Draft countdown: 7 days remaining

As 2012 draft fever builds, we reach into the archives for this photo of what appears to be the winning team in one of our annual softball clashes. Can you name the team members — and the year???  

Meet the new managers: Rick Lackey

Rick Lackey, manager of the expansion English Pigdogs, has already been associated with the I-75 League for several years, having assisted Garth Lewis with the general manager aspects of the South Grand Prairie Warriors. He’s also been active and successful in another long-running Strat league, NASOMA, where he has earned 10 league titles since 1987 [...]

Meet the new managers: Steve Nieroda

Steve Nieroda, manager of the expansion Satellite Beach Brawlers,  joins the I-75 League in 2012 as a 15-year Strat veteran who is also managing clubs in three other leagues. Steve was born in Union, N.J., and grew up a fan of the New York Mets. He now lives in Satellite Beach, Fla., where he sells [...]

‘Baseball Dentist’ Ken Kuzdak drills off into the sunset

In an interview conducted in 1989 for the I-75 League’s 10th anniversary, Ken Kuzdak famously pledged, “I’ll never quit this league. I’ll die before I quit this league.” Well, things change, and Ken hasn’t died, but he has retired from the league. After 31-plus years as the manager of the Detroit Drill Team and Demolition [...]

Scorpions, Clips go retro for July series

Savannah manager Steve Hart and Applegate manager Gary Kicinski sported a retro look for their July series, complete with short shorts, hideous facial hair and a replica of Steve’s Newburgh, N.Y., dining room circa 1985. The Clips took three out of the five games. Regarding our photo trivia from May, commissioner Dave Renbarger reports those [...]

First known photo of I-75 League surfaces!

At the recently concluded 32nd annual convention of the I-75 Strat-O-Matic League, Mike Renbarger presented an envelope postmarked July 3, 1982, from Shirley, Mass., with a 15 cent stamp on it. Inside were six photos from the 1981 convention in Knoxville, Tenn., the site of the convention that started our second season, and the first [...]

Expansion voted in for only second time in league history!

After a flurry of e-mails and several days of debate, the managers of the I-75 Strat-O-Matic league have voted to expand for only the second time in league history. The league that was born with 9 teams in 1980 and expanded to 12 in 2003 will now grow to 14 or 15 teams beginning in [...]

Belated farewell to Jamie Turner and the Tropical Heat

Even though Jamie Turner didn’t join the I-75 League as a manager until the third month of our sixth season, those who were there on that Sunday night in March of 1980 know that Jamie played a key role in a successful launch of the league. Jamie, then working as a sportswriter at a newspaper in Natchez, [...]

This month in Strat history

Remember stooges, instruction sheets, typewritten newsletters? News You Can Use, Notes and Quotes, Player/Pitcher of the Month? 30 years ago this month: (click to view newsletter) The June 1980 newsletter, from the home office at 181 Archibald Street in Burlington, Vt., brought news of the I-75 Strat-O-Matic Mail League’s first no-hitter: Our inaugural season is [...]

Great moments in Strat: Game 160 Clips-Senators showdown, 1983

Face-to-face action is always exciting, but usually it occurs at the beginning of the season when many of us are gathered for the annual convention. Rare is the instance when face-to-face action takes place in the season’s final month, with a playoff berth on the line. But that was the case in 1983, when the [...]

Historic stats unearthed!

During some spring cleaning today I came across a floppy disk containing some treasured data: A complete set of statistics — compiled in year-by-year fashion as well as 20-year totals, for all players, and all teams during the I-75 Strat-O-Matic League’s total redraft era. These stats were painstakingly compiled by Mike Renbarger in the era before [...]