The spring of 1972 had arrived. In the winter of 1971, I had received a 1971 Strat-O-Matic baseball game with 4 teams (Baltimore Orioles, Oakland Athletics, Pittsburgh Pirates, and the San Francisco Giants). My brother and I as well as two of our neighbors played games over and over until we all decided we had to have more teams.
Strat-O-Matic had come out with historical teams and we all wanted the 27 Yankees. To save money, we had a draft to determine which person would buy which teams and now they were finally arriving. My brother bought the 55 Dodgers and the 61 Yankees. One neighbor got the 1941 Yankees and the 65 Giants. I bought the 31 Athletics and 24 Senators. The neighbor (Scott Barry) received his teams first and brought over the 27 Yankees to annihilate the 1971 Pirates. I watched in amazement as the Pirates won the first and third games and improbably game 6 via a no-hitter by Steve Blass. Barry just kept exclaiming, ‘No way, no way!’ Finally, in a game 7 that I do not remember the score, I only remember that Clemente hit a triple and Stargell hit a homer and Bob Moose was the winning pitcher. It was that day that I was hooked on the mathematics of baseball.
Who is Bruce Morris?
My name is Bruce Morris and I play Diamond Mind baseball, though I always type in Simnasium.com. I cannot remember when I started. I only remember after some season John Cox sent me his DLFans site for statistics. Later I remember a team competition came up with team owners and I had the tremendous opportunity to be on a team of 4 owners that included Bob Jecmen and Larry Larsen. It was from that group of seasons that I truly became stuck to the comradery and grace that is provided with this great game. That tournament, of course, Bob won the overall trophy and our Dodgers won the overall Franchise championship over the Yankees.
I was born in 1959 with a brother that was a Dodger fan so I became a Giant fan. I loved Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Bobby Thompson, and Gaylord Perry. I ultimately landed in Tucson AZ, played a lot of Little League Baseball as well as thousands of pickup games. Soon I matriculated to a baseball powerhouse, Sahuaro HS, and played baseball with quite a few folks who played professionally. But my Dad retired and suddenly I was forced to move to Virginia. Socially, not so great, but the dip in competition helped my career explode but a severe injury playing football my senior year ended my designs on baseball. Thankfully my academic skills were good and my math skills were better and I ultimately went on to a career in Transportation that allowed me to retire in the late 90’s, move to Jacksonville Florida. This gave me the chance to be very actively involved raising my 3 children, two daughters and a son, who all developed a love of baseball and sports.
Love of Fantasy Sports
Fantasy baseball was my first statistical love. I do remember that doing stats from The Sporting News was painful. USA Today made it bearable. Today the players have no idea how good they have it. I had the fortune to join a group of baseball broadcasters that were involved with Dan Okrent and Glen Waggoner playing Rotisserie Baseball. They didn’t like the time it took to auction the start of the season so in 1982 they started a draft style league and broadcasters in Pawtucket, Richmond, Syracuse, as well as several sports writers with the Richmond Dispatch, started a league and they needed a 10th owner. So the Spring of 1982 was my first Baseball Fantasy League, Summer of 1982 was my first Fantasy Football League and Spring of 1984 my first Golf Fantasy League. The baseball league died during the strike of 1994 but the other two fantasy leagues are still alive today. This will be our 38th season playing Fantasy Football with most of the original 10 owners still intact.
Addicted to Fun
I was fortunate to be part of Dayne’s original beta groups (along with Larry and many others) and so when Simnasium became a full company I jumped in and played as often as I could. Soon though my 3 children grew old enough to be tired of their Dad being around all the time and I returned to work and with that return to work, slowly fell out of playing Diamond Mind baseball. I would return to view it every once in awhile but just didn’t feel I had the time to play again. Then in December of 2016 (a full 7 years since I had played a game of simulated baseball), I got an email. It had Dayne’s name on it but it was from my old pal Larry L. We had teamed up several times after the Dodger’s experience and he offered me a free team to play again. I played and I was hooked; though the game had progressed a bit and my skills were very rusty. In short, it was horrible. Horrible but hooked. Extremely surprised how many names I could still recognize but also proud of all the new players that had grown to join Dayne and Charles’ wonderful website game. So now, I am back in the fold, losing to longtime owners like Bob Jecmen and Larry L but also losing to new friends such as Tommy Jones and Jon Karraker. But best of all getting a chance to view the humor and stylings of tonzmanic, TheAncientMariner, richinaz, AvalonBob, smatranga and hubstud just to name a few. So many of you say and do things to influence lives and you never know who may be reading your words. I am one of those guys. And a special thanks to Larry for bringing me back to the fold. I missed you guys!
Bruce’s Stats
Overall Record: 4598 and 4182 but far better in the Single Season at 760-560 Favorite Player by far, Ted Williams. Favorite Pitcher is Lefty Grove. My nickname for pinball high scores was always YAZ (quickest name I could sign in…left flipper twice, right flipper once, left flipper once…you get YAZ). My claim to fame in the Standard Game was 3 times compiling an OBP over .400 (only done by other team) and also scoring 1360 runs during one of those years (highest by 93). Unfortunately only one of those three won a WS. I am enthralled by our play by play and wish we could turn it into an audio play by play. My screen name is a nod to my favorite band (Traffic) and a very high percentage of my team names come from song titles. I have tried to figure out my first team and I am pretty sure I went 70-92 but I am pretty old and there is no doubt I cannot remember 17 years ago to one team.
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