The (soulless, computerized) boys of summer

As any of you I've talked to in the past two months or so has undoubtedly learned, I've fallen hard for baseball again this summer. Baseball was my first love, starting at about age 5, a good three years before I tried two-timing with football. About the time I moved to Nebraska (1997), baseball and I took a break while I saw other sports.

Well, I've gotten back together with baseball this summer. Let me count the ways:

--I've become a genuine Brewers fan again, for the first time since the glory days of Yount and Molitor. There are good days ... and there are bad days.

--I'm reading Moneyball, the bible of 21st-century baseball. And remembering why I always loved Bill James.

--Dana and I bought baseball gloves to play catch with.

--I'm going to the College World Series in Omaha on Friday. And I actually know who the Brewers' draft picks in the CWS are. And whether they plan to sign.

--And I'm playing Strat-O-Matic baseball. No clue what it is? Good--one box on the nerd checklist you don't have to check. Basically, Strat-O-Matic is Dungeons and Dragons meets baseball. I've never played D&D, but I believe both involve 20-sided dice, so, um, that makes them the same.

Basically, SOM is a way of re-simulating baseball games using players' past stats to create really complex probabilities for a bunch of dice rolls. It's been around since the '60s using real dice, but the online version lets the computer do all the dice-rolling for you--which is great, because computers are way faster than us at rolling dice.

It requires a lot of managerial skills in tweaking lineups, maximizing matchups, setting strategy, getting the most for your money. You play a whole season in a couple of months, so every day you have your box scores from your team. It's good times.

I'm a cheapskate, so I first discovered SOM this spring--coincidentally enough, when they offered their first free trial season. And last week, I completed an epic three-game comeback sweep to make the playoffs in my league. My computer-generated probability-grid 1986 "players" demonstrated so much heart and chemistry ... sniff ... The playoffs begin tonight, so I hope they behaved themselves this weekend.