game he broke a Strat record still around today. Balboni went 6-6 with 6 runs, one single, double and four homeruns, 19 total bases and 13 RBIS. What a great game!
I like the managers who have seen these stories and are now putting their favorite players on the RSBL site. I will publish my all-timers in the future.