Ah, the 60’s. Those were wild times. Some of the things I did back then were pretty rash, or at least they caused a rash. I was actually born just a couple of months before the 60's ended, so even though I lived through a very small part of that decade, I can’t claim to remember any of it. When my friend, Lawr, asked me if I wanted to join him in a 1969 strato league I was intrigued, although I can't say I knew a lot about all of the players from that season.

I've played some simulated baseball online before and I've also played tabletop strato in a full season league back in high school. But I'd never played stratomatic baseball online. I was curious to see what it would be like.

The first thing I had to do was come up with a team name. I wanted something that would somehow tie strato to the 60’s. I settled on Stratosphere Dukes, a reference to the musical group, The Dukes of Stratosphear. The Dukes were a spin-off from the band XTC and their music seemed appropriately psychedelic for a 60's league.

Naming the team was easy, next I had to get down to business and figure out how I was actually going to build my squad. With $80 million to spend I couldn't really afford to have a deep and balanced team. Going into the draft, I tried to emphasize defense while evenly spreading as much money as I could amongst nine everyday players and four starting pitchers.

After the draft was held, I ended up snagging Brooks Robinson and Mark Belanger. Not a bad start defensively but I missed out on Johnny Bench at catcher and Felix Millan at second. I also failed to land several other players that I had originally targeted and I wasn't thrilled with the replacement picks.

Comparing my drafted roster with the available free agents and the rosters of the rest of the league, I decided to retool. I still wanted to focus on defense but I also wanted to sink a lot of money into starting pitching. I picked up Juan Marichal for $11.5 million, Andy Messersmith for $10.5 million and Jim Perry for $7 million. I also splurged and picked up Roberto Clemente, a good bat and a 1(-5) in right field, for $10 million. That didn’t leave me with a lot of cash, so most of the other pickups that I made hovered around the league salary minimum. My team wouldn’t be strong offensively but I hoped my starting pitching and defense would keep me in games.

Once the season started I was sure that I would lose 100 games. Swept by the Pimp Ministers right out of the gate, the Dukes stumbled to a 2-7 record. I had seven injuries in the first nine games. I figured I was doomed. Then a funny thing happened, the Dukes started winning. As of this writing the Dukes stand at 23-16 with a slim two-game lead in the West Division. We’ve allowed the fewest runs of any team, but unfortunately, our offense is also last in runs scored.

There are still a lot of games to play and my starters are throwing a ton of innings. I’m not sure how the online game will treat them once they begin to exceed their real life inning totals for the season. If my rotation’s arms fall off in the second half of the season I know I can’t count on my offense to bail them out. If they continue to pitch well, though, I think the Dukes can stay competitive. Time will tell.