Close Encounter at a Star Tournament - Wolfman Shapiro, Part II

(Chicago, IL, August 6th & 7th, 2006)
by R. Joshua Shapiro, aka "Wolfman Shapiro")

PART II
(Personal Preparation for the Star, The Tournament Draft,
How did the Wolfmen Do & Final Comments )

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Preparation for the Star held in Chicago
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The first thing I did once I made my decision to play in this tournament was to download onto my computer every document from the Star Tournament website. After reviewing this information, using my natural ability to organize data (from my computer job days), I color coded it within various spreadsheets. The tournament provided this information on web pages but I was able to transform the web page into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are the best way to go because if you want to sort the player's statistics in a different way, it's easy to do (and this is what I did to develop some other types of analysis I created for the draft.)

Then I signed up for the Star Tournament on-line forum and was able to find a few other players who were open to answer questions and offer advice and I found a few other people to do the same via one or two other Strat-o-matic related mailing lists or on-line forums. The person who helped me the most though was Bill Fenlon so contacting the person who leads the particular Star Tournament you are joining is important and can serve you well.

Of course, you also have to review for yourself all the eligible players and go over their cards (either via the computer game or the physical card themselves). You should try to know or generally memorize as many of the player’s cards as you can, because when you are in the draft, it has to go very fast (you have a minute to make your selection) so you can play games on the first day. Actually, if you have the printed cards, it is a good idea to sort them into their respective positions and have the cards with you and in front of you so that on the day of the tournament you can view all the cards of the potential players you are considering for your next pick. Having some documents with rankings as you look at the cards is helpful or already knowing the order you would pick players at each position is good too. Usually you have to be prepared to make a quick decision which position you are going to pick next and be ready when they say, "And your pick is?" Again the dsim program can be a helpful tool for the draft with the players it recommends for your next pick.

Another thing I saw at the tournament, which I think is very helpful, is that most of the experienced players had already marked on the Strat-o-matic player cards the ratings and key statistics about that player so when they looked at the cards they could see the vitals at a glance. Things like on-base percentage or home run percentage against left or righted pitchers for that hitter or similarly how many hits, walks or homers a pitcher gives up are important to know (this was ranked by chances on the card -- recall on each card for the right or left, there are 108 chances to roll any result). They even had by the player’s fielding ratings and which numbers were errors. I happened to be an individual who can just look at a player's card and I can sense the true value of that player's performance. I know where their strength and weaknesses are but it doesn't hurt to have such information handy on the cards themselves too.

So, starting in June of this year (2005, two full months before the tournament) I went through this process. I did my best to touch all the information I could so that when the time came for the draft I would know exactly who to pick quickly. Therefore, after all the hours I spent (very enjoyable hours as I really got to know the players' cards well) to prepare and be ready for the draft, I thought I would nail it and get a great and powerful team so the so-called "Skokie Wolfmen" (the name of our team) would be there at the end, when the dust settled. I have a friend named Joel, from one of my computer leagues, who really had studied the cards and even had a system. Using his system if you knew the stadium you were playing in, he could plug the players into a spreadsheet with formulas and all the players would be rated for their performance at a certain ballpark. Thereby he made certain recommendations of the best players to pick if I went with a hitter's park or pitcher's park. However, when the draft came, I kind of went my own way.

Ok, lets discuss what happened from the time I arrive in Chicago about 10 days before the tournament.

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Almost Show Time - What Next
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Well, first of all, since it was an eight-hour plane ride from Holland to Chicago, I spent most of my time on the plane studying all the charts and really deciding who I would pick at each position by an ordered rank if I was doing the real draft. Next, since the game has changed a lot over the past 20 some years, I had to learn the new super-advance rules. I printed out the Star Tournament rules document because it covered all of these newly developed rules and read this on the plane as well. But of course, a lot of these new rules didn't make sense, so I would definitely need practice games to learn them. I wanted to bring the 2004 player set of cards, so I can look at them on the plane. But I clean forgot. Fortunately, my two buddies in Chicago who I have known since I was in high school, Steve Fixler (who did act as a coach for our team the second day of the tournament) and Larry Braus let me borrow their cards. If they didn't allow this, it would have been a very difficult time for me when I was drafting.

Since I haven't played face to face for over 20 years and I needed a crash course on the new rules, I arranged with my two buddies (Steve and Larry) to play some practice games before the tournament started. Additionally Bill found time to visit with me for one night and another friend named Tom. All of them were willing to meet with me at my father's home and I created a little Strat-o-matic corner on his kitchen table which we called "Wolfman's Park". Sad to say though, I was 1-8 in the practice games as I really was having great difficulty hitting the ball and scoring runs (the dice tower drove me crazy). Plus I found all the new charts for the super-advance game pretty confusing at first (I wondered what happened to our simple and easy game). But, in the end, I am sure if I hadn't of played the practice games and humbled myself I would have done far worse at the tournament and not been in the right mind-set.

I also practiced using the draft simulation program (dsim) a few times to see if I could really get the players I wanted and what type of team I might end up with. Dsim evaluates your teams but it never seems to like the teams I picked. Before I played the practice games I had in my mind a pretty clear idea of the type of team I was planning to draft. But after not doing so well in face-to-face play and how dsim was ranking my possible teams, I was more confused then ever which way I was going to go and I really couldn't make up my mind before draft day. I decided to just wing it and work with my intuition. The bottom line is that theory and speculation on what type of team to play can never replace one's real life experience. Which is why you might need to play in a tournament or two to get up to speed.

The day before our tournament was to start (Friday, August 5th) a bunch of us went to the White Sox game (they were playing Seattle). This is where I got to meet some of the other contestants and got some early advice. I complimented Bill on adding some other activities around the tournament to give the players a chance to meet and become better acquainted. (For example, in our Champaign tournaments, a bunch of us went bowling in the evening at the student union).

Ok, well you have the basics now. You have an idea of how the tournament is played. Also, you have an idea of what you have to do to prepare. So, lets move on and see how the "Wolfman" did in his first every Star Tournament draft! Hang on!

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The Skokie Wolfmen appear in their first
ever, Star Tournament .... The Draft
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This was the sign I displayed for our team, you see
the emblem of the CBA above, a cleverly designed
baseball card showing myself as the Manager of
the Montreal Royals in the CBA. Well would you be
scared of the Wolfmen with this sign?

The commissioner of the CBA asked me if I would make a sort of a sign that I would display at the tournament, to let people know about the CBA. Additionally, he asked if I would take a few photos of myself during the tourney so that it could be seen on the CBA website -- as I was in a sense representing our league representing at the Star. So as you look above, this is the sign we displayed during our tournament play, just so my opponents knew that the Skokie Wolfmen had finally returned to SOM after 20+ years. This didn't seem to impress anyone in the least however, nor strike fear into their hearts. But, at least the sign had a picture of my wife on it that was encouraging for me as I sensed her rooting me on, all the way from Holland.

Ok, so now we take you to Saturday morning. It’s about 7:30 AM and it is time for the tournament to begin. First, Bill welcomed us and explained a little bit about how the next two days would go. Then we voted on how many divisions we should have (there were 23 participants) and we decided to break up into three divisions of eight teams each (which means one division had a dummy team which gives you a 1-1 record when you play that team).

   Photo during the draft from our division. Bill is the gentleman in the back in green. You can see my computer in the lower right which had the d-sim program running on it. This was perhaps the most intense time of the tournament because of how quickly you had to pick your next player. You can see everyone was very focused and busy studying their cards or charts.

I wanted to go with an eight- team division because there would be less teams to compete against in the draft and you can create a much stronger team. A 20-sided die was rolled within our division, to see in which order we would draft. My roll was not so high so I decided to pick in the 8th or last position of the draft so I would always see two picks together as our draft was done in reverse order in the odd rounds. Some of the members of our division included: Bill (who had won some tournaments before), Ben Leong (also another top finisher), Eric Wayne (who finished second in our tourney and was part of the Star Associates who oversee the tourney), and Vic Horath (who just won the Boston tournament at the end of August). So some pretty good players were in our group -- what chance did a newbie like me have?

Well, I discovered my draft pick gave me some extra time (2 minutes to grab 2 players) to decide upon which players the Wolfmen would adopt. We were given a sheet where we wrote in the players being drafted for each team. At first it was pretty easy for me to decide who to go with as the first few rounds followed the order of the major players shown on the Average Pick Sheet. To aid me with my selections, I had in front of me all the cards sorted by position, my notebook computer running the dsim program (so I could see which players the computer suggested) and all of my rating sheets. But I found as we went into the later rounds, with little time between picks, I started to panic a bit.

Does it look like I know what I am doing in the draft. I thought I did and that I was picking a champion team. I found that due to the quickness of the draft that all my charts didn't help me so much and looking at the player's cards and seeing what the d-sim program suggested were the easiest way to do the draft. Plus you had no time to study what teams your opponents were making -- Go CUBS!

Below, are the draft picks in our division from the first two rounds:

Round 1)   1) Bonds 2) Edmonds 3) R. Johnson 4) Rolen 5) Pujols 6) Beltre
                7) Drew 8) Helton (Wolfmen)

Round 2) 9) Suzuki (Wolfmen) 10) Mora 11) A. Rod 12) Berkman
              13) Zambrano 14) L. Walker 15) Santana 16) Beltran

For my team, I decided at the last minute during the draft itself that for my boys I would go after a good defensive team (i.e. Helton and Suzuki are both "1"'s), with a few hitters that had a pretty darn good on base percentage, and then draft later a pitcher's park. Thus I was going to try to get one main or ace starter and have the rest of the staff with low or no home runs on their card to support this pitcher's park and which would also help us when we played in a hitter's park. So based on my strategy, Helton and Suzuki seemed to be two very good picks to build our team. So with this strategy in mind, I decided for my next two picks I should take two of the best relief pitchers that were available:

Round 3) Wolfmen picked Nathan (for our closer, Wagner had been picked so far) and for Round 4) we took B J Ryan for our lefty ace reliever.

Again with the idea of having a good pitching team, I looked at our next pick to obtain what I consider to be an ace starting pitcher -- (R. Johnson and Santana, the best two were gone along with Schmidt, Clemens, Zambrano, Schilling, Sheets and Oswalt) so for Round 5) we took Peavy. For round 6, there are not so many quality catchers available, so I took Round 6) Posada (I. Rod is the best and was taken first) as he is good defensively, has power, a switch hitter and good on base (I have seen in both of my computer leagues that teams with several good on base players do well).

So I figured at this point, I had three good quality pitchers and three hitters with pretty decent on base percentage and Helton and Posada had some power.

For the next two rounds I felt I need to start to fill in the position players of my team (as I was watching to see who else was being picked, and if a position was running out of pretty good players) since the starting pitches I had slated with low home run chances are their cards were still around, so I could wait to pick more starters. I saw shortstop as a key position to take next (A. Rod was taken first and C. Guillen) so I felt the next best shortstop left, who was good defensively with speed and power was Round 7) Jeter and then I decided to take a 3B and went for Round 8) A. Ramirez from the Cubs (A. Rod, Lowell and Chavez, Rolen, Beltre were already taken), to add another good hitter with power. Since 3B and 1B only see two chances on the pitcher's card for x-ratings, I felt ok going with a 4 at 3B. When I asked Bill what he thought about my picks, he thought I could have waited on 3B, so this was perhaps the first mistake I made for our team by picking Ramirez this early instead of going for another position player or pitcher.

Continuing on into the draft, again I was looking to fill in our starting position players and decided to stay with good power hitters but also hitters with good defense and I chose Round 9) Boone at 2B (a "1") and Round 10) Jones in CF from the Braves (also a "1") so I had four position players rated at "1" thus far. Of course taking Boone was a gamble as he is not a great hitter for this season. When I finish the discussion of our draft I will show all the players we had by position.

As draft continued, I thought since we have 7 of our 8 main position players set (who generally will start against all type of pitchers) and we already had two excellent relief pitchers in our camp that I should try to build our starting pitchers up next. So following this philosophy, I looked for those starters with no or little homer run chances on their card for Round 11) and chose Hudson from the A's and in Round 12) I picked Penny from the Dodgers.

Continuing to try to build up our pitching staff, for Round 13) I picked Carrara who is a good reverse righty reliever and then in Round 14) I took Smoltz to become my middle innings workhorse and stopper.

For Round 15), I thought I should do some platooning and selected S. Finley to share CF with A. Jones and then I felt since I have a team more bent toward defense and pitching I should take the best pitcher's park available and I selected Round 16) San Diego (which is rated Singles L 1-7, R 1; Homerun L & R 1). I felt that I had good enough hitting and pitching that we could win a lot of low scoring games in this park. This was perhaps the biggest mistake I made in the tournament as I didn't draft enough pure hitters to win in the park as you will see.

For the next two rounds, I decided I better get a left handed starter so for Round 17) I picked Davis from Milwaukee and then I didn't have a left fielder yet, so I picked Round 18) Werth from the Dodgers to play in LF verses lefties.

Round 19) I felt the best left handed LF available with Power was Burnitz so we took him and then for Round 20) I picked Freel who is one of the best all round players with a good on base average, can steal bases and play a number of positions (in the OF and INF).

Round 21) Here I saw that Everett on the Astros was still around so again thinking defense and especially to get a "1" at shortstop for the late innings we picked him. Round 22) I took Konerko who I thought could help us if we played against a tough lefty starter, to have a good power hitting 1B

Round 23) I decided to take Escobar -- even though we had four starters, I thought he has a pretty good card and if we started him in San Diego or at home, then his ballpark homer runs against righties are neutralized (this is a common strategy I saw other participants do, get a pitcher with a lot of ball park homers but use them in a pitcher's park). Round 24) we took M. Stanton for our reverse lefty relief pitcher.

Finally to finish our draft, we went with Round 25) J. Walker from the Tigers to be another lefty ace reliever and we needed a backup catcher, so we took Round 26) Schneider from the Expos who has a very good throwing arm.

So to round out our team, by position here is who we had:

SP - Peavy / Hudson / Penny / Davis / Escobar

RP - Nathan (closer) / Ryan (closer) / Smoltz (middle) /
        Carrara (rev Righty ace) /Stanton (rev Lefty ace) / Walker (lefty ace)

C   - Posada / Schneider

1B - Helton / Konerko
2B - Boone / Freel
SS - Jeter / Everett
3B - Ramirez / Freel

LF - Burnitz / Werth / Freel
CF - Jones / Findley
RF - Suzuki / Burnitz / Werth / Freel

I believed we had drafted a pretty balanced team that could compete in both a hitters' and pitchers' park. But, one thing that really hurt us is that when we played in San Diego, we lost a lot of power due to ball park homers as this basically nullified the power of Finley, Burnitz, Konerko, and Boone (vs Lefties) and to a degree with Ramirez. We really need a few more enough pure hitters -- players for example like Berkman, M. Ramirez, Loretta, Matsui, and Sheffield who have a good average and on base percentage.

But when we use to play Strat-o-matic without the super-advance rules and ballparks, this type of team could actually be counted on to do quite well.

I will caution the readers that if you decide to go with a pitcher's park you really have to know what you are doing. In addition to good pitching and defense you need to have almost every hitter with a pretty good on base percentage. For my team, outside of Helton and Suzuki, we didn't have enough other good players that could help us to consistently score more runs.

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The Performance of the Skokie Wolfmen
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One thing I forgot to mention is that we would play each person in our division a two game series. You would roll the 20-sided die to see who was the home team for the first game, and then you switched for the second game. We also had a sheet which we wrote down for each game how many innings each pitcher went, so we could keep track of when a pitcher could start or how many available innings a reliever had.

The first game of this tourney was a sign of things to come for the Wolfmen. We were the home team and our opponent started Randy Johnson against us and we decided to go with Escobar. Well through 9 innings, it was a scoreless game however Johnson was throwing a no hitter at us. We had four walks and a hit by pitch but not one hit although we finally got one in the 10th (A starter can go a maximum of 10 innings).

In the 5th inning our opponent had the base loaded with one out but we got out of the jam and again in the 8th he had first and second with no outs but the next batter hit into a double play. The game went to 14 innings and an error on Ramirez allowed our opponent to score and win the first game, 1-0. (Note: In the 3rd inning I was confused with my batting order and I actually rolled a home run on A. Jones card but I thought Boone was up and we redid it. I was told later by Bill that if saw this error during the inning it happened, that the roll I did for A. Jones would have been legal so I could have possibly won this game 1-0. But, it was my first Star Tournament game and I was a bit nervous).

Game 2 was much more exciting as both teams hit well and after 4 innings it was tied 5-5. We had Davis pitching against R. Clemens. However in the top of the 9th Burnitz hit a 2-run homer and we had a 7-5 lead. But, in the first game we had to use up our ace closer Nathan due to the extra innings required. So B. J. Ryan was our man but unfortunately he was unable to hold the lead as our opponent scored three runs in the bottom of the 9th and went on to win 8-7. So, after the 1st round, the Wolfmen were 0-2, two one run game losses. And this was to be a sign of how the whole tournament would go.

Well not to bore you too much, our final record was 9-14 in the tourney, 8-13 in regular tourney play (there was one game I didn't play since my opponent and I were eliminated from the 1st round bracket). We were outscored by our opponents 98-67. There were nine games (11 games if you count our two games in the 3rd place bracket) decided by 1 run. I scored 5 or more runs only three times and scored 2 or less runs 11 times. So my team basically couldn't hit. In my own ball park we were 3-7.

While I never challenged for the title, I did beat some teams who were competing for a chance to be in the 1st place bracket so that at least was some small comfort. But the key for me was that I couldn't ever find a way to win consistently. I couldn't get a winning streak going. The best I ever did was to win two games in a row (I swept 2 series with a series consisting of 2 games).

Here I am playing against Kevin Heth -- this was one of my shinning moments as I won both games from Kevin. But Kevin got very hot on Sunday as well as swept me (for revenge a bit). Kevin won up in the 1st place bracket as the wild card team. A very nice guy!!

Some of my special moments included: In game #3 on the road (see photo above), the Wolfman scored 7 runs in the first inning including a grand slam by Burnitz and homers by Finley and Ramirez. This was against Kevin Heth wo actually wound up as the wild card team in the championship series. Kevin was virtually unbeatable during our 2nd day of play. In game #7, the Wolfmen were down 4-2 in the 8th but thanks to home runs by Jeter and Helton (a 2-run shot), we pulled out a 5-4 victory.

In game #11, the score was tied 6-6 (we had a 6-2 lead and couldn't hold it) and Helton came through with a 3-run homer in the 10th for a 9-6 win (this was against Ben Leong, who has won a number of tournaments in the past and over 1,000 tournament games; more than any other player). In Game 12 against the same player (Ben) the Wolfmen team was able to hold on to a 1-0 victory as Nathan had the save and Posada hit a solo home run. Game #14 was another nail bitter, 1-1 into the 8^th. The Wolfmen scored a run on a sacrifice by Suzuki, moving the runner to second so Jeter could knock him in. Then the Skokie relief got out of a bases loaded jam with two outs in the 8th and retired the side in the 9th for a 2-1 win against Bill Fenlon (he said if he won this game he would have been in 1st in our division). In game #16, Finley's homer in the 9th gave the Wolfmen a come from behind victory as they beat Ben again, 5-4. Finally in our 20th game, thanks to three home runs (one by Ramirez and two-two run shots by Konerko), we were able to hold on for a 6-4 win.

The Wolfmen did play two games in the 3rd round bracket, and as you guessed it, both games were decided by one run each. In our first game of this bracket we scored two runs in the top of the first because of some aggressive (but low odds) base running and then a stolen base, an error on the catcher and a balk brought in the winning run as we just won by a score of 3-2. The Skokie relief staff pitched 2-2/3 of scoreless relief for the save. Then for our second game we played against Mr. Star Tournament himself, Hank Smith. Hank had a team similar to our own with good defense and playing in a pitcher’s park. It turned out Jason Kendall's two run shot in the 3rd against Escobar was the winning total (a low split on his own card). The Wolfmen scored a run on a homer by Burnitz and we had first and third with no out in the 9^th. But we just couldn't bring the runner home against Brad Lidge and ended our campaign with a 2-1 loss.

Here is an overview of how the Wolfmen did from a statistical point of view:

In the 23 games we played the Wolfmen hit only .203 as a team. They hit 21 homers and stole 10 bases and committed 12 errors. They averaged just a little over 3 runs a game which is not enough to win any tournament.

Burnitz led the team with four homers and 11 RBIs and Steve Finley led the hitters with a .277 average.

The pitchers didn't do too bad. The team had an ERA of 3.98 with Carrera
(2-0 and 1 save) having a 2.70 ERA and Nathan (2-1 with 2 saves) with a 2.57 ERA. But, they gave up an average of 4.36 runs per game.

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Final Comments about the Tournament
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Well it was great to finally be able to play over 30 games of Strat-o-matic in about a week against some very talented and knowledgeable opponents. I gained a greater appreciation of the super-advanced game and really got to see how all the new rules make the game even more realistic and more challenging to play then ever before.

I liked the other players I met at the tournament. Although there were a few managers who were very intense about their game and were either a bit over excited or overly depressed, everyone was very friendly and helpful. The other players were willing to answer my rookie questions and one time I made a mistake (didn't take a ballpark home run) and the opponent went back in fair play and allowed it (that was Vic). It is this honesty that is refreshing and which made it fun to be a part of this great tournament. I learned a lot from the other players and I am sure the next time I participate in a Star Tournament; the Wolfmen will not be such a pushover. Other than my personal challenges with the dice towers, I thought the tournament was done very professionally and in a very fair and balanced way. I felt that everyone there truly had the same chance to win. (But who had the luck huh?)

For myself, when I saw that my team wasn't able to perform at the level it needed to win, I just relaxed and didn't worry about winning. I tried to do my best and just enjoyed being with some of the best players and people on the planet. I experimented with some different strategies and lineups and also observed what my worthy opponents were doing and which players they had drafted.

I really want to thank Bill for making this an enjoyable experience. I think he is a great guy and a very knowledgeable player (he has most of the game memorized). And, as he said, his main intention was to make sure that all the participants (all the guys, where are the female challengers?) were feeling comfortable so they could enjoy and focus upon their tournament play. However, I think having such responsibilities probably distracted Bill from doing better in the tournament. I was happy that I could at least beat him once (he had Bonds so we walked that guy a lot).

As far as Hank Smith, “The Proud Papa” of the Star Tournaments, I want to publicly acknowledge him for his dedication and all the efforts he has done in the past (as you will discover via his interview) to make the Star Tournaments happen. I couldn't think of a nicer person to play against and be eliminated from a tournament as by Hank. He handled himself in a very humble way and was always very positive and cheerful. We are lucky to have Hank around to make such tournaments possible. Although he is not one of the people leading the tourneys today, he did set the ground rules and all of us are prospering for it. And finally, to all the other folks who are supporting the Star Tournaments that I didn't get to meet (Stan Suderman and the board of directors) a big thank you as well. Keep up the Great Job! And, carry on boys!!

I would personally recommend, that if you enjoy face-to-face play with Strat-o-matic baseball, that you should go to at least one Star Tournament. Whether you win or lose doesn't matter. The experiences you will gain and the aspects of the game you will learn here will help you in all your future play for a very long time.

As I step back now and finish my personal side of this report, and think about where tournaments have come since those early days in the 1970's, I see that this game and the love of this game is not going to go away any time soon. And that the people who play the game, who are the most important, are some of the best people you would ever want to meet. Age doesn't matter in this game (although there were very few young people who came to Chicago). Once you sit down across your opponent it is one manager against another.

Our friends and family might not always understand us spending so much time on this pastime and our loyalty and love of this game. But, when you go to a tournament and you are in a room with other Strat-o-matic fanatics, we all understand the joys of winning and the disappointment of defeat. Yet, we can still be there to support each other and cheer when we each have our time to be a champion that day. Of course luck does have a lot to do with winning. But, still the people who finished at the top of our tournament were all very knowledgeable players and they each knew what they had to do to draft a good team and to win. So I congratulate the winners of this tournament:

1)     The Champion -- Mike Cohen and the runner up Eric Wayne (watch out Eric, next time we will give you a run for your money -- ha ha!!)

2)     Dave Hegg and Hank Smith for finishing 3rd (tied)

3)     Mark Delpopolo and Kevin Heth (in 5th and 6th)

So, to all those who read this article and decide to go to a Star Tournament in the future enjoy yourself. But, watch out, because you haven't heard the last from the Wolfman. My competitive side always come out (but I did shake the hand of all my opponents and wished them luck) and perhaps one day, even though I was never able to win at one of the tournaments we personally organized before in the so-called early days we have a "Star" in our sights.

Ok to finish this article, in our last part, I did have a chance to interview the two big guns at the tournament, the director and founder, Bill Fenlon and Hank Smith. I think you will find some of their comments and answers very interesting to offer to you some other perspectives on the Star Tournaments and their history.

First lets hear from the creator of the tournaments, good old Hank ... take it away mate ...............

To Continue Reading
Part III

(click above)

To correspond with the "Wolfman" feel free to send him an email at:
wolfmanshapiro@gmail.com

To view the leagues that the "Wolfman" is competing in, feel free to visit:

THE CBA (www.cba-bb.net -- check out the Skokie Wolfmen)
THE PSBL (www.psbl.us ---- check out the Skokie Cubs, 2005-2006 seasons)

To read the article entitled "The Wolfman's Return to SOM", which deals
with his first computer league the CBA (as shown above), please click on:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/WolfmanReturns-PI.html

Good luck everyone with your Strat-o-matic Seasons

................ the Skokie Wolfman