Update: May 21, 1942

I’ve reached May 21, 1942, in my APBA baseball replay, which is a bit more than 20 percent completed, and I’m finding this is a really good season to play.

Like all replays, personalities of both the players and the teams are beginning to come out. For example, I’ve noticed that of the three DiMaggios who are playing this season, Vince, not Joe, is more valuable to his team. The Pittsburgh Pirates aren’t faring well, but they’d be a whole lot worse if Vince DiMaggio weren’t playing for them.

Dolph Camilli leads the Brooklyn Dodgers with nine home runs and Johnny Mize has clouted seven for the New York Giants so far.

I’d provide statistics for the big three: Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Stan Musial, but, alas, as I thought would happen, my computer crashed. It happens every time I keep stats. And, yes, I know all about thumb drives, et al. The problem is that I am using an antiquated computer program on an old iBook laptop computer. The program itself crashed. I think this particular program — Appleworks — was invented about the time Thomas Edison was playing with light bulb filaments.

I do know that Ted Williams walked three times against Cleveland on May 21, and ended a 21-game hitting streak. Musial was batting only about .230 when the computer program died and DiMaggio was batting about .270. If I’m rambunctious, I may do the three players’ stats by hand. I can trust my pen. I can’t count on any computer.

Here are the standings as of the end of play on May 21, 1942

AMERICAN LEAGUE

W L   GB

New York 22 9 --

St. Louis 21 14 4

Washington 18 15 5

Detroit 19 18 6

Cleveland 14 19 9

Philadelphia 16 21 9

Boston 13 19 9.5

Chicago 13 21 10.5

NATIONAL LEAGUE

W L     GB

Brooklyn 24 10    --

St. Louis 21 12 2.5

Cincinnati 18 16 6

Boston 18 18 7

New York 17 18 7.5

Pittsburgh 17 20 8.5

Chicago 15 19   9

Philadelphia 9 16 15.5

I’ve kept up a decent pace playing the games so far. I began this on April 14 and think I could finish this season’s replay by the end of the year. It’s not that I want to finish this quickly; this is an interesting season to play and I’m learning about players of this era for the first time. But, as always, there are more seasons ahead to play and there’s always something new to learn with this game.