Strat-O-Matic Padres All-Stars

via 1.bp.blogspot.com

Just so you know. I have been using the information I've been getting from Twitter. It's just been in the form of passing it along to newly registered Gaslamp Baller JackTish who will be playing a Strat-O-Matic league limiting himself to only players who have ever worn a Padres uniform. Read on, True Believers. -Dex

It came to me at the Padres Town Hall on Jan 27, when some guy from New York (like me, but not me) stood up during the Q&A with Padres execs and asked, basically "Hey, why don’t the Padres have an Old Timers’ Day? A lot of teams do it, it fills the stadium, and a ton of talent has played in a Friars’ uniform at one point or another." Their answer: We never thought about it, but maybe.

I doubt it’ll happen, but it did inspire me.  Just how good is the best talent that’s ever played in San Diego?  I mean, sure, this town has had franchise players like Gwynn and Hoffman (when’s he getting a statue?).  But since moving here in October, buying season tickets,and eagerly learning more about the franchise past and present, I’ve been gratefully reminded Hall-o’-Famers (or HoF to be) Rickey Henderson, Greg Maddux, Ozzie Smith and Roberto Alomar all once donned the brown, tan or blue (but not the horrid camo).  If you really want to stretch it a bit, you could even include the Splendid Splinter, who got his start with a different Padres franchise, back when they were a AA Pacific Coast League affiliate of the Red Sox.

I was intrigued.  So, for fun (and something to do before the real baseball season begins), I put together a dream team of the best the Padres organization has ever had to offer, through the computer simulated Strat-O-Matic Baseball game, which I played religiously as a kid with dice and charts but now (like pretty much everything else) you can play online.  I might go a bit into the game’s rules in a later post (they’re here: http://bit.ly/hJtI2C), but chances are if most Gaslamp readers are baseball freaks like me, you already know about it.

The team drafted last night (see it here: http://bit.ly/huGVf6), and I got all the best known franchise players and almost all of the talent that was here early or late before going somewhere else to earn their HoF plaque.  Only key players I didn’t get were Ted Williams, Ken Caminiti and Graig Nettles; I did get Rickey in LF, so with Kevin Mitchell in CF and Tony G. in RF, the OF is looking fine.  What I need is a solid 3B – any suggestions?   There’s close to 4,000 once or current players in the pool, from the deadball era to today, so not everybody you could think of is there, but I welcome suggestions.

For my homefield, both Jack Murphy and Petco are offered. I picked the latter because it looked a lot easier to build a potentially competitive Padres squad around pitching and defense than slugging, and Petco – then, now, whenever – was the most pitching-friendly stadium in the entire collection of 170+ ballparks you could choose from 1905 to today.

I’ve also picked Preston Gómez as the name of my manager, so I have somebody else to blame should we come in last.  Catch you later.

JackTish