So. I like having games running in the background and I thought it might be fun to start out in 1901 with historical transactions and lineups. In addition to satisfying my craving for games to glance at I thought it would be a fun way to learn about baseball history. Sure I know that Cy Young was good, but what does that mean? Who were the Chicago Orphans? If it was the deadball era, why were teams scoring 5 runs a game? I wanted to gain an appreciation of every year of baseball by playing it out.
The process is pretty simple; as I said, I use historical lineups and transactions and I 'watch' one game every in-game day through the season. Early in the season I'll watch whichever game has the best underdog (whichever game has the team with the worst record that is the best). Later in the season when it becomes clear who has a shot at the pennant (usually the last month or two) I'll only watch games that affect those teams, even if they're against someone crappy. And once the pennant is locked up in both leagues I just sim to the playoffs, because there's no point in watching irrelevant games. I'm turning ratings off because I don't want to corrupt the experience by simply looking at a rookie and going 'oh, this guy is obviously great.' I'd like to experience his rise first-hand.
So this series of posts is basically an attempt to do two things; record the results of the sim for entertainment value and to record the things I've learned from the game, for educational value.
A caution: this is a replay. That means that the seasons will play out generally the same, but not exactly the same. A player that bats 300 may bat 330, or 270. A team may have multiple players underperform and itself underperform. It's like we're replaying every year, knowing that (injuries etc aside) it may play out differently than it really did. But perhaps that's the fun of it; learning from the past without being shackled to it.
I've already done the first two seasons; I'm halfway through May 1903. I wanted to give myself some time to see if I'd stick with it. Having done so, and become more excited each year to see what happens, I'll now start recapping the 1901 and 1902 seasons, within reason.
I recently read the Bill James Historical Abstract and it was really funny to read the player rankings (1-100 at each position for all time) and realize that because the book was written around 2000, the era I knew best, by far, was the deadball. He'd talk about Ryne Sandberg and I'd think "yeah, 2b with cubs in the 80s or so, pretty good wasn't he?" But I'd see a decent 1901 player like Joe Kelley and think "oh yeah, he was great for brooklyn that one year, nice!" So I guess using this as a tool to educate myself appears to have worked :P
I hope it makes for interesting reading
