Slow

Question: What’s slower than the 5 p.m. traffic on the Tri-State Tollway near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport?

Answer:  Nearly 40 percent of the players in the 1947 baseball season.

I’m finding there are not a lot of stolen bases in my APBA replay of the season and there’s more than the average number of outfielder-to-catcher double plays because of slow runners. It’s a far cry from the previous replay of the 1991 season I finished last summer where players like Marquis Grissom of the Expos and Rickey Henderson of the As blazed the base paths.

Of the 400 players carded by APBA for the 1947 season, 157, or 39 percent, have been given the dreaded “S,” meaning they are rated as slow runners. Slow as in turtle slow, molasses slow, New York Giants slow!

Only 21 percent of the players who were carded for the 1947 season received “F” for “fast” on their cards.

APBA, for those who don’t know the game, creates cards for players in various seasons. Gamers toss dice and match the results with numbers printed on the players’ cards. The game company uses a formula to replicate a player’s actual performance for the season. A player with many home runs, for instance Ralph Kiner in the 1947 season, have more 1s and 5s on his card indicative of more home run chances.

The game also reflects if a player strikes out a lot and, as in the case of my 1947 season replay, if he’s pretty slow.

I’ve tallied the number of stolen bases and players caught stealing through 400 games of this season. So far, players have combined for only 160 stolen bases and have been caught 108 times for a success rate of 59.7 percent. In 1991, the National League successfully stole bases 67.1 percent of the time and the American League swiped bases 65.9 percent of the time.

Projecting the 1947 season to the end (based on me having played about 33 percent of the replay so far), it looks like teams will take a total of 480 bases. In the actual 1991 season, Montreal alone stole 221 bases.

So, the players in 1947 are generally slow. Of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 25 carded players, 13 are rated as “slow,” including nine of its pitchers.  I may be wrong, but I think it was Mickey Lolich, the portly Detroit Tigers pitcher, in Jim Bouton’s classic “Ball Four” who talked about being slow. “You don’t run the ball over the plate, you throw it,” he said.

The New York Giants have eight slow players, including the heart of its line up with sluggers Johnny Mize, Willard Marshall and Walker Cooper. On a few occasions, the “slow” player rankings have caught the Giants twice in the same inning. Mize will get a single. Marshall’s roll will result in an “8,” or a single and should move Mize to third. But because Mize is a slow runner, he’s nailed at second. Then, Cooper bloops a single and, again because Marshall is rated as slow, Marshall is caught at second.

Of course, the Giants are blasting home runs. Mize has 15 home runs so far and Marshall has 12. You don’t have to zip around the bases at jackrabbit speed following a home run. You just have to be sure to touch all the bases.

Still, the slowness has cut short scoring opportunities for the Giants and may be responsible for their less than stellar 27-29 record so far. The Pirates, with their 13 slowpokes, have crawled their way to the major league worst record of 18-41.

Brooklyn and Philadelphia have the most fast-rated runners in the National League with 10 of their 25 players rated as “F.” Both teams have done well so far, too.

On the inverse, the Washington Senators have nine fast runners to lead the American League. That lead doesn’t translate into wins, though, as the Sens are at the bottom of the league with a 22-36 record.

It’s obvious that 1947 is a different era than 1991 in terms of speed by looking at the statistics. It’s even more evident when playing the season.