The fast forward is over and Figment is back to a regular sim schedule as we dive into the 1962 season. It is presently late January 1962 and the baseball expansion draft -adding four new teams- was conducted by the AI General Managers. Immediately after which, our human GM's were called back to work and are now back to running our teams.
GOOD NEWS. THERE ARE SOME OPENINGS
If you have been following along with this dynasty now is your chance to be a part of the story. With expansion we have a few openings, but they are not just for expansion teams as few of the original 16 GMs opted for a new challenge. As a result there is I believe five openings and they include an expansion team if you want a challenge but also the mighty Cleveland Foresters, led by veteran pitching greats Deuce Barrell and Adrian Czerwinski, if you want to jump right in and control a winner. Send me a PM if you want to find out more and I will put you in touch with our commissioner.
Baseball is back to human GMs and the other three sports will follow soon. The plan is to let the AI GMs finish out the 1961-62 basketball and hockey schedule before human GMs take charge once again when we hit the off-season. I believe both are full but if you are interested in running a team in either of those sports (in conjunction with a baseball team or just as a hockey or basketball GM only) our commissioner is willing to add expansion clubs a few years earlier than real life. The American Football Association, which has been around since the early 1920s, and using Draft Day Pro Football since 1950, will also welcome human GMs as we approach the 1962 grid season. There is a companion league using the college game that will provide the draft pool for our football team.
If you want to be a part of Figment sports, rather than just an avid reader, this is the perfect time to apply for a GM job with one or as many as four teams in the various sports.
TWIFS issues will be sporadic over the next couple of in-game months as with baseball the only one with human GMs at the moment we will likely be simming a couple of weeks at a time to get us to spring training and the much anticipated 1962 season- a new era of FABL in a new decade and with, for the first time ever, 10 teams in each of the Continental and Federal Associations fighting it out for the chance to compete in the World Championship Series.
JANUARY 29, 1962
BIG WEEK AHEAD FOR NAHC LEADERS
It is hard to call any games in late January or early February crucial but the Detroit Motors and Chicago Packers have a big home and home series this Wednesday and Thursday as the two battle it out for first place in the NAHC. The two clubs are separated by just a single point atop the league standings with the Motors owning the lead will also in possession of a game in hand on the Packers. The two clubs have met eight times already this season and their is little to separate the pair, with each winning three games and the remaining two contests ending in ties. Chicago has reached the Challenge Cup finals each of the past two years but came up short on both occasions including a 4 games to one loss to the Motors last spring.
Detroit is led by twenty-year-old sophomore sensation Hobie Barrell (25-26-51), who trails only veteran Toronto pivot Quinton Pollack in the scoring race. Barrell has spent some time skating on a line with his older brother Bennie Barrell (10-26-36) after the Motors number one center Alex Monette (8-10-18) missed more than twenty games with knee and elbow issues. Monette is healthy, at least for the moment, so the Motors offense should be firing on all cylinders.
Scoring was expected from the Detroit club, but what comes as a big surprise is the goaltending after longtime star Henri Chasse announced his retirement last summer. Chasse, who had played every Detroit game for nearly half a decade, was spelled on occasion by former Boston farmhand Sebastien Goulet for 16 games a year ago. The 28-year-old Goulet had his struggles as a rookie a year ago but without the safety net of Chasse, has excelled this season and is chasing another late bloomer in Toronto's Justin MacPhee for the Juneau Trophy as top netminder in the league.
The Packers strength is their balanced offense which already boasts eight different skaters in double-digits for goals this season led by Ken York (16-18-34) and J.P. Morissette (14-31-45), who tops the club in points.
It is far from a two-horse race as the Toronto Dukes are just five points back of Detroit and the Boston Bees a single point behind the Dukes. Toronto is led, as always, by the ageless Quinton Pollack who shows no signs of slowing down at the ripe old age of 39. Justin MacPhee is also back as the top option in net and boasts the lowest goals against average in the loop. The 28-year-old burst on to the scene as rookie two years ago, winning both the Juneau Trophy as a top netminder and the McLeod Trophy as rookie of the year but was exiled to the minors a year ago in favour of Toronto's other top tender Mike Connelly.
The fourth place Bees lack the star power of Toronto and only 25-year-old Jack Gariepy (9-24-33) cracks the league top ten in scoring but Boston has managed to stay in the chase for top spot. The Bees shutout Montreal 4-0 last night with veteran Oscar James turning aside all 32 Vals shots in a game that allowed Boston to open up a 5 point lead on the Valiants in the race for the final playoff berth. The New York Shamrocks, who have made the playoffs only once in the past eight years and have not won a playoff series since the spring of 1950, are enduring another difficult campaign and have little hope of ending their playoff drought as they trail fourth place Boston by 21 points.
FALCONS FINALLY TAKE FLIGHT It feels like forever but fans of the Toronto Falcons are finally witnessing winning basketball again. The past decade has been tough on Toronto as the Falcons finished dead last in the West Division each of the last six years and have won just one playoff series since 1950. Now the club, which flew north from Pittsburgh in 1945, is perhaps dreaming of the first Federal Basketball League title in franchise history.
The Falcons are off to a 31-10 start, best record in the entire FBL and even a slight slump in which they dropped two of three to division rivals Detroit and St Louis last week, has not been a cure for basketball fever in a city where the local cage club has long been overshadowed by the most successful hockey team in the NAHC.
A recent ten game winning streak seems have to have reaffirmed that times have indeed changed at Dominion Gardens and it boosted the Falcons win total to 31 on the season. The season is just past the halfway point but the Falcons have already won more games than they did in the any of the past six full seasons.
After so many awful seasons the Falcons just had to improve because of repeated first overall draft picks. They may have made some errors on passing on players like Steve Barrell, who is starring for East Division leading Boston, but Toronto also landed some gems, although it took a few years to polish them up. Those gems would include the backcourt duo of Bill Spangler and Jim Bromberg. Each was selected first overall with Spangler coming in 1957 from CC Los Angeles and Bromberg three years later from Detroit City College. Spangler is third in league scoring, averaging 21 points per game, while Bromberg is following up his rookie of the year award win a year ago with a strong sophomore campaign. The two Toronto forwards, Bill Hash and Bryce Kirk were also first overall selections but the surprise piece that may have allowed the Falcons to put everything together is a 28-year-old center who was waived by two teams before finding a home on the shores of Lake Ontario. That would be Fred Lillard. Originally a 1955 second round pick of Chicago where he had no chance of replacing the great Luther Gordon, Lillard ended up playing semi-pro ball for four years before making his FBL debut with Washington a year ago. He suited up for just 2 games as an injury replacement with the Statesmen, and averaged 24 points but was cut and finally landed in Toronto for training camp. An impressive camp earned Lillard the starting job with a team in need of a big center and the rest has been like a fairy tale. Lillard is averaging 21.5 points per game, second highest in the league, and is among the top dozen rebounders in the game as well.
The Falcons still have a long flight ahead of the them, but it seems very clear they are poised to end the three year old on the West Division lead that the St Louis Rockets have held. The Rockets lost just 25 games all of last year and are still in second place, but they are two games under .500 and have already tasted defeat 22 times in 42 games this season.
DENNING HAS COLONELS BACK IN CHARGEAl Denning has Noble Jones College back in a spot the Colonels have not been in since the days of Charlie Barrell. Noble Jones College is the top team in collegiate basketball, leading the polls with a 17-1 record including a perfect 4-0 start in Deep South section play. Denning, the Georgia born and bred senior guard who was named National Freshman of the Year in 1959, is the biggest reason why the Colonels are dreaming of their first national cage title since Barrell led the club to back-to-back trips to the national championship game and a win in the spring of 1950.
Denning had 23 points in a recent victory on the road at Opelika State as the Colonels swept a two-game sojourn through Alabama last weekend, following up a 9-point win over the Wildcats Thursday with another 9-point victory over Alabama Baptist Saturday. Denning's 16.2 points per game average places him among the league leaders in the entire nation and makes him one of the most feared shooters in the Deep South Conference. Denning, who hails from Conyers, is not the only Georgia born product leading the Colonels this season as he has teamed with fellow senior Jim Glick, a forward out of Decatur, to give the Colonels one of the most lethal one-two scoring punches in the nation. Glick is averaging 13.5 points per game.
Come tournament time there is expected to be plenty of competition for the Colonels from the usual college powers as Carolina Poly, Maryland State and Whitney College are all ranked in the top ten and the Lane State Emeralds, who reached the national semi-final game a year ago, are also making noise out west. The Emeralds stumbled in their West Coast Athletic Association opener against Coastal California, but have won five straight section games since and are ranked second with a 17-2 overall record.
EXPANSION IMPERIALS QUICK TO DEAL
It did not take one of baseball's newest franchises long to make its first trade. The New York Imperials, just two weeks after stocking their team with players from the expansion draft, dealt away a pitcher who was expected to be near the top of their rotation with news that former Detroit Dynamos hurler Bob Allen was heading to Chicago. It will be a homecoming for the 33-year-old righthander who returns to the Cougars, the team that drafted him in the first round in 1946.
Allen was considered the top pitching prospect in the game for several years, but his career never quiet lived up to expectations. He debuted with the Cougars at the age of 23 in 1951 to the highest of expectations but won just 34 games over six seasons in the Windy City before he was traded to Detroit for a prospect by the name of Monty Brown, who is now 26 and recently was selected by the Minneapolis Millers in the expansion draft.
Allen had some success in Detroit, posting a 53-39 record in the Motor City but enjoyed the most success out of the bullpen when the Dynamos were in the tail end of their dominant years. He saved a Federal League best 20 games in 1959 but with Detroit on the downswing he returned to the rotation the past two years. There was some surprise Detroit exposed Allen in the expansion draft but perhaps even more surprise that the Imperials, who look to be very weak on the mound, would opt to move him even before seeing Allen in spring camp.
New York management appears committed to a long-term youth movement and the Imperials hope that Delos Smith, a 24-year-old acquired in return for the veteran hurler, will be part of their future. OSA feels the move will heavily favour the Cougars, who always seemed to win trades when their current GM was in charge prior to the fast-forward. The scouting service appears to call this one another big win for the Windy City Kitty's, noting Allen "should have no trouble filling a role in the middle or back half of any rotation" while noting Smith plays "capable and reliable defense" but he is more of a "supplement than a star."
- Former Chicago Cougars ace Peter "The Heater" Papenfus is back in the game five years after his retirement. Papenfus posted a 153-133 record from 1938-54 with the Cougars before playing one final season with the Los Angeles Stars. The two-time Allen Award winner had spent four seasons coaching in Japan but has returned to the United States and will become the pitching coach for the Newark Aces - the AAA affiliate of the Detroit Dynamos.
- There were several FABL teams busy making staffing changes including the Cougars who replaced nearly their entire coaching staff
- It was a busy week for the Washington Eagles returning GM. 19 players were released from the organization and 25 newcomers were signed to minor league contracts.
The Week That Was
Current events from the week ending 1/28/1962
- Postponed last week due to low-hanging clouds, astronaut John Glenn will attempt to rocket three times around the earth sometime this week. The Mercury countdown, set for Saturday, was called off 20 minutes before blastoff.
- Ranger 3, another spacecraft, is more than halfway to the moon but there is no hope of the craft hitting the moon. It was launched yesterday on a lunar collision course but its big Atlas booster rocket gave it just a bit more speed than it should have had, and it will not achieve its mission of landing on the moon.
- Budget Director David Bell told the Senate Appropriations Committee to not be surprised if the Federal budget passes the $100-billion a year mark within a few years. He was testifying in a closed session on the requirements of the 1963 budget which calls for spending of nearly $92.5 billion.
- At a meeting in Uruguay, the foreign ministers of the American states agreed in principle to "suspend" Fidel Castro's Cuban regime from hemisphere family councils.
- The 39-month old three-power nuclear test ban talks broke up in complete disagreement today as after a stormy 135-minute session, delegates from the United States, Britain and Russia failed even to agree on ho to end the conference.