If you want to play in a tried-and-true format and create your team right now, standard leagues (Classic and SSG) are open to the public 24/7. But if you want to try something different, Custom Leagues – created by customers – are there in abundance.

There are franchise leagues, progression leagues, captains leagues, high and low salary cap leagues, “rags to riches” leagues, alphabet leagues, place of birth leagues … the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Diamond Mind Online would not be the same if the Community did not include some of the most clever and prolific creators of Custom Leagues. We’ll be featuring one of these in this space each month.

This month we’re visiting with Paul (coalcreekbaseball) Stark, proprietor of Starx Cards.

Tell us something about yourself: age, occupation, marital status, where you live, and interests (apart from DMO, of course).

I’m just about to turn 65 (in March). I’m married to my fabulous wife Vicki for the last 12 years and live in Longmont, Colorado.
I’m a Colorado native and mostly grew up in Boulder.  As many already know, I’m a full-time baseball card dealer for the last 35 years and that may have just a little to do with my interest in DMO. This game has brought to life so many players that I have owned cards of and wondered what kind of players they were in real life and has illuminated some truly great players that have fallen completely below the radar of most serious fans and collectors. I few names that come to mind in that regard are guys like George Uhle and Curt Davis (who has almost no cards for some strange reason). Gavvy Cravath, Wally Berger and Bob Elliot also come to mind.

I’m a big history fan and have always loved games that were involved with that – war games and sports games. I’m just fascinated with the “what if” aspect of those things.

When did you start playing DMO and how did it first come to your attention?
I started playing back at Stats about 20 years ago. I was introduced to it by Bill Goodwin, who still plays here, at a card show. He showed me how it worked and I put a team together and was hooked immediately.

I’m aware that you may have dozens of teams going at any given time. What strategies do you employ to stay on top of so many teams going at once?

I put teams together just to relax. I love the endless possibilities for team construction and like to play with it just to mess around.
I know the catalogue so well, that if I need to make changes I usually have a few ideas immediately, so it doesn’t take long to do upgrades/replacements.
Generally I like to use a 65%/35% offense to pitching ratio, so that also provides a bit of a template for building teams. That said, every once in a while I’ll try something way out there just for fun. I did a team with Walter Johnson, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Wilbur Wood as my SP’s, which was over $75mil of my cap and just missed the playoffs.

You must have played in virtually every custom league format imaginable. Do you have any favorites?
The SSG progression leagues are my hands down favorite. The year-to-year general manager aspect really makes those a blast

Is there any advice you would give to people who haven’t created a Custom League before, but would like to give it a try?
I’d say look for a theme that interests you and find a way to make that work. I always thought a 20-game loser league would be fun and I saw that someone put that together just recently. For most custom leagues I’d say don’t make it too complicated, most people don’t have the time to do the research necessary. The Masters tournament is perfect for people who like the research aspect.