Over the years, I’ve been amazed at the accuracy of the player cards in the Strat-O-Matic baseball game.
The good players really do come through when they need to … most of the time unless you can’t roll a 20-sided die successfully.
As my 1975 Cincinnati Reds season replay has progressed, two things have happened that caused me to do a little research.
The two players involved are the Jack Billingham (1975 Reds) and Bob Gibson (1967 St. Louis Cardinals).
Billingham was a quality pitcher in his six seasons with Cincinnati. In 1975, he was 15-10 with a 4.11 ERA.
Overall, he was 145-113 in 13 seasons with an 87-63 mark with the Reds. He was an all-star and was inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame in 1984.
The Slugger?
Something that Billingham didn’t do well was hit with a career batting average of .111 and 23 RBI.
In real life, Billingham never hit a home run in 656 plate appearances.
In Strat-O-Matic, Billingham has one career long ball off the 1967 version of Ray Washburn‘s card in a win over St. Louis.
While Washburn did give up 14 homers that season, none were to pitchers.
Although Billingham’s homer was very unlikely, it’s pretty easy to believe it because after all, Bartolo Colon has one in real life.
Rough Outing
Two games after Billingham’s moment in the sun, Gibson gave up eight runs by the time he left a game with two outs in the sixth as the Cardinals were on their way to a 9-0 loss to the 1975 Reds.
When one thinks of Gibson, getting hammered on the mound isn’t what comes to mind.
Gibson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981. He was 251-174 with St. Louis in a career that spanned from 1959 to 1975.
Maybe the 1975 version of Gibson would be possible for a bad outing because he did lose 6-0 in his only start against the Reds that year.
However, this is 1967 when Gibson led the Cardinals to a victory in the World Series over the Boston as he had a dominating performance against the Red Sox with three wins.
Gibson suffered a broken leg on July 15 as he was hit by a smash up the middle by Pittburgh’s Roberto Clemente, but he finished the season 13-7 with a 2.98 ERA despite missing nearly seven weeks.
It didn’t seem to make sense that Gibson could be so bad. However before his injury, Gibson did suffer one of the worst performances of his career on June 29 against the San Francisco Giants.
In the top of the first at Busch Stadium, Gibson could only get two outs as he gave up nine runs on seven hits with a pair of walks.
Ouch.
The Giants were not done as they scored 11 runs in that inning on their way to a 12-4 win.
As bad a Gibson was that day, his counterpart from the Giants didn’t make it through the first inning either.
Joe Gibbon faced four batters and didn’t retire any of them as he gave up two runs. Bobby Bolin came on for the Giants and finished the game to get the win.
Perspective
It may be safe to assume that the Strat-O-Matic player cards are probably pretty close to being realistic, but there still may be such craziness as a random homer by Billingham or even Colon.
But isn’t witnessing the unexpected what makes baseball so fun even when you are rolling dice against a friend?