Sunday, October 28, 2012

Woe is Minnesota, 1981

I now have an inkling of what Gene Mauch felt like in the summer of 1961.

Mauch, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, watched 51 years ago as his team embarked on a 23-game losing streak. It is the record for futility in the World Series era of Major League Baseball.

Comparatively, in my APBA baseball game replay of the strike-shortened 1981 season, the Minnesota Twins — nay, my favorite team the Minnesota Twins — are engaged in a similar journey. Through my skillful managing, the 1981 Twins have now lost 21 games in a row and counting.

The APBA game is an ingenious one based on statistical occurrences. The game company computes batting and pitching tendencies and replicates those on individual players’ cards.  Fans of the game roll dice and replay baseball seasons with those cards. I’ve been doing some version of the game since 1977.

Despite the math-geekiness sound to it, the game doesn’t always stick to statistical probabilities, algorithms and frequencies. There’s always an anomaly or two in each season I’ve played. In my 1957 replay, Mickey Mantle played horribly and the Chicago White Sox actually won the American League pennant over the real life winner, Mantle’s Yankees.  Kansas City couldn't lose in 1987, beating out the real life winner Minnesota Twins for the pennant that year.

This one, however, is the worst. I’ve juggled the 1981 Twins’ lineup a bit, hoping for some stroke of luck that will end the losing streak. I generally stick to the suggested lineups the game company provides, but if a player seems to be “hot,” I may move him up in the order to utilize his bat more efficiently.

It hasn’t worked for the Twins.

Minnesota had the powerful bats of John Castino, Rob Wilfong, Hosken Powell, Glenn Adams and Danny Goodwin. Not heard of them, you say? Well, join the club. And I lived in Minnesota.

In my replay, the Twins led only one time in their 21-game kaputt. The streak began on July 7, 1981, against California. Their latest loss, to Cleveland, happened on Aug. 1, 1981. Only six games were loses by two runs or less. Only two games extended into extra innings.

Their pitching staff didn’t render fear in the hearts of man, either. Fernando Arroyo, Don Cooper, Pete Redfern. I guess, in those days, the ol’ adage, “Spahn and Sain and pray rain” became: “Erickson and pray for work stoppage.”

Which was what actually happened in the real season. The 1981 season was disrupted by a baseball strike. And here’s the irony: When I began this 1981 replay last December, I decided to play the full season. The strike never happened in my game. And, on the inverse, the games my replay Twins are playing never actually happened.

So, I roll on and hope each time Minnesota plays a game. I average maybe five games a day, so the Twins don’t play but every four or five games here. I have a few days to prepare for yet another loss.

On an interesting historical note, Mauch, the manager of the ill-fated 1961 Phillies, actually managed Minnesota. His last season with the Twins was in 1980. Maybe he saw the handwriting on the wall and left, leading the California Angels in 1981, because he didn’t want to be associated with my own poor managing skills.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Begrudging Sports

The kid wearing the Washington Nationals baseball cap backwards in the grocery story ticked me off the other day.

It was the night Washington beat St. Louis in Game 4 of the National League Division series and sporting a cap of such in Cardinals’ country wasn’t a great idea. So I told him. I actually scolded him for wearing the wrong hat. “Dude,” I said, trying to reach his generation with my hip talk. “That ain’t cool.”

And then I realized, I was a crotchety old man complaining about the kid’s team. But that realization didn’t last and my sports grudge flared again.

A week later, I spoke to a woman who, offhandedly, said she was a Washington Redskins fan. I immediately said something about them beating my beloved Vikings last week. My anger rose again.

Those kinds of grudges stick with me apparently. I’ve forgiven people who’ve stolen from me, ex-girlfriends who broke my heart and my parents for moving from Minnesota. But I hold on to sports things for a long, long time.

My first grudge developed at a very early age. The Washington Redskins beat my Vikings on a last-second play once when I was but a grade school imp. I asked my father where I could get enough explosives to blow up the nation’s capital city. Musings of a small kid, sure. But I still remember today that anger I felt over the game. It stays with you.

In 1975, the Dallas Cowboys beat the Vikings on quarterback Roger Staubach’s Hail Mary pass to Drew Pearson. I thought it was blatant offensive pass interference on the Cowboys. The referees thought otherwise and I felt the utter crush of defeat. I also felt a rising hatred for Dallas.

I also harbor ill feelings toward the Boston Red Sox. Coming back from a three-game deficit to beat the New York Yankees was bad enough in 2004. They added the fuel to my burning dislike of them when they swept the Cardinals in the World Series.

I am over a half-century old. Some of these offenses I still cling to happened four decades ago. It may be time to let it go.

But it’s hard and that’s what gives the characteristics of sports fans. It’s more fun to root for a team you have reasons to hate. A victory over that particular team gives an added enjoyment. On the inverse, getting beat by a grudge team hurts and it perpetuates the discord and the everlasting hatred.  

There are more teams to form grudges against. I’m developing one now for the San Francisco Giants as they battle the Cardinals in the National League Championship Series. It’s a minor thing now, but if the Giants win on some controversial play, or they injure a Cardinals’ star it’ll develop fully.

I’m sure there are people in San Francisco now who are working on their own grudges against St. Louis.

I’ll return to the grocery store where the Washington cap-wearing fan was and I’ll try to understand my sports obsession and my grudges that last lifetimes. And even though it may be a problem, at least I maintained some civility and didn’t knock that hat off his head.

Yet.


Sunday, October 7, 2012

America's Real Debate

I  signed up for an online survey about last week’s presidential debate to answer questions that ultimately would end up on CBS News before I realized that the event coincided with the last day of the baseball season.

Here, in Cardinals’ Country, St. Louis’ game against Cincinnati was not a pivotal game. The National League playoffs had already been set. The American League teams were also set, it was  just a matter of who played who.

So, I had to weigh the importance of both. The debate versus the baseball games. American politics versus the American game. I debated myself over my choices. Debate leader Jim Leher or fair balls?

The debate, the first of three planned, focused on the economy. In these troubled times, economic recovery is important to the country. It would be interesting to see what each candidate had to offer while making veiled promises to fix everything and set us back on the right track.

So, I pondered my choices. I was a conscientious American and, like millions of others, had a stake in the presidential election. Although, personally, I don’t think the effects of whoever wins next month will trickle down to me that much. Still, this was America and it was an important night.

I chose what to watch as a red-blooded American. I picked the most important event, the one that had a longer-lasting impact on us all. 

I chose the baseball games. Romney against Obama? Give me Yankees and the Red Sox. Even the Cardinals’ game, which featured a lot of the team’s Triple A players from Memphis held my interest more.

And that’s said, what with me being in news. 

I did glance at the debate during pitching changes and when the innings ended, so I got a feel for what was going on. And I did participate in the after-debate online survey that simply asked my impression of each candidate on a basic semantic scale.

It’s a measure of what an imbecile I am, I guess. I couldn’t repeat what Romney’s stance is on cutting taxes and stimulating economy. I don’t know Obama’s plans on boosting employment. But I know the Cardinals are a good two-strike hitting team and Detroit has the one-two combination of pitching and hitting to make a playoff run.

Republican versus Democrat? Bah. American League versus National League is far more compelling for me. Ah, sports addiction.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Computer Illiteracy, LOL

In this world of hi-tech devices of wireless internet, instant information, apps and other gadgets, I remain pretty primitive when it comes to computers. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. Maybe it’s because I am computer illiterate and fear anything new, frightened of being so far left behind that I come across as a doddering old man.

Oh, sure. I have an iPhone — provided by work. And I use it like everyone else: checking scores, looking at the internet while afield and calling up  weather radars to see if rain is headed my way. Why, the other day I attended a college football game and even used the iPhone to find the scores of other games in progress. I thought I was pretty 21st century until I saw the hordes of others in the stands doing the same thing.

For the most part, I reject the pageantry of gadgetry. Wi-Fi? Why fight it, you say. It’s here to stay and we are evolving into info geeks with large thumbs and a new language used for chatting. LOL.

But this may be why I embrace the dice game of APBA. It’s simple, doesn’t require electricity and I’m not handicapped if a computer breaks down or the power goes out. Give me a dice, a pen and ambient light and I’m fine. 

I remember a debate I saw on an internet message board for the game company once. A person was crowing about the computerized version of the baseball replay game. He said he set his lineups up and chose managerial styles for his teams and then left his home for the weekend. When he returned, the season was completed, the statistics compiled and a champion crowned. But what’s the fun in that?  It takes forever to complete a dice-rolled season, but at least you’re part of it. You see it develop game by game and, while it may be old fashioned, there is the excitement associated with each game, much like in real life. 

I’m sure I sound like some crotchety old-timer harping on about newfangled contraptions and all. Of course, it’s easy for me to shun the technology. I grew up in a time when ESPN didn’t exist and we relied either on local evening news for sports reports or the newspapers for baseball standings. West coast games? Forget about it. They were never completed before the papers went to press, so editors simply put “N” by the game indicating it was played at night.

So, while we hurtle toward more instant information (I predict one day we’ll have chips implanted in our brains and contact lenses to receive internet in our vision), I continue to grasp an old tradition that I learned as a child and hope to continue on for years to come.