Strat-O-Matic has been around since 1961 with a variety of sports simulation games (both tabletop and digital) across baseball, football, basketball, hockey and more, and with no actual MLB season going on at the moment, the company is running daily simulations of the games that would have been played and posting the results (at 2 p.m. Eastern each day). And San Francisco Giants announcers Jon Miller and Dave Flemming decided to have some fun with that, delivering a “call” of the simulated results of the Giants’ home opener against the Dodgers (which was supposed to be played Friday) from their backyards:
That’s a cool idea, and Miller and Flemming have a lot of fun with it, working in some old highlights, ballpark clips (including even “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”), and family recreations. We’ve seen a lot of announcers broadcasting whatever they can find, from the Oakland A’s announcers calling submitted baseball highlights to Fox’s Joe Buck calling fan-submitted clips of everyday activities to British rugby announcer Nick Heath calling dogs chasing each other and people crossing the street. But this broadcast was particularly fun for seeing the announcers maintain much of the rhythm of a normal game and actually calling what happened (as generated by the Strat-O-Matic simulation, at least).
It’s neat to see Strat-O-Matic doing a dedicated day-by-day simulation like this, and it’s cool that Miller (who tested negative for COVID-19 last week; he and his wife were self-isolating following contact with their son and his fiancée, who tested positive) and Flemming got involved in calling one of those games. Thanks to them for bringing some levity and some baseball into this stressful period of time.
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.