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Strat-O-Matic is the boss of sports board games, a memory-making experience. Ideal for playing solo or in friendship-bonding face-to-face play, Strat-O-Matic is easy to learn. Yet it is challenging enough to entertain for hours, as you make the player selections and the offensive and defensive decisions that decide the outcome. Make your lineup and in-game strategy decisions. Roll the dice that activate play (think of it as the pitch or swing). Then find the result on the statistically designed player card. Every player is unique, giving every dice roll drama.

It’s this easy: The first die tells you whether to consult the batter or pitcher card and which of his three columns to check. Two other six-sided dice are added to locate the result in the correct column. What a player does most (hit for average, hit for power, strike out, etc.) shows up on the most common dice combinations.

Because of Strat-O-Matic’s unmatched play value, a full nine innings can be played in less than 30 minutes. One dice roll ends most at-bats with the outcome right off the player card. Sometimes you’ll need a dramatic second role – to find out if your fielder is good enough to save a run or turn a double-play, or to find out if that long fly ball is outta here! … or caught at the warning track.

Three games in one, Strat-O-Matic will have you playing the Basic game within minutes of opening the box. Once you have a little experience, you may wish to adventure into the richly detailed Advanced and Super Advanced games, where lefty-righty advantages, ballpark effects, clutch hitting – and much more – practically put you in the dugout as a Major League manager!

The Giants last won a World Series when they were in New York, in 1954. The Rangers had never won a pennant since moving to Texas in 1972, nor as the expansion Washington Senators formed in 1961. But in this magical season, both reached the big stage with such young stars as National League Rookie of the Year Buster Posey and American League MVP Josh Hamilton and Rookie of the Year pitcher Neftali Feliz. In the end, San Francisco’s pitching overwhelmed Texas’ lineup power.

And that was a fitting end to a season that gave us six no-hitters, including two perfect games, one by Philadelphia’s Roy Halladay. Then Halladay threw the only post-season no-hitter other than Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956. Though batting averages and homers were lower this year, 2010 produced an array of awesome high-average sluggers, from reliable Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera to newer stars Hamilton, Posey, Carlos Gonzalez and National League MVP Joey Votto.

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