It was a long season; 16 months of rolling games, recording scores and some stats and watching what happened.
It was a good season. When I embarked upon this, I wanted to see what would have happened if the baseball strike didn’t occur. There were some highs: Mike Schmidt hit 53 home runs in my replay. Jerry Reuss threw two no-hitters for the Dodgers. There were some lows: Minnesota lost 26 in a row and ended with a record of 48-114. The Twins, Toronto, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs and Atlanta all lost at least 100 games.
As I’ve said so many times here before, but for the benefit of first time readers, APBA is a statiscally-based replay sports game. Baseball players for the season are given cards with numbers on them. Replayers roll dice, match the roll to numbers on the cards and determine play results. I’ve been playing APBA basketball since 1977 and baseball since 1998.
The 1981 replay is the eighth season I’ve completed and this was one of the better ones, despite Minnesota’s awful outcome.
When the regular season ended, Detroit and Baltimore were tied for the American League East, each posting 97-65 records. The Tigers beat Baltimore in a one-game playoff, but were defeated by Kansas City, 3 game to 1, in the American League Championship Series.
In the National League, Los Angeles, which won the West Division by 9 games over Houston, swept Montreal in the three-game National League Championship Series.
The Royals took the first game of the World Series, 1-0, over the Dodgers on Amos Otis’ RBI double in the seventh inning. L.A. took the next two games, 9-0 and 6-2. Willie Aikens drove in the go-ahead run in Game 4 for the Royals in the ninth, and Kansas City tied the Series at two games apiece.
And that was it for the Royals. Dusty Baker hit two home runs for the Dodgers in Game 5 for the win and Rick Monday added two homers of his own in Game 6. McRae popped out and the season was over.
So, the 1981 cards are put back in their envelopes, the envelopes back in the box and the box back on the shelf. It’s over.
I just pulled out the 1942 card set and have written down the teams’ schedules for that year, the pitching rotations and the stat pages I keep.
Tonight, I’ll start replaying this season, and again, I’ll see what happens. I hope it’s as entertaining as the 1981 season was.
I believe if you check the "comments" section of your March 13th posting, you will see that I said the Dodgers would win it all.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your completed replay project.