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I came across this post on the official OOTP forum the other day:

This is a major problem, particularly for anybody who is interested in doing replays with historical lineups and transactions.

The problem has to do with roster sizes - in particular, with figuring out precisely which players were active and which players were not active.

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The problem is exacerbated when you’re dealing with certain managers. Billy Martin wasn’t exactly known for using every single pitcher who was at his disposal. And, as a result, it can be difficult to figure out just who was and who wasn’t available based on boxscores alone.

That’s why I consider the response to this issue to be a bit unusual:

This comes from a poster who apparently is either on the OOTP staff or is a volunteer who has helped put together the historical transaction database.

The problem here, of course, is that it doesn’t really answer the first poster’s question. The issue isn’t that the Yankees had an 8 or 9 man pitching staff in April and May 1985. The issue is that there are empty roster spots, and that the human manager is at an extreme disadvantage by playing with 23 players instead of 25.

It’s true that the Yankees didn’t exactly use a ton of pitchers in early 1985:

It’s also true that the Big Boss wasn’t exactly thrilled with the state of the bullpen:

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But what’s frustrating about this is the sorry state of OOTP’s historical transactions.

Now, the funny thing is that it seems that this volunteer used another game’s transaction record as a source for OOTP’s transactions:

To me, this is the most damning statement of all.

First of all, your “transaction sources” apparently come from another game without attribution - something that might be interesting to dig a bit deeper into.

And second, this is basically an admission that no play testing has gone into these historical transactions at all.

I’m interested in knowing what you guys think. And this isn’t the last thing I’ll have to say about this issue.

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I saw a good article and video by Joon Lee here on Substack the other day. You should check it out if you haven’t already:

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How Stadiums Stopped Being For Fans

Today, you can go to a sporting event and enter through a private entrance, skip security, eat a Tomahawk steak, order sushi, sip champagne and spend the entire game inside a members-only nightclub without ever setting foot in your actual seat. Somewhere between Fenway Park opening in 1912 (the week the Titanic sank!) and the Intuit Dome opening in 2024…

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7 days ago · 7 likes · Joon Lee

The interesting thing, of course, isn’t this article. It’s this Baseball Weekly article from May 1993 that I read the very next day.

You probably think of the opening of Camden Yards in Baltimore as a breath of fresh air for baseball. And, honestly, it was a big deal. That was the moment that separated the cookie cutter and generic world of artificial turf stadiums from the modern world of quirky stadiums designed like amusement parks.

And so you probably will be surprised to read about how Frank Kuznik really didn’t appreciate Camden Yards. I mean, just look at these opening two paragraphs:

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Now, there are a few signs here that Kuznik was writing a bit tounge-in-cheek:

I mean, it’s obvious that nobody was going to be able to walk up at the last minute and get good seats to a game at what was then the hottest ballpark in Major League Baseball.

But bits and pieces of this remind me a lot of Joon Lee’s article and video. This part, for example:

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Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to have gone to Camden Yards a few times. I can report that the view from the upper deck is awful, and reminds me a lot of old parks like Jack Murphy Stadium. But it’s a completely different story if you manage to get lower bowl seats (and that used to be easy a few years ago, back when the Orioles were awful).

Kuznik does have a point, of course. Attending the ballpark has turned into an event in and of itself regardless of what actually happens on the field.

But is that a good thing or a bad thing for the sport? Is that good or bad for baseball culture in general?

What do you think?

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This is one of those games that is probably better to show you rather than try to describe. So here you go:

Best Play Pro Yakyuu, or ベストプレープロ野球, was years ahead of its time. It was basically Japan’s equivalent of MicroLeague Baseball, except with much better animation, more options, and much smoother gameplay.

And I really am amazed that a sim like this was never released outside of Japan.

There are more games in this series than this one, by the way, and I’m going to cover all of them bit by bit. However, this particular game is remarkable because of how early it came out (July 1988) and because of how much fun it is to play.

Perhaps I’ll do a full season one of these days.

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If you could change one thing about the baseball sim industry, what would it be?

I was thinking of this as I was preparing for my upcoming video on Best Play Pro Yakyuu for the NES.

If I could change one thing, I would adopt that game’s style of having the game play in front of you in real time, forcing you to pay attention and call the right signs at the right time.

More about this on Wednesday, of course.

But what would you change? Or are things perfect as they currently stand?

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It seems bizarre today, but there was once a time when mainstream baseball publications included commentary on the baseball card industry.

I ran across one of these in an old issue of Baseball Weekly just the other day.

The report was a reflection of an inquiry into the state of the sports card market created by a Chicago-based company called Action Packed. In early 1993, Action Packed commissioned an independent research firm to do a full inquiry into the state of the sport card industry.

If you’re not famliar with the football cards of the early 1990s, you probably don’t know anything about Action Packed. The company created football cards between 1990 and 1997, most of which honestly look pretty generic:

I mean, the cards aren’t awful, but they’re also not quite up to the Upper Deck and Pro Set standards of the time.

However, the report itself is interesting:

That’s right. There was a massive decrease in the sports card industry before the famous strike of 1994.

In particular, the popularity of baseball cards shrunk considerably starting in either late 1991 or early 1992:

Notice that the football card industry had also shrunk. The general feeling was that the surge of popularity in basketball cards was responsible for the other sports shrinking:

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And, yeah, the 1992-93 Shaq rookie cards were really a big thing. Though we tend to think of Michael Jordan as the player who revolutionized interest in basketball cards, the truth is that it was actually Shaquille O’Neal.

In fact, industry experts concluded that baseball’s biggest problem at the time was the lack of a clear star player:

You could argue that baseball has a similar problem today.

The other interesting thing was this general speculation on baseball card print runs:

It’s still incredible to me that we’re talking about billions of individual cards sold. That should give you an idea of just how much junk wax we’re talking about.

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It also seems that card companies started sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s to quietly resell cards returned by retail outlets, rather than destroying them:

This graph is probably the best way to visualize it all:

And this isn’t the only bit of evidence we have that the fall in baseball cards came before 1994. If you read Card Sharks, the in-depth book about the rise of Upper Deck, you’ll notice that Upper Deck fired a number of staff members sometime in 1992, ostensibly because of a decline in the popularity of baseball cards.

It’s incredible to me that we were talking about 20 billion sports cards sold between June 1991 and December 1991. I’m speechless.

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Hope you guys are doing well! Here are a few thoughts about Bill James and baseball sims.

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Though we tend to forget about it, the truth is that baseball’s popularity was in question even before the awful 1994 strike.

Over the years, the narrative we’ve come to settle on is that the player’s strike in 1994 did a lot of damage to the game. The popularity of the sport dove to an all time low, and only really began to come back with the home run race of 1998.

However, the truth is that there were cracks under the surface all along. In fact, this Tom Verducci article from early May 1993 is a pretty good example of the discontent that many in North America felt with the sport at the time:

Apologies for everything being in black and white; the only scans I was able to find come in black and white.

Verducci’s article is interesting to read from our current standpoint - especially because it starts out with a discussion on Bud Selig:

And, honestly, the entire article is a bit uneven.

Verducci seems to be frustrated that the players of the early 1990s weren’t receiving the same media adulation as major players in other sports.

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Now, he does have a point. Nobody in baseball was even close to the stardom of Michael Jordan back in 1993, for example.

However, I’ve got a feeling that some of you might consider this to be a little bit over the top:

I mean… Jim Palmer was advertising underwear back in the 1970s, right? Rolaids had been using relief pitchers in its advertisements going back to the late 1970s as well. What’s wrong with having players sell something other than beer and sneakers?

And, of course, those of us who grew up in the 1990s would take issue at this idea that nobody outside of San Diego knew who Tony Gwynn was, or that nobody outside of Chicago knew anything about Ryne Sandberg.

Anyway, I found this interesting, primarily because we’ve seen this effect continue as time has gone on. It seems that the more in-your-face sports like basketball tend to do better at creating marketable stars, while baseball tends to wind up with a more regional appeal.

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It’s also true that part of the problem back in the 1990s was the fact that Jose Canseco was seen as the man on top of the sport:

Now, Tom is looking back a bit too optimistically. During their heydays, Ted Williams actually received a lot more media criticism than Canseco, although Canseco really was roasted when all the steroid stuff came out.

But I do think that Verducci still has a point. Baseball stars aren’t superstars the way that they once were.

What do you think?

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This is probably going to wind up being more of a discussion post than anything else.

About 20 years ago, back when Diamond Mind Online / Symnasium (hope I got that right) purchased Diamond Mind from Tom Tippett, I was one of the fans of Diamond Mind Baseball that strongly opposed the move.

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The worry back then was that the Diamond Mind Baseball PC game would be completely abandoned in favor of a subscription based, online-only environment.

Actually, you can read more about the controversy here:

And, yes, this post is over 3 1/2 years old. It’s hard for me to believe, too.

Diamond Mind wasn’t abandoned in the end. And, actually, the game company has done a good job at coming out with new season disks frequently and keeping the game updated.

But the bigger trend in the industry has been towards online only games. APBA Go, Strat Max, Dynasty League Baseball, and a few other games are moving towards online only systems.

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The benefit is obvious, of course. It’s a lot easier to manage draft leagues when you’re using a centralized server. And it’s a lot easier for these companies to make consistent income when everybody is paying money to play the games using their online platforms.

But are we losing something? Do these games keep the wonder of the cards and dice alive? Should we stay away from online only platforms and only support the few companies that still create games you need to install?

What do you think?

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Apologies again for the quick post, as I’m out of time once again this morning.

Here’s a chart that is currently making the rounds on social media. This is a “bunt for a hit” chart that I believe originated in the APBA Journal at some point in time:

I’m not sure how realistic or effective it is, as I haven’t taken the time yet to really do a deep dive into the mechanics of APBA’s basic game.

However, this might be helpful to those of you who are interested in messing around with it.

Note that you should not try to use this with the pitcher because of play result number 23.

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I recently bought a large collection of old Conlon Collection cards on Ebay. This was a series of cards featuring old baseball players that came out in the early 1990s; I’ll have more to say about it in a later post.

Anyway, the cool thing about the Conlon Collection is that you can see all sorts of cool stories about baseball back in the days. And, of course, that gives me some fodder for interesting posts.

Here’s one I ran into just the other day:

Apologies for the poor quality of the photo. I’ll make sure to scan the card in next time.

Anyway, the interesting part is on the back, of course:

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Most people don’t pay much attention to the backs of these cards, which is a real shame. In fact, for the Conlon Collection, the stories on the back are probably more important than the photos on the front.

But, as great as the citation from The Glory of Their Times is, the original newspaper account of Sad Sam’s No Hitter was even better.

1923, of course, was the golden age of sports journalism. And I don’t think I’ve read any better account than this one in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

One of the thing Sad Sam forgot to mention to Lawrence Ritter was the fact that he came very close to a perfect game that afternoon:

And you read right - they called Everett Scott the “Iron Man.” Scott played every single game of the 1920 and 1921 season for the Red Sox and every game of the 1922 season for the Yankees, and was on a consecutive games played streak at this time that must have been pretty impressive.

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Anyway, I’ll let this article speak for itself:

And this is the best part of all:

I’ll skip ahead to the ninth inning:

And then came the climax:

The truth is that this article paints a better picture of the game and the drama than even a videotape recording of the entire thing could have. And it’s certainly a much more interesting picture than the one the Inquirer printed of Sam Jones that day:

Sure, the sport has come a long way in the last century. But sometimes I think we lost more than we gained.

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As I find myself strugging to write something before leaving for work yet again, I figure that I’ll leave a very short clipping that you might not have seen before.

33 years ago, back when baseball was still seen as relevant to bigger national discussions in the United States, this letter to the editor was printed in Sports Illustrated:

I’m not sure if it’s out of modesty or what, but Gowell decided not to mention that 1972 was his only season in the Major Leagues. Larry started one game, pitched in two games, pitched 7 innings, and had a 1.29 ERA.

The double gave him a 1.000 batting average and a 2.000 slugging percentage, as well as a 791 OPS+ as a hitter in 1972.

Keep this in mind the next time you play in a 1972 draft league.

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Have you ever wondered what happens when people lose interest in a certain type of collectible? Are you worried that your APBA and Strat cards will be worthless forever? Let’s talk about it!

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I ran into something interesting the other day while reading through an old Bill James Baseball Abstract.

Yeah, yeah, I know that the Jamesian methods and formulas are pretty old and outdated. It’s been over 40 years since this 1984 Abstract was published. Sabermetrics has grown a lot since then, and I’m probably foolish for spending time looking back at this stuff.

However, from the point of view of someone interested in baseball simulation, there’s something interesting going on here.

As you probably know (and as some of you remember), traditional analysis of baseball offense was largely focused on batting average. And that’s why it was revolutionary for students of the game when James wrote things like this:

James did this to explain his infamous Runs Created formula, which I suppose we can think of these days as a precursor to something like OWAR (and, as someone who spent far too long working for the U.S. government, I honestly hate acronyms). The basic formula worked like this:

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And it works in theory, too.

Scoring runs requires you to get guys on base and to get them around the bases. The “hits plus walks” part tells you about how many guys are getting on base. “Total bases” is an approximation of how they’re getting on base - it’s a measure of the total number of bases offensive players accumulate through hitting.

And, of course, you want to do this in as few outs as possible, which helps explain the bottom part of the formula. Outs are the actual “currency” of baseball, and you need to spend them wisely.

In fact, James tells us this in the same article:

But there’s something missing in this formula, and this is where the world of baseball simulation comes in.

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You see, it’s actually pretty easy to make up a baseball game where players hit similarly to how they hit in real life. It’s easy to get the singles, doubles, triples, and home runs right.

The part that we always get mixed up on is the stuff in between. Things like taking the extra base, stealing bases, being caught stealing, and good fielding preventing players from doing all this stuff.

That’s really where the baseball sims differentiate themselves from one another. The way you handle these nitty-gritty problems of the game will have a lot to do with how you model offense in different eras of baseball.

James spent years trying to tease all of the base running and fielding information out of existing statistics. We’re actually still trying to do the same thing. In fact, one of the reasons Project Retrosheet took off in the 1990s, and one of the reasons it’s so important to this day, is because it tells us a lot about how baserunning actually worked in those days.

We’re much better at keeping tabs on these stats today than we were in the past, of course. We can measure exactly where defensive players are stationed and whether the plays they make are easy or difficult based on where they are stationed. We can also measure a lot about raw baserunning ability and baserunner intelligence - all of which is ironic, of course, because baserunning is increasingly becoming less and less important in our home run dominated sport.

But, if you’re looking at any seasons before the early 2000s, you really need to start digging in. And, if you really want to understand why the players of 1908 played the game the way they played it, you need to understand the context of base running and fielding in that season.

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Johnny Evers probably should have played his last Major League Baseball game in 1917. He was 35 years old tat year, and wound up playing for both the Braves and Phillies, putting together an awful .214 batting average in 317 plate appearances.

Evers is a Hall of Famer, of course - though his Hall of Fame credentials are debatable at best.

But one thing is certain: Evers wasn’t timid.

After retirement, Evers came back not only once, but twice.

Johnny’s first comeback came on April 27, 1922 with the Chicago White Sox. For one reason or another, the White Sox wound up down a second baseman - and so Evers stood in, at the young age of 40:

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Evers didn’t do anything with the bat, though this was normal for Johnny:

And, of course, they couldn’t finish the game because of the train schedules. Not even OOTP can simulate that for you.

Anyway, this would have been an odd but interesting end to Johnny’s career if it weren’t for his second comeback.

This one came in 1929, at the very end of the season. Evers was a coach with the Boston Braves by this time, and I guess they figured they might as well stick him in there.

Now, the newspaper coverage of this game wasn’t great, mostly because the journalists were all paying attention to the upcoming World Series. But at least we got something:

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The boxscore for this game reads like a dinner menu:

Anyway, there you have it. Evers was certainly not known for his bat.

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This one is for you APBA fans.

I came across a post earlier today featuring this 1930 Babe Ruth card:

If you know your APBA lore, you know that this card comes from the revised version of the 1930 season, which APBA put out in 1989. I do have the original version as well, but have not been able to find the time to scan it yet.

The interesting thing, of course, is the D grade.

In “The Year of the Hitter,” Ruth started, completed, and won a single game. He pitched 9 innings in Boston on September 28th, the final day of the season. The Yankees won 9-3, and Ruth’s ERA was a relatively low 3.00. Ruth also went 2 for 5 that day with an RBI.

So should APBA have given him a higher grade? Or is this grade necessary to prevent people from starting Ruth in the starting rotation?

What do you think?

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While it’s not a “proper” replay, I was able to recently finish a 1908 project of some sorts:

Yeah, I know, it’s RBI Baseball. We probably shouldn’t expect it to reach any of the standards of realism we tend to expect from serious baseball sims.

However, when I played through the 1908 RBI baseball mod, I was reminded of a few things that make 1908 difficult to simulate regardless of the game.

1908, of course, likely had the greatest pennant race in the history of Major League Baseball. Both the American and National Leagues had fascinating pennant races that year. The combination of the excitement of not knowing which team might wind up in first place, and the fun of digging through really old newspapers and understanding what the world was like before World War I, makes 1908 a project that is extremely attractive.

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But, like I said, there are a few problems you need to keep in mind:

Power hitting was different. You probably already know that the batting average across both leagues was .239, the second lowest of all time (second only to 1968, when it was .237; for the sake of comparison, 2026 is currently at .244 as of the writing of this). However, what you might not realize is that hitting for power in 1908 consisted mostly of doubles and triples. The season featured around 1.01 doubles per team per game and 0.40 triples per team per game, as opposed to only 0.11 home runs per team per game. These aren’t record numbers by any means, but they are a good example of deadball era rate stats, and are shocking if you’re used to the ebbs and flows of modern baseball.

Everybody bunted. You’re not going to see this happen in RBI Baseball, of course. But the truth is that players bunted in 1908 at a rate much higher than in any other season in baseball history. There were 1.3 successful sacrifice hits per team per game in 1908 - and, of course, that doesn’t count the unsuccessful attempts at sacrificing. This is extremely difficult to replicate, as you have to completely change your offensive approach to replicate what was happening in real life.

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Good and bad defense. 1908 is famous for pitching, of course. But there’s more going on than just good spitballers. On the one hand you had 1.71 errors per team per game - not the higheset of the era, but an unbelievably high number when you look at it from a modern perspective. There were also only 0.51 double plays per team per game, which is the lowest rate in the “modern era” (i.e. 1901 and after). And yet, at the same time, it’s clear that base running was stifled in 1908 in a way that is difficult to replicate. There were 13.36 assists per team per game, the second highest post-1901 total (behind 1918, which was a partial season). And so you’ve got the difficulty of crafting together a season with both poor fielding and good fielding at the same time.

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Hey all - just another quick update to let you guys know that I’m still alive.

I’ve got another video coming tomorrow, and I wound up having to rewrite the script and film it again after my first attempt on Sunday. It’s been kind of crazy, especially with our air conditioning broken.

I do have a few ideas for a couple of posts, and should hopefully be able to get ahead of everything after tomorrow. Sadly, I wound up running out of time today.

The good news is that we’re getting a new air conditioner this morning. The bad news is that I’ve got to go to work, lol.

Anyway, just wanted to send this quick update to let you guys know that I’m still alive.

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If you think about the 1908 Giants every once in a while (and who doesn’t?), which players do you tend to think of?

I’d argue that most people would think of Christy Mathewson:

And, of course, you could be excused for thinking of Big Six first. I mean, it’s not every year you run into a pitcher with a 37-11 record and a 1.43 ERA.

While you might not think immediately of many of the hitters on the old Giants, you almost certain would think of this man:

And, yeah, McGraw was quite popular in 1908. Most New York baseball fans connected McGraw’s leadership directly with the success of the team.

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Of course, if you’re a baseball fan, you’ll think immediately of this man when you think of 1908:

Merkle was an obscure player, however, and most fans in New York in 1908 would never have thought of him as anybody significant.

Actually, if you go back to 1908, you’ll find that the true “hero” of the team was an obscure player named Mike Donlin.

In fact, The New York World established this as a definitive fact in mid-September of that sason. The old tabloid started a voting contest, and Donlin was the clear favorite:

Why was Donlin so popular? Well, maybe it’s because he was married to this star actress:

It was Mabel Hite who was at least in part responsible for Donlin being so obscure, by the way. He left baseball after his excellent 1908 season to pursue a career on Broadway. And, while Hite was clearly a great actress, it’s also pretty obvious that Donlin didn’t have much by way of acting skills.

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But, then again, the true baseball fans probably remember Donlin for his heroics on the field, not off the field:

And the way this one ended was simply amazing:

I’d say hitting a walk off home run in the home opener in freaking 1908 is a pretty good indication of the sort of slugger Donlin was.

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Here’s a quick update from the house with no air conditioning. I’m hoping we’ll survive the rest of this summer.

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This video is technically on my hockey channel, but I’m trying to give it as much exposure as possible:

Of course, the rise and fall of Upper Deck is connected directly to the world of baseball cards. Actually, the only reason I’ve got it on my hockey channel is because the NHL license is really the only official license Upper Deck still has.

Upper Deck’s presence in 1989 changed the world of baseball cards for good. It ushered in the era of premium cards, which gave us some really nice looking sets back in 1992 and 1993 that most people these days ignore.

However, it wasn’t all good. Upper Deck also ushered in a bunch of problems that still plague the hobby today, including:

• Serialized cards

• Endless low-effort inserts

• Jersey patch cards

• Cards with pieces of cut up memorabilia

• Insanely expensive product lines

And so on and so forth.

For a little while, Upper Deck’s presence seemed to help the hobby immensely. I’m not sure if we can say the same thing today, however.

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