Jamie mentioned this the other day, so now's a good time to bring it up for the first time in a while, and probably the last time.

For those of you who weren't reading the site last October, I participated in a Sporting News/Strat-O-Matic online replay of the 1986 season.  Naturally, I managed the Brewers, and of course I didn't have high hopes.  You can do some clever stuff with Strat, but it's hard to make a bad team any good.

Well, I'm ashamed to say that my real life kept me from actively managing the last few months of the season, so I wasn't even doing the clever stuff.  The Brewers are currently suffering through September at 64-76, in 6th place.  (Full results at that link.)

Anyway, now that the replay is winding down, TSN is making the 1986 season free for anybody, at least for a limited time (usually they charge for that kind of stuff).  I would encourage you to take advantage of it, especially if you've never played Strat-O-Matic before.

SOM is seriously addictive, and it's also an interesting way to learn about the impact of the managerial decisions that we're talking about all the time.  Just about every sabermetrician out there spent their formative years playing Strat (or something similar), and just about every manager would benefit from playing it themselves.

To me, online Strat is better than Fantasy--you get all the fun of drafting (which I am personally obsessed with), but without the risk of drafting any Cubs.  (Or, at least, you get Cubs who retired a long time ago and never played on a winning team, which is just as good.) 

And that's all I have to say about that.  Check out the 1986 season before they start charging for it (or after, but the choice seems pretty obvious to me), and if you end up captaining a squad of 1986 players, please--please!--do better than I did.