Let's play ball! 52 years of Strat-O-Matic baseball league in East Meadow

What started out as a way to have fun with friends has ultimately turned into the country’s oldest known Strat-O-Matic baseball league. The East Meadow Strat-O-Matic league was founded in 1972, and this season marks 52 consecutive years of play.

The league was founded by Jim Drucker, who grew up on Clearmeadow Drive. It originally comprised fewer than 10 players, all friends from East Meadow, most of whom also lived on Clearmeadow.

They didn’t play for money — just bragging rights — and that’s still the case.

Strat-O-Matic is a company that develops sports simulation games based on real players’ statistics, much like fantasy sports leagues today. It creates simulations for sports including baseball, football, basketball and hockey. New cards are released each season showing the statistics of players from the previous season.

Each athlete’s card has various ratings and result tables for dice rolls. The game players make strategic decisions for their teams, such as batting order, when to hit or bunt, when to substitute players and more, while monitoring the results of their in-game decisions by cross-referencing dice rolls with a system of charts and tables. The rolls of the dice determine the outcome of each at-bat.

The game is conducted as if in real time.

How the East Meadow league got its start

“In 1965, one of the guys in the neighborhood got a gift of Strat-O-Matic, and it caught on, and that’s all we did all summer,” Drucker, 70, recalled. “We had a great time, and we had a league that we played outdoors, and it was a great time killer on rainy days.”

Drucker said that during Thanksgiving break in 1971, the group members were home from their respective colleges or jobs, and they argued about who the best baseball player was that year. Someone mentioned that they dig out their old Strat-O-Matic gear and get the newest version of the cards.

“We had a draft where we picked one player at a time, and we wanted to see who could put together the best team,” Drucker recounted. “I was the organizer, and I was always putting together schedules and stuff, and we had a ball. So when everyone asked if we wanted to do it again next year, I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”

The friends started playing before any of them had careers, so they decided to name their teams after their fathers’ occupations, according to Drucker. Drucker’s father, Norm, was a referee in the NBA, so Jim’s team became the Drucker Whistles. Another original player, Michael Finkelman, who became a firefighter, like his father, named his team the Finkelman Firemen.

Jeffrey Weintraub, 74, who started playing in the league in 1975, after he bought a house next door to the Druckers, named his squad the Weintraub Pearls because his father was in the jewelry business. Weintraub has been the team’s commissioner since 1979.

More than half a century of play

Through the years, Drucker said, teams have come and gone, new players have joined, and some teams have taken years-long breaks, but league play goes on.

“It’s interesting — we’ve gone through our entire lives, being preteens to teenagers to college students to getting married, having kids, to getting divorced here and there,” Drucker said. “It’s a lot of fun, and for many years we hid that we played this kid game, but then one of us said that it was just like poker night for all of us, and that was it — we came out of the Strat-O-Matic closet.”

Not everyone lives so close anymore. Drucker lives in Philadelphia, and another player lives in New Jersey. Others still live on Long Island, and those who can make it to the games still play in person. And whenever Drucker can make it to the area, he does, too.

“We didn’t even notice how many years we’d been playing until we came up on the 40th anniversary,” Drucker said. “And it wasn’t until the internet came up that we really figured out that we had something going.”

The league, which usually consists of seven teams, has two big celebrations when all the players make the trip to be together, and it’s been held at Borrelli’s Restaurant in East Meadow for 40 years. They have a winter meeting in February, and then a celebration after the World Series in the fall.

The other time they all try to meet is for their draft, usually in May.

“We start off fresh every year — you pick your draft number from scratch from a hat,” Weintraub said. “Our goal is to make sure that the guys stay interested, because we’re doing something for fun as a hobby and it does take time. You want to feel competitive and like you have a chance.”

Camaraderie among friends

The games get competitive, Weintraub said, but it’s also a fun time filled with lots of emotions.

“This is like being a 12-year-old and hitting a home run,” Weintraub said. “There is a child behind every one of these men, and I know that for a fact, because you can see it in their eyes.”

Steve Epstein, of East Meadow, is considered a new player, even though he’s now 10 years deep into the league. He joined with his team — the Epstein Barristers, because he’s a lawyer — after he found out about the league from another member. But he’s actually played Strat-O-Matic since he was a kid.

“First of all, you get to strategize and play a game as if you were the manager of a major league baseball team,” Epstein, 54, said when asked why he loves the game. “I think one of the great things about baseball is that it’s a real American pastime. Not only is the game a pastime, but it’s a cultural pastime, like how my father and I used to go baseball games together.

“But I think one of the things that’s special about baseball, more than other sports, is the significance of statistics,” he added.

Epstein joined the league because he loved baseball and Strat-O-Matic, but he’s stuck around for the friendships. He has a teammate, Mark Levine, who plays for him when he can’t.

“I love playing the game, I love strategizing, winning, and I love the interaction with my friends that I’ve developed through playing the game,” Epstein said. “There are guys in this league, especially Jimmy (Drucker) and Jeff (Weintraub), who can tell you about games that happened in 1972, and they can tell it to you with specific recollection. It’s very interesting how much passion and love for the game there is for the people that follow it.”

This year’s draft was on May 23. Most of team members gathered at the Muttontown Country Club to share food, laughter and baseball stats.

Drucker said he didn’t intend to stop playing until the league’s 75th anniversary season in 2047.

“It’s just friendship personified,” he said of the league. “Strat-O-Matic is the glue that helps us hold it together.”