By Fred Seely
Editorial Director
Glenn Guzzo’s newspaper job went away so he became an author. If you’re a baseball fanatic, you can thank the management change at the Denver Post because now you know the rest of the story about a game within a game.
And, if you’re interested in how a business succeeds, you might take a look, too.
Guzzo was the editor of the Denver Post until a new publisher came in and had his own person.
“I couldn’t be bitter,” said the 54-year-old resident of Julington Creek. “I got the job because of a new publisher who wanted his own man, and that was me.”
The veteran newsman and his wife decided that life could be easier so they looked for a more comfortable place to live and a more comfortable way of making a living.
He established himself as an expert witness and he travels often to trials based on libel or slander cases. He also conducts workshops on journalism ethics. He’s also an author, and all three of those businesses can be done from anywhere.
“My wife’s family is in Miami so we decided on somewhere in Florida,” he said. “Not too close, though. We looked at Naples, for instance. But we liked Jacksonville. It’s a friendly place with a lot going on.
“We have an 8-year-old daughter and this is a good place for her to grow up.”
Guzzo’s new vocation seems to have produced a reasonable amount of overnight success. He wrote a book titled “Strat-O-Matic Fanatics” with the subtitle “The unlikely success story of a game that became a national passion.”
If you’re a Strat-O-Matic player, you don’t need to know much more. If you’ve never heard of the game, suffice it to say that it’s a board game where contestants play “baseball” with three dice and a lot of statistics. It’s based on performance by top major league players and players figure that they’ve arrived when they have their own “card.”
If you’re interested in small business, it’s the story of a man named Hal Richman who loved baseball and invented the game. It tells of his efforts to get money to start, how he marketing it and how he has survived in a very competitive field.
Guzzo’s journalistic background included plenty of sports. He was the executive sports editor of the Philadelphia morning newspaper before moving along the editorial ladder to managing editor (Akron), corporate executive (Knight-Ridder in Miami) and editor (Denver.)
He’s involved in sports, here, too, as a committee member of the Gator Bowl Association.
Today, he would rather talk about the book than the other jobs.
“I love a good story,” he said. This is a good one — it’s how a company can start with an idea, work through the problems of being in business and thrive for 40 years.”