ATG8--WHY DILUTE THE SET?

Looking at the intro page to this game, the title is: Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online All-Time Greats. No mention of Major Leagues.

I've read a fair bit about baseball over time and still have learned much about Major Leaguers thanks to this game. I learned considerably more checking out things about the Negro Leaguers after that set was added to the game. I expect I'll discover some about Cuban and Japanese baseball when those players come aboard.

I enjoy the fantasy part of this game as well as the statistics play. Major League Baseball hasn't been all that pure over the decades, so no reason for SOM to pretend it to be everything baseball. If Strat wants to add a few names that kids read about in other parts of the globe, I'm OK with testing them with my Wagner to Morgan to Charleston infield.

I agree, any way you could always designate that a league may not contain Japanese or Cuban Players.

Watching all the comical suggestions makes me wonder if a league of totally fictional players is possible? I'd want Joe E Brown's 'alibi" Ike on my team.

Baseball, as this and other threads has shown, is visceral. But more than any other sport in America, baseball seems to want us to use it as a Proustian madeleine to connect our present lives with some perfect time in our personal and collective pasts. It is the combination of "guts" and "brains", both equally inexplicable. And it is for that reason that I have an extremely difficult time explaining the importance of baseball to my French university students. How is it that a game in which time plays no essential part is so linked with time? How can a game in which nothing really happens except occasionally be about the possibility of action? (You can probably tell that Roger Angell was bedtime reading for a long time).

The inclusion (?) of Japanese and Cuban league players forces us to ask what is the baseball we know. And the inclusion of new cards is not harmless. Some of us see the cards as gems of mathematical possibility, others of us see the cards as paper manifestations of names, faces and periods lived through or wished to have lived through. To include players for whom we have no tangible attachment reduces the enjoyment of the game, for others (like Frank) increases access to knowledge. On a personal level (having spent many years in Japan), Japanese Professional League players would be an exciting way to get a feel for the game that has had such a following in Japan for such a long time. BUT I would prefer the Japan League cards to be contextualized (a professional problem as a historian) and only to compete against each other in a Japan League or a World League (like the 1986 or 1969 leagues). The inclusion of Cuban League players seems slightly off-base (even if we know that baseball has had a long history there as well). Would it not be better to include a full roster of Marlins, Diamondbacks, Rays, and Rockies before branching out to World League players? What about the leagues in the US that have in some quarters been elevated to major league status -- Union League, Federal League, American Association, Players' League?

I am honestly touched by the concern that some of you have shown me in my quixotic quest to compile our community wish list. Believe me, as an academic, I am used to working monkishly on projects that may not be seen by many nor taken much into consideration. But like many of you, baseball holds an important place in my life and compiling the list is my way of hoping that we might have a voice somewhere along the line in improving our experience here (after all, what is baseball without hope). Improving the online game of SOM may be the one thing that all of us agree upon here, no matter how baseball has gotten us here.

Bill

Great post, Bill!

I have often requested the buffing up of all mlb franchises. Personally I need more and better Blue Jay seasons-olerud/green/delgado etc. SOMers love their favourite teams and players and want to use them accordingly.

Brilliant post Bill, would that we all could state our opinions so effectively!

Mike

I personally don't like the inclusion of the Cuban or Japanese players. As Barnard pointed out in a previous post, some of us play the game to select the players we identify with, while others play the game for the statistical qualities that individual cards may bring. I would think the vast majority of players would select the former as one their main reasons for playing.
I see this game evolving into a farce - Japanese players play their games in ballparks that traditionally have been much smaller - will ATG give Sadaharu Oh a bunch of BP homeruns instead of boldface homeruns on his card? I would hope so - because to give him a card that rivals Bonds, Ruth or Mantle's would be an absolute joke. How do we know about the effectiveness of pitchers? Japanese baseball is considered at best, AAA level, Tanaka aside. How does ATG reconcile their card making formula to integrate the Japanese and Cuban players with their "traditional" formula? I guess we'll find out soon enough

We do have some quirks in this game that have been successfully integrated into ATG. The NEL cards have been a good addition imo - I was concerned because the records kept for these leagues was spotty at best-cards like Gibson's, Charleston & Wells which have nonetheless become a staple of play and can't really go wrong with them on your team (though Charleston is overpriced to me). I don't think anyone picks these cards thinking their ratings may be off - they are just stud cards that can help your team win. We have some ridiculous cards that have been a part of the game for a while now, especially the pre 1900 cards. Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson & Hugh Duffy come to mind - those cards just flat out rake and most guys would pick them in a small ball environment without hesitation - but no way would these guys be able to compete with their bottle bats and lace up flannel jerseys vs a Koufax,Gibson or Randy Johnson fastball - different game/different era - so I guess people have no complaints about those.

The game already has too many cards as is which anyone can put together a reasonably competitive team if they miss out on their draft targets - you have too many crazy cards like Gates Brown and others that make no sense. The challenge of putting together a team is no longer there at 100M and above and leagues take a long time to fill as is. It would be interesting to see how these new cards play, but let's not for one second think that this is at all "realistic" which is what SOM was originally supposed to be about

Me, I can't wait until they start putting in players that played all minor league baseball .. how about an Joe Bauman card... maybe his 72 homer run season of 1954. I am sure there are other fine players that could be included too.

Bill,

Although I'm not quite sure how time plays "no essential part" in baseball--could you elaborate further?--I truly enjoyed your post. It was both sensible in its proposals and thoughtful in its addressing the various views on the matter. I also loved your effective use of Proust. I hope to see more such references in your future posts, which I look forward to reading.

Can't touch on everything in the 10 pages worth of commentary but someone earlier questioned Andy's usage of the term "dilute". I think it's a proper term for the sets integrity as a result of the Cuban and Japanese cards, not particularly its potency. To me thats the only problem. I, like everyone else I imagine, want the best players being the best players in strat. the NEL additions are great as those guys were incredible and deserve a lofty place in baseball history.

I fear that some of these cards will wind up as some of the best. Now they may be, but this games all about producing quality, representative numbers over 162 games, an amount of games that 99% of players in this deck ACTUALLY played in real life. The marathon that is a MLB season normalizes player performances and makes it that much harder to maintain a sparkling efficiency rate like hitting .400 or an OPS of 1.200. Playing 64 games or something, makes this MUCh easier, whether these players are lesser or not. Take the '94 season. Guys like Bagwell my boy Frank 'The 'Big Hurt' Thomas, and countless others were able to put up exceptional seasons that were enhanced by having a smaller sample size. And that's only like 30 or 40 games.

These guys played a fraction of a MLB season. My initial reaction was it'd be okay if they built these card like Oh to dominate against their ACTUAL competition and be more mild against a supertalented player pool like ATG. That seems impossible. Counting numbers (see ALbert Belle) always come through on the hitters card so, guys' counting numbers will come through in offensive bonanza - something all too present in the last few iterations of this game.


Overall, some GREAT changes on the way. Superadvanced cards are a revelation. Mays, Clemente, Kaline and others willbe great adds. At first I was reaaaal excited for an individual Negro League seasons like the great Oscar Charleston although its obviously a similar issue as the C/J cards and after looking at his stats, we're likely to be getting either a meh season or a year where he hit .430 to choose from....

Repricing is a must and its gonna happen. Good changes on the way and I'm sure the sky won't be falling as much as we fear. Surely some fun cards (still Arky Vaughan=NEVER AGAIN) will come out of this and as always, I'm excited.


Great post by George Barnard, I'm a little ashamed to have taken up more cyberspace than your post of the year

Bill,

Although I'm not quite sure how time plays "no essential part" in baseball--could you elaborate further?

First, thanks for the kind words. I probably should have specified "clock time". What I was thinking about was what Roger Angell wrote (all the way back in 1971!) in "The Interior Stadium" http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Finstruct.uwo.ca%2Fkinesiology%2F378%2Ffiles%2Fessays%2Fstadium.pdf&ei=2N2eU6GsLcnmOYySgJAJ&usg=AFQjCNH-9JavqOFQsxg9kJWOjZ-pMzFHgQ&sig2=mg7e7rfb8hM5TmJ6-dYlUQ&bvm=bv.68911936,d.ZGU , specifically at the very end of the essay where he writes:

The last dimension is time. Within the ballpark, time moves differently, marked by no clock except
the events of the game. This is the unique, unchangeable feature of baseball, and perhaps explains why
this sport, for all the enormous changes it has undergone in the past decade or two, remains somehow
rustic, unviolent, and introspective. Baseball's time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which
players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the way the game
was played in our youth and in our fathers' youth, and even back then-back in the country days-there must
have been the same feeling that time could be stopped. Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all
you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You
remain forever young. Sitting in the stands, we sense this, if only dimly. The players below us-Mays,
DiMaggio, Ruth, Snodgrass-swim and blur in memory, the ball floats over to Terry Turner, and the end of
this game may never come.

Earlier in the essay, he discusses the introspective qualities of the game and our attempts to play the game without the physical presence of the game itself being necessary (attempts that mirror, at least to my mind, our time spent with SOM).

Baseball has one saving grace that distinguishes it for me, at any rate-from every other sport. Because of its pace, and thus the perfectly observed balance, both physical and psychological, between opposing forces, its clean lines can be restored in retrospect. This inner game --baseball in the mind -- has no season, but it is best played in the winter, without the distraction of other baseball news. At first, it is a game of recollections, recapturings, and visions. Figures and occasions return, enormous sounds rise and swell, and the interior stadium fills with light and yields up the sight of a young ballplayer-some hero perfectly memorized-just completing his own unique swing and now racing toward first. See the way he runs? Yes, that's him! Unmistakable, he leans in, still following the distant flight of the ball with his eyes, and takes his big turn at the base. Yet this is only the beginning, for baseball in the mind is not a mere returning. In time, this easy summoning up of restored players, winning hits, and famous rallies gives way to reconsiderations and reflections about the sport itself. By thinking about baseball like this-by playing it over, keeping it warm in a cold season-we begin to make discoveries. With luck, we may even penetrate some of its mysteries.

In any event, if there are still people amongst us who haven't had the joy of reading Roger Angell (recently named to the Hall of Fame at 93 years old), then here are a few articles to read. I envy you discovering him.

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1987-08-31#folio=034

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1975-06-23#folio=042 (about Steve Blass)

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1980-09-22#folio=082 (about Bob Gibson)

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/22/041122fa_fact1?currentPage=all (about the Red Sox victory)

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/11/05/071105taco_talk_angell (about Joe Torre)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/09/mo-town.html (about Mariano Rivera's last game)


And one final extract from "Farewell":

Curiously, these historic recollections played little part in our own feeling of sadness and loss, for they had to do with events, and events on a sporting field are so brief that they belong almost instantly to the past. Today’s fielding gem, last week’s shutout, last season’s winning streak have their true existence in record books and in memory, and even the youngest and brightest rookie of the new season is hurrying at almost inconceivable speed toward his plaque at Cooperstown and his faded, dated photograph behind a hundred bars. Mel Ott’s cow-tailed swing, Sal Maglie’s scowl, Leo Durocher’s pacings in the third-base coach’s box are portraits that have long been fixed in our own interior permanent collection, and the fall of the Polo Grounds will barely joggle them. What does depress us about the decease of the bony, misshapen old playground is the attendant irrevocable deprivation of habit—the amputation of so many private, repeated, and easily renewable small familiarities. The things we liked best about the Polo Grounds were sights and emotions so inconsequential that they will surely slide out of our recollection. A flight of pigeons flashing out of the barn-shadow of the upper stands, wheeling past the right-field foul pole, and disappearing above the inert, heat-heavy flags on the roof. The steepness of the ramp descending from the Speedway toward the upperstand gates, which pushed your toes into your shoe tips as you approached the park, tasting sweet anticipation and getting out your change to buy a program. The unmistakable, final “Plock!” of a line drive hitting the green wooden barrier above the stands in deep left field. The gentle, rockerlike swing of the loop of rusty chain you rested your arm upon in a box seat, and the heat of the sun-warmed iron coming through your shirtsleeve under your elbow. At a night game, the moon rising out of the scoreboard like a spongy, day-old orange balloon and then whitening over the waves of noise and the slow, shifting clouds of floodlit cigarette smoke. All these we mourn, for their loss constitutes the death of still another neighborhood—a small landscape of distinctive and reassuring familiarity. Demolition and alteration are a painful city commonplace, but as our surroundings become more undistinguished and indistinguishable, we sense, at last, that our environs are being replaced by mere events, and we are stabbed by the realization that we may not possess the score cards and record books to help us remember who we are and what we have seen and loved.

Baseball, Angell reminds us, is about how we remember. And with that, the bittersweet incapacity to remember everything. For me as a Giants' fan from the late 60's on, it is, for example (and one example among many), the memory of Ed Goodson's perfect swing, the description of it by the radio announcers, the images on KTVU broadcasts of games, and the gnawing feeling that Goodson might have made a greater splash in the majors if his swing hadn't been so perfect.

In any event, enjoy Roger Angell.

Bill