I Learned About Sabermetrics Playing Strat-O-Matic

I began playing Strat-O-Matic in the late '70s. My next-door neighbor and I started with the football board, dice and cards game, but quickly added Strat-O-Matic Baseball to our arsenal. We even dabbled with Strat-O-Matic Basketball a bit, but it didn't take long to realize it was a little boring.

Strat-O-Matic Football was fun, but baseball was definitely where it was at. Not because it involved a great deal of strategy—other than setting lineups and making pitching changes, it's mostly about the luck of the dice—but because baseball is, and has always been, about statistics.

The statistics some of emphasize have changed over the years, but they've always been a huge part of any serious fan's enjoyment of the game. Obviously, the kind of kid who got into a game like Strat-O-Matic was also the type who didn't mind digging into the numbers in an attempt to determine who was worthy of playing time and who wasn't.

It didn't take long for us to start figuring out the probabilities of each roll of the dice. It's pretty simple math, really. By determining, when rolling two dice, there are six possible ways to roll a seven, five ways to roll a six and eight, four for a five and nine, etc., we were able to determine the percentage chances of each outcome.

Eventually, my standard practice became to write each batter's total hit chances, on-base chances and home run chances versus both right-handed and left-handed pitchers directly on the card. Of course, I similarly evaluated each pitcher against each type of batter. I did this all in pencil, of course, which seemed like a good idea in theory. But, as you can probably imagine, eventually those numbers gave way to smudge marks.

Still, writing those numbers on the cards, and realizing a player with 54 on-base chances has only a 50% chance of making an out if the roll refers to his card* influenced me to emphasize on-base percentage and power. For some reason, when you're the one rolling the dice for each play, the value of avoiding outs becomes more obvious than usual. And, of course, what's better than a home run? Right, a home run with runners on base.

*When rolling two dice, there are 36 different potential rolls (6 times 6). A third die is also rolled, which determines which of six colums to refer to. 1-3 are on the batter's card, 4-6 on the pitcher's card. Remember how I said there were six possible ways to roll a seven? That would count as six total chances. 36 chances per column times three columns on the player's card equals 108. Now, of course, you see that 54 is exactly half of 108.

So, long before I had ever heard of Bill James, it was Strat-O-Matic Baseball that introduced me to the world of advanced statistics. Sort of. OK, not really advanced statistics, but we all know OBP was essentially the gateway to OPS+, wOBA, WAR and some even more advance sabermetric statistics.

After my initial purchase of the most current set of cards that came with the game, I developed an interest in the old-timers sets. I'm not sure why, except I'm pretty sure it was less jarring to my sensibilities to make what sometimes seemed like unorthodox personnel decisions with players I wasn't all that familiar with.

1956 was one of the first old-timers sets available, and when I bought it I had no idea how interested in some of those older players I would become. OK, well I will admit one of the catalysts for said interest involved a lot of drinking while in college.

I'll explain. One of my college roommates and I played a 162-game series between the '56 Reds and '56 Tigers, which we called the Busch Drinking Series.** Yeah, I know 162 is an even number, so in reality it was a 163-game series, since if it ended in a tie, we would have had to play the extra game. But, we wanted it to be the equivalent of a full season of games, although I'm not really sure why we played 162 instead of 154.

**The Busch Drinking Series, I would be embarrassed to admit if I wasn't in college at the time, was named after the 16 oz. cans of Budweiser's cheaper—but not necessarily inferior—cousin we drank while playing a drinking game which revolved around the "on-field" outcomes.

The defensive manager drank a sip of beer for each total base (one for single, two for double, etc.), walk, HBP, stolen base and run scored by the offensive team. I think he even had to drink when his team committed an error. The offensive manager drank once for each out his team made. Some simple math will tell you a grand slam meant eight sips, or about half of a 16 oz. beer. Needless to say, the drinks added up, especially considering we chose two strong offensive teams with mediocre—at best—pitching, and it was kind of an unwritten rule you never started a player for his defense if it meant sacrificing offense in the process.

What does the drinking series have to do with sabermetrics? Not much, really. But, a couple of those '56 Tigers players—the team I managed to a somewhat dubious 76-86 record—were among the prime examples of hitters who seemed much better to me than I would have otherwise thought.

Earl Torgeson was a .264 hitter with above average power, above average speed, and average defensive skills at first base. Not much to write home about, right? Except for the fact he walked 78 times in exactly 400 plate appearances, for a .406 OBP. Despite the fact he wasn't a base-stealer, he instantly screamed leadoff hitter to me.

Now, I must admit I don't necessarily deserve a lot of credit for looking past his lack of base-stealing ability to make him my leadoff hitter. Harvey Kuenn led the team with a grand total of nine stolen bases. But, Kuenn's .332 batting average better fit the bill—by the standards of those days—despite the fact his .387 OBP was almost 20 points lower, so in real life, he batted primarily at the top of the order.

Torgeson was a platoon player, but when he played, he mostly hit second. Since he had only one sacrifice hit that year, this probably means Detroit had the right idea with the way he was used. He simply was another guy at the top of the order who had the ability to get on base in front of Charlie Maxwell, Al Kaline and Ray Boone. But, I still thought it would make more sense to swap the two in the order, to have the higher OBP guy batting in front of the better run producer (Kuenn out-slugged Torgeson .470 to .425).

Another player on that team whose ability to draw a walk enhanced my desire to over-use him, somewhat unrealistically, was a catcher named Bob "Red" Wilson. Also a platoon player in real life, Wilson got the bulk of his playing time versus left-handed pitching, with Frank House being the other half of the platoon.

Wilson hit .289 with a .393 OBP and a .452 slugging percentage in 1956, and he was equally as good vs. RHP as he was vs. LHP. Of course, the batting average and slugging percentage only hint of a pretty good offensive player, but it was the OBP that made him stand out. So, despite the fact he wasn't quite as good as House defensively, he was an easy choice as my full-time backstop.

I guess the point of this all is to say playing Strat-O-Matic taught me to appreciate players who I might not have otherwise thought very highly of. Sure, I learned "a walk's as good as a hit" back when I was an eight-year old playing organized baseball for the first time. But, somehow those words never rang true. Even at such a young age, I knew, in most cases, a hit was actually better than a walk. As I got a little older, I realized those adults who were saying that really just thought of a walk as a consolation prize for kids who had difficulty reaching base otherwise.

What most of those adults probably never realized was they were making a case for why the ability to draw a walk is such an under-appreciated skill. Of course, when the pitchers are so young, we're probably talking more about their lack of ability than the batter's eye for the strike zone.

But, what I didn't realize was so important until playing Strat-O-Matic taught it to me many years later, is a walk accomplishes two really important things: it puts a runner on base—with the exception of a home run, a runner has to reach base before he can score—and it avoids an out (you only get a finite number of those).

It's a pretty simple concept, really. And, let's not let our judgment be clouded by what we've always thought to be true, the ability to draw a walk at competitive levels is a skill, perhaps even a talent. Dare I say, but maybe—in the discussion of what's often referred to as the five tools of a ballplayer—it's about time the ability to hit for average be replaced by the ability to get on base.

Anyway, what reminded me of this is that I recently signed on to "absentee-manage" the '58 Tigers in Jeff Polman's Mysteryball '58 Strat-O-Matic replay and murder mystery blog. Unfortunately, Torgeson has since been traded to the White Sox, but Wilson, Kuenn, Maxwell, Kaline and Boone—for a couple months, at least—remain. Still, it's a much weaker offensive team than the '56 version, partly because Maxwell is a shell of his former self, Boone's now a platoon first-baseman rather than a third-baseman (and on his way out), and Kuenn's offensive contributions come from center field instead of shortstop.

But, my excitement about this particular project, while it initially had to do with my minor involvement in it, is now more a product of my interest in the tale that Jeff will be telling via new entries to the blog three times a week. Let's just say he had me at "Tough to make out a dead body when it’s covered in peanut shells and Royal Crown Cola," the opening line to the story's first entry, "Unsafe at Home."

Only three posts have been written so far, so there's not much catching up to do if you're a fan of baseball murder mysteries, or if that concept intrigues you as much as it does me. I can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed. Just don't get your hopes up for my Tigers.

The Earl of Snohomish

In the late '70s, my next-door neighbor (and childhood best friend) and I discovered Strat-O-Matic, first football and then baseball. The football game, while somewhat strategically deficient, did have the element of trying to out-think your opponent that the baseball game was lacking. It provided hundreds of hours of entertainment for us—including our annual Thanksgiving day matchup between the '58 Colts and '58 Giants—but, ultimately, we decided the baseball game was better.

I'm not really sure why. As I already inferred, Strat-O-Matic Baseball was more about luck than was Strat-O-Matic Football. Case in point: Brian was the quarterback of our high school football team and simply had a knack for figuring out what I was thinking, to the point he probably won about 55% of the football games. This despite the fact you didn't have to have any in-depth knowledge of football strategy to understand the game. Now, when we played more complex football strategy games, he flat out kicked my butt.

So, the reason we liked Strat-O-Matic Baseball better was probably because Strat-O-Matic Football didn't satisfy Brian's desire for real football strategy, and because I was tired of him coaching inferior teams to victories over mine. Baseball was a much more level playing field. I was a little more knowledgeable, but it really didn't matter.

When the college years came along, Brian and I invented a drinking game associated with Strat-O-Matic Baseball that we played with the Hall of Famer set of cards. As evidenced by the fact he became my first home brewing partner around the same time, suffice it to say our interest in re-creating sports contests wasn't the only thing Brian and I had in common.

I'm not going to go into detail regarding the rules of the game, but I will say high scoring games resulted in inebriated managers. The game worked well with the Hall of Famer set because, when the odds are 50-50 the hitter's card will determine the outcome of an at bat, there is no such thing as strong pitching beating strong hitting.

Although Brian and I invented the game, my college buddy, Stein, and I perfected it during what we dubbed the Busch Drinking Series (BDS). The BDS was so named for the 16 oz. cans of the brand of beer we consumed while playing. OK, before you give me a hard time for drinking Budweiser's inferior—if that's even possible—cousin...yes, I had discovered home brewing, and had a bit of taste for what would later come to be known as craft beer, but I was still a college student, after all.

The Busch Drinking Series consisted of an entire 162-game series played between the same two teams, the 1956 Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati Reds.

Why did we choose these two teams, you ask? Well, first of all, Strat-O-Matic had just begun to release entire sets of teams from past years, and 1956 was one of the first. I think my interest in purchasing one of these sets, which consisted of many players I wasn't at all familiar with, was just that. If I wanted to try to use these players unrealistically, it meant a lot less to me if a player I didn't know a lot about performed beyond his capabilities.

The reason we chose the Tigers and the Reds, in particular, was these two teams had potent offenses and not necessarily good pitching. The Reds led the National League in runs, home runs, and slugging percentage, and were second in batting average and on-base percentage (OBP). Their pitching staff was not terrible, but definitely below average, finishing fifth—out of eight teams—in team ERA and WHIP (base-runners allowed per inning), and second-to-last in strikeouts.

The Tigers led the American League in batting average, and finished second in runs, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and third in home runs. On the pitching side, they were fourth in team ERA, and sixth in WHIP and home runs allowed.

The idea was a success, at least in terms of the incredible offensive displays put on by both teams. We kept statistics, of course, but when I came across them several years ago, they were incomplete. I did, however, find the mid-season statistics I had compiled for the Tigers, the team I managed. Through 80 games, five players had 50 or more RBI (Ray Boone, Bob Wilson, Al Kaline, Charlie Maxwell, Harvey Kuenn) and six had 50 or more runs scored (Earl Torgeson, Kuenn, Maxwell, Kaline, Wilson, Boone). At that point, my team had 95 home runs, 522 runs scored and a composite batting average of .307.

I'm pretty certain we didn't quite maintain that pace for the entire season, as we actually lost the series 86-76. I am pretty sure, though, only a few of the aforementioned players fell short in their bids for 100 runs and/or 100 RBI, so it was a potentially record-setting performance. As you can imagine, my opposition's numbers were equally as impressive, although you'd be somewhat surprised to hear we actually outscored them over the course of the 162 games. I guess that's at least a partial indictment of my ability as a manager.

Perhaps my favorite player on the 1956 Tigers was Earl Torgeson, my leadoff hitter and on-base machine. Torgeson's success reflects the fact my thinking was way ahead of my time, as I fell in love with players who didn't necessarily hit for a high average, but who walked a lot and had a little bit of power. In 1956, Torgeson batted .264 with 78 walks—for a .406 OBP—and 12 home runs in just 318 at bats. For his career, he was a .265 hitter with a .385 OBP.

At the time, I likened Torgeson to Mike Hargrove, who actually was a little better hitter for average (.290) with a little less power (.391 career slugging percentage to Torgeson's .417), but who also played first base and had a similar penchant for drawing walks (.396 career OBP).

Torgeson was born and raised in Snohomish, Washington, and is one of two former major league players from that town with the name of Earl, the other being Hall of Famer Earl Averill. Probably not coincidentally, both were nicknamed "The Earl of Snohomish."

Averill played from 1929 to 1941, and Torgeson from 1947 to 1961, so it's likely Torgeson was given the nickname in honor of Averill. Regardless, this post is a tribute to my favorite Earl of Snohomish, Clifford Earl Torgeson.

I got the chance to visit his home town over this past holiday season—my brother-in-law's family lives there—and it was everything I imagined it would be.

Winter Hill Root Brew

In a somewhat surprising move, I recently took my first stab at non-alcoholic brewing. About three weekends ago, KJ and I made a trip to the local home brew store with the intention of attempting to make root beer. This was her idea, so she basically took the lead with most everything, but I was totally on board with the concept. She did most of the research and developed the recipe, borrowing ideas from other concoctions of course, while I lent my relative expertise in the areas of sanitation procedures and determining the ideal temperature for the pitching of the yeast.

As it turns out, root beer takes considerably less time to make than alcoholic beer, mostly owing to the fact that it doesn't have to ferment. The yeast is added for the sole purpose of carbonation, although the combination of yeast and sugar must mean there's at least a little fermentation. Needless to say, the wheels are now spinning inside my head.

We recently tasted our finished product—which we're naming Winter Hill Root Brew after the Somerville neighborhood in which it was made—for the first time, and it was pretty good. Judging by the smells that were emanating from my place during the time since we brewed it, I thought it was going to be much sweeter than it turned out, so we'll have to make some adjustments the next time around. Overall, though, we're fairly pleased with the results.

There is still an update pending on my latest alcoholic brew, for which my brewing partner and I labored over the naming process before finally settling on a moniker. I'm going to save that for a subsequent post, though, as I recently ordered labels and am excited to see how they turn out. I'll include a photo with that update.

Four Nights in the Garden of Good and Evil

Following our visit to Atlanta and Turner Field, and a brief stopover at my cousins’ place just outside of Greenville, South Carolina—the former hometown of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson—KJ and I ventured down to Savannah. A charming and historic port city on the coast of Georgia, Savannah lies at the mouth of the river that shares its name. It also has a unique history of interesting, and sometimes eccentric, people and mysterious circumstances.

Our first night in Savannah, we wandered around town, getting the lay of the land. The city’s historic district is comprised of 24 squares, although three of these were all but destroyed due to development in the 1950s. Unlike in Boston, where a square is really just a chaotic maze-like intersection, Savannah’s squares are basically miniature parks. Most of them are shaded by Spanish moss covered live oak trees, and many feature fountains and/or statues as their centerpieces.

The next morning, we visited the Mercer House, which was less than a block away from our B&B. The home was built by the great-grandfather of Academy Award winning lyricist Johnny Mercer (“Moon River”, “Days of Wine and Roses”), who was also the co-founder of Capitol Records. The Mercers never lived there, though, but antiques dealer and Savannah socialite Jim Williams—the central character in John Berendt’s true-crime murder story Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil—did.

Speaking of Moon River, and since a trip to a new area wouldn’t be complete without tasting some locally brewed beer, the afternoon brought us to Savannah’s one and only brewpub. Moon River Brewing Company’s Wild Wacky Wit is an ordinary, but refreshing, orange peel and coriander-spiced Belgian-style wheat that went well with our lunch on a hot and sunny day. Their Savannah Fest is a German-style fest beer with medium malt character and a nice hop/malt balance. It was most enjoyable, though, due to the fact that Savannah’s lack of an open container law allowed me to get it “to-go” in a plastic cup and consume it while walking around town.

Our second night was not without incident. After much indecision about where to go to dinner, we ended up at a place whose menu did little for me, at least partly due to my distaste for seafood. We opted to just have a drink there prior to moving on, but not before I proceeded to let a pint glass slip out of my hand and knock over KJ’s drink in the process, spilling the majority of both drinks on my lap. The waitress replaced both drinks—mine was a SweetWater Georgia Brown—but considering the state of my shorts, we decided to dine at Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

The SweetWater Georgia Brown was unimpressive, as are most American brown ales—with the exception of Brooklyn Brown—it seems. This one, though, was oddly over-carbonated but with virtually no head retention. Five Guys, on the other hand, was easily the best fast-food hamburger I’ve ever tasted. This was my first visit to the Washington DC based chain, and I left there hoping they have plans to open more locations than the three that are within 20 miles of Boston.

A trip to the south just wouldn’t seem right without some barbecue, and our third night was highlighted by a visit to a place called Blowin’ Smoke. Besides having a great bottled beer list—although I opted for a Dale’s Pale Ale, a rare microbrew in a can—this joint featured the best Kansas City Ribs and green beans I’ve ever had. Their pulled pork, fried pickles and mac & cheese were boast-worthy as well, and the Dale’s—a strong ale that perfectly straddles the line between pale ale and IPA—was the perfect complement.

On our fourth, and final, night we re-enacted a memorable scene from the aforementioned book—well, sort of—by driving to Bonaventure Cemetery with a couple of cocktails, and drinking them while sitting on the grave of writer Conrad Aiken. Now, before you jump to the conclusion that this was a disrespectful act, I should tell you that Aiken’s gravestone is built in the shape of a bench, and he had it made that way for this very purpose.

Aiken’s successful life and career as a poet and writer of short stories was despite a tragic childhood. At 11 years old, the Savannah native found the bodies of his dead parents, the casualties of a murder-suicide committed by his father. He was subsequently raised by relatives in Massachusetts, returning to Savannah later in life, where he lived out his final 11 years.

Overall, our trip to the 13th colony was one of my best vacations in recent memory. That, of course, had as much to do with the company as with the places we visited, although that’s not to say that I don’t wish I was still on the streets of Savannah, drinking a beer from a plastic cup or a vodka and tonic from the styrofoam variety.

Old 97's (1997)

1997 should have been the year of the Old 97's, but unfortunately I didn't pick up Too Far to Care until late in the year. So, most of the time I spent with this album in frequent rotation was in early '98. Back then, I wasn't as adamant about having my year-end list completed by New Year's Eve, so I spent the first couple of months of '98 listening heavily to Teenage Fanclub's Songs from Northern Britain, Reservoir's Pink Machine, and Too Far to Care, trying to decide if they were top ten worthy. Old 97's would eventually slot in at #8, while the other two would get edged out. In hindsight, Too Far to Care was probably my second or third favorite album of '97, that is among those I was aware of at the time, and the 97's instantly became synonymous with the term cow-punk in my lexicon.

In early 1998, I crashed and totaled my 1990 Nissan Sentra. I won't get into all the details of that one (only a few people know the full story and two of them are named Scott), except to say that, right after the accident, that evil pager of mine went off and, seconds later, was launched deep into the woods. The car was really only totaled because it had a bent frame and wasn't worth much anymore. In fact, I didn't really bother to find out. I just called the junk yard and said "come and get it".

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that, shortly thereafter, I bought the car that I'm still driving, a 1998 Subaru Impreza. You wouldn't know it anymore, but that vehicle was deceptively powerful in its younger years. What does all this have to do with the Old 97's, you ask? Not much, except I recall driving that car around and belting out the lines, "She said, do you have a car? And I said, do I have a car?" every time I listened to "Barrier Reef". I guess you had to be there.

Another of my favorite lines from that album was "Well I'll find another lady, and you'll wreck another man" from "Salome", Rhett Miller's ode to lost love. Really, though, I never felt like saying that to anyone. My favorite song from Too Far to Care, at least in the early days of my Old 97's fandom, was "Big Brown Eyes". But, it's not because I could identify with the lyric, "If that phone don't ring one more time, well I'm gonna lose what's left of my mind". Definitely not.

On the tour to support that album, Len and I saw them at TT the Bear's in Cambridge. In fact, that show was Len's introduction to the band. During one of the openers, who we weren't really interested in, Len and I almost played a doubles match in pool against two of the 97's. I believe it was Murry Hammond, the bassist and occasional singer-songwriter, and drummer Philip Peeples, but they had to go get ready for their set before Len and I finished off our opponents.

This also reminds me of the time Scott and I were playing pool against each other after a show at Bogie's in Albany. This was undoubtedly part of the Lifetime Pool Achievement, for which Scott and I decided to keep track of our record against each other for the rest of our lives. I guess there's only a 50/50 chance that the winner will be able to celebrate, and even that will be bittersweet, I suppose, but the tournament has been dormant for quite some time. In fact, neither of us remember what the score was, but we do know that it was tied. I'm thinking something like 33-33.

Anyway, The Reverend Horton Heat had been the headliner that night at Bogie's, and Jim Heath, the Reverend himself, was waiting to play the winner. Well, Scott and I were drunk, beyond the point that the alcohol improves your pool playing skills, and were so bad that he eventually picked up his quarters from the table and left. I'm not sure why we were at that show anyway, as neither of us were ever really a fan of that band. There was probably some connection to one of the opening acts, or maybe our friend Carl, who worked the sound board there until he was unceremoniously canned, got us in for free.

The 97's two earlier albums, Wreck Your Life and Hitchhike to Rhome, were very good as well. The latter wasn't very well regarded, and I suppose it did expose Rhett Miller's immaturity as a songwriter, but that quality also made songs like "St. Ignatius", "Hands Off" and "If My Heart Was a Car" quite endearing.

I was disappointed in the band's move in a more pop-oriented direction on 1999's Fight Songs. As a regular reader of No Depression, the power pop transformation of many alt-country bands turned into a divisive issue, with Wilco's Summerteeth being another prime example. Of course, the purists wanted more of the same from their favorites, but the flip side was the desire of these artists to avoid being pigeon-holed. Although not entirely in the purists camp, and despite the fact that 2001's Satellite Rides showed the band improving on their new formula, for me this was the beginning of a downward slide for the 97's, and Rhett Miller's subsequent solo material certainly adds fuel to the fire.

Seeing Miller play solo and attempt to stir up a little nostalgia by playing some of the Old 97's fan favorites was further evidence that these songs were missing a key element without Ken Bethea on guitar, and that nothing could ever match the cow-punk energy of the original Old 97's formula.

Uncle Tupelo (1995)

The (almost) perfect setting for my introduction to Uncle Tupelo was a rural highway just outside of South Bend, Indiana. I was traveling for work there and driving a rental car while listening to a cassette that Anders had sent me and Scott. On one side was Guided By Voices' indie rock breakthrough, Bee Thousand, which didn't do it for me at the time. However, the flip side was possibly the most unique and awe-inspiring album I have ever heard, the album that inspired the modern alt-country movement, Uncle Tupelo's No Depression.

While I would give Guided By Voices the nickname Blighted By Noises, only years later to come to appreciate them, I had never heard anything like No Depression's blend of country and punk that, recorded in 1990, wasn't the first example of such a combination, but certainly preceeded the trend of hipster punk rockers embracing Johnny Cash and the like. If pressed to name the most important (to me) artist on this list, Neil Young would get the nod, but if I had to pick one album, Uncle Tupelo's debut would be it.

Uncle Tupelo would quickly become the house band at 43 Dove Street. In a March 16-20, 1995 tribute to UT, inspired by the title of their third album, we would feature one of their four studio albums each day. The math didn't quite work out on that one, so I'm not sure what we did on the fifth day...probably nurse our hangovers.

Speaking of hangovers, Scott and I were probably a little too quick to embrace the working class drunkard themes in Uncle Tupelo's songs, particularly those penned by Jay Farrar. I would take this fascination a bit too far when I drowned my sorrows after the breakup of a short-lived relationship by drinking a bottle of Southern Comfort while making the quintessential Uncle Tupelo drinking mix, aptly titled "I Fell Down." The only reason I didn't fall down was the fact that I was sitting and drinking on the floor while compiling the mix.

At the time, I was working the late shift, dispatching for Ryder at Grand Union in Waterford, while still pursuing the professional umpiring dream, so the drinking and recording took place from 3 to 6am. Scott returned home from spending the night at his girlfriend's to the ominous sign of the empty bottle lying on its side on the living room floor. For some strange reason, though I have no problem drinking vodka to this day, Southern Comfort is another story. This is at least in part due to a previous SC incident more than a few years prior in which I hit on Scott's mom, kicked his foot that had just been operated on, and broke the door handle off of Rob's car as he and Beau tried to stuff me into it.

Uncle Tupelo had already split up by the time Scott and I became fans, but this wouldn't be the last we would hear from Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy.

Steely Dan (1986)

It was some time around the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college that I popped into the cd player a copy of A Decade of Steely Dan that I found lying next to the stereo in Anders' house. I recall the house was full of guys sleeping off alcohol-induced hangovers, although I'm sure that wasn't the only substance involved. Of course, I had heard many, if not most, of these songs before, and had often enjoyed singing the lyrics to "Deacon Blues" while intoxicated, but this collection of hits initiated my desire to explore this musical territory further.

Within a year, I would purchase, in cassette format, all seven of Steely Dan's studio albums that existed at the time. In fact, years later, I would purchase all seven of these on cd, making this the only artist that I, at one time, owned their entire catalog (not including compilations) in two different formats. Of course, that no longer is the case since I don't own either of their 21st century albums in any format.

1976's The Royal Scam was my first purchase, although the hit-laden Aja would've seemed the place to begin, and remains my favorite to this day, despite being considered by some to be among their worst. In my opinion, as many as five of those first seven albums could legitimately be considered their best, with Gaucho and Countdown to Ecstasy being the exceptions. By the summer of '87, I would be so enthralled that I would declare it a Steely Dan summer, much to Scott's chagrin, as that moniker would describe the only music played on my car stereo during those months. Beau would later give me The Best of Van Morrison as a gift, just so I would listen to something else.

I was fascinated by the sarcasm and cynicism of their lyrics, even if I had no idea what many of the songs were about. I even drove through the upstate New York town that was the subject of the less than flattering "Barrytown", to try to learn what Donald Fagen was singing about. Barrytown was towards the northern end of the Hudson River, nearby to Annandale-On-Hudson, where Fagen and Walter Becker had met while attending Bard College. I found no evidence of the other worldiness that this song portrayed.

Steely Dan may very well be the band that I overplayed the most, thereby taking some of the enjoyment out of their music for years to come. I seem to have recovered from this, though, and I now consider their 70's output to be among the strongest decade long runs of any of my favorite bands.

Yes (1984)

90125 was released in 1983, and the opening guitar riff to "Owner of a Lonely Heart" totally grabbed my attention. Len also owned a copy of Classic Yes, the concise but essential greatest hits collection released in 1981. I recall an 11th grade lunch room conversation in which John Clark remarked that he didn't like 90125 because it didn't sound anything like old Yes. My feeling, at the time, was that I wasn't a huge fan of the older material, so I didn't care. In hindsight, as questionable as that assessment was, there's no denying the fact that 90125 was the album that piqued my interest in Yes.

Eventually I would come around on "old Yes" and near the end of the summer of 1984, Len, Mark and I would plan to go see them live at the New Haven Coliseum. Len and Scott were both working as lifeguards at Manchester Gardens, the apartment complex that Len's father managed. I showed up there one afternoon to ask Scott if he wanted to go with us. Scott was there with his girlfriend Laurie, and as I walked into the pool area, he said, rather brusquely, "Len's not here". When I informed him of my purpose for being there, he warmed up a little, but I kind of had a feeling that Scott didn't like me. Regardless, from the day of the concert on, Scott and I quickly became good friends. I don't know if it was due to watching me throw up after a pre-concert Uranium 232, or because we bonded over being scared out of our minds as the speedometer of Mark's 1972 Pontiac Catalina hit 116 on I-84 on the way home, but it seems that Yes concert was the pivotal moment in our friendship.

Oh, the infamous U232. Rob and Len returned from a class trip to Russia in the spring of 1984 (Scott and John were on that trip as well), and for three hazey Thursday afternoons in May (one on my 17th birthday), we consumed copious amounts of vodka. For that three-week span, the Thursday Afternoon Pact was born, reached its zenith, and came crashing to earth, along with our bodies and many brain cells. Twice at Rob's house and once at mine, the three of us played quarters with shots of vodka, and you can just imagine the results. I'm not even going to get into explaining what a U232 was, but I will say that it was born out of my desire at the time to do everything to extreme.

The third session, and the pact, ended with Rob and I, aided by an extremely amused Mark, dragging Len into his bedroom, putting a trash can next to his bed and leaving him to his misery...not to imply that we were really in any better shape. Later, Rob would get lost walking home from my house, or so he claims, and his mom would call me demanding to know what he had induced. I denied vehemently that we had been drinking, claiming that Rob just got sick on some pizza. Rob's mom, concerned that drugs were involved, called his Uncle Brian, who assured her that if he was puking then it had to be alcohol, and if you couldn't smell it on his breath, it must be vodka.

Although considered somewhat legendary in the classic rock realm, the strength of Yes' entire catalog was not beyond question. Just a few years ago, I would introduce a somewhat subjective type of music trivia discussion which went something like this: What bands, who have reached the status of icons, have actually produced more albums not worthy of their legend than records that live up to that status? The example I intended to use was The Rolling Stones, but I came to decide that Yes were, in fact, the poster children for this affliction.

It's difficult to remain objective about 90125 because of its nostalgic meaning to me, but other than that, there are only three Yes albums that are inarguably very good, The Yes Album, Fragile, and Close to the Edge. All three of these albums were released within a two-year period (1971-1972) of Yes' 30+ years as a rock 'n roll entity. Tales of Topographic Oceans, Relayer, Tormato, Drama, and everything post-90125 are pretty much crap. Everything else is in that gray area. Still, Yes produced enough good material to earn their spot as the most successful of the British prog-rock bands, even if they weren't my favorite.

I'm thinking that now is a good time to take my first crack at reviewing some 2006 albums. I'll start with the year's first highly anticipated release.

The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth

It seems that most people are at least mildly disappointed with this album. Count me among the majority. Don't get me wrong, it has its moments, but it's more than a slight drop-off from 2003's Room on Fire, which was a slight drop-off from their 2001 debut Is This It. This one does, however, owe much less of a debt to The Velvet Underground than the latter, but, in this case, that's not necessarily a good thing.

Overall, there's enough enjoyable material here to be only slightly disappointing, and there are a few gems, including the album-opening "You Live Only Once" and the hook laden closer, "Red Light". In between, we get the album's strongest track...the "Mandy"-inspired "Razorblade", with its "My feelings are more important than yours" refrain providing us with the opportunity to reminisce of Barry Manilow crooning, "Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking", with just a little more edge.

Unfortunately, most of what falls between "Razorblade", the disc's fourth track, and "Red Light" are tediously boring songs that are standard guitar based garage rock, although far more polished than what we've heard from this band before, and with far too few really great hooks. Maybe I'm being too harsh here, because in reality, after a couple of beers, many of these songs amazingly transform from mediocre to pretty good. In fact, my real beef with most of these songs is that they tease me by starting out a bit catchy, but later prove to be not inspired or interesting enough to hold my attention.

The lowlights of the aforementioned stretch of tedium include the organ based "Ask Me Anything", which would be more appropriately called by its much repeated refrain "I've Got Nothing to Say", and the album's most boring guitar rocker, "Fear of Sleep", in which we get to hear lead singer Julian Casablancas repeatedly exclaim "You're no fun!"...my sentiments exactly, about this song in particular, and this album in general.