The View From Wisconsin

I finally got enough info and stuff together that I could play out a few games using LONGBALL. In the process, I remembered a few things about the game:

1. It is incredibly tedious to go from looking up rolls on a rating card to the playing board.
   
2. Some of the results on the boards can be very unrealistic. For example, in the first "test game" I played (2009 Brewers at 2009 Rays), there were a grand total of seven hit batsmen by both teams. Of course, I had to "guess" on a lot of the results when I recreated the playing board, since I still haven't found my copy of the playing board (and probably won't until I finally shell out $ for a replacement game - which won't happen soon).
   
3. Though the pitch endurance concept that I came up with was good to start, it makes more sense to do it the way I do now - one d8 for the ball count, one d6 for the strike count.
4. I'm currently playing out the "Selig Series" - the 1982 Brewers vs. the 2008 Brewers. In game one, CC Sabathia threw a three-hitter (with three HBP?) in a 6-2 game one win at County Stadium. Ryan Braun and J.J. Hardy homered for the New Crew off of Mike Caldwell. In game two, Pete Vukovich didn't even get through the fifth inning; Gabe Kapler (who was starting in place of Bill Hall, as the DH), Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun all homered to hang an ocho on the '82 Crew. Yovanni Gallardo went six innings, allowing three runs. Eric Gagne closed the game out, though it took a base running mistake by Gorman Thomas in the 9th to squash a potential comeback rally. With one away, he singled to right and Corey Hart threw to the plate to try to get Ted Simmons, who led off the inning with a single and was advanced to second by Ben Oglivie. Simmons was safe at the plate, but Jason Kendall threw out Thomas trying to take second on the play. Gagne got Roy Howell to pop out to third to end the game.
5. That's the other thing about the playing board - a lot more pop fly outs than ground outs. I suspect that if I had a copy of the real board, I'd see that the grounders were spread out a bit more.
   
6. Because of the HBP fiascoes I mentioned, I actually had to re-write the entire list for one of the results on the main board (namely, 44). I had a fun one that I added for runners on first and second (A bonus no-prize for the first person who gets where the play came from): "Batter hits dribble down first base line; as first baseman tries to tag him out, batter intentionally swats ball out of his glove; batter is declared out by umpire (3-UA; roll one die: odd - batter is ejected from game for arguing; even - batter remains in game); runners advance one base;"
   
7. Doing the stats can be incredibly tedious, especially when it comes to guessing a player's Injury Factor. Molitor was healthy most of the '82 season, but I still rated him as a "2".
   
8. I still haven't used the park factor add-ons that I'd created way back in '94, mostly because I'm not interested in using even more charts and tables to play a simple game.
   
9. I've only used the stolen base a couple of times, though I could use it even more frequently, because neither Simba nor Kendall are very good at throwing out runners (Simmons is a T-4, Kendall a T-5).
   
10. Hits and scoring plays all tend to happen at one time because of a series of bad rolls - which does detract from the play of the game. And the Pitcher Ratings (the I-II-III things) don't help minimize that as much as they could (though that is a symptom of not knowing the board, of course).
    

I'm in the middle of playing out game three of the Selig Series at Miller Park right now. The 82 Crew had a 2-0 lead, but the 08 squad just took the lead on a series of errors by Cooper and Oglivie. Cooper, by the way, is having a nightmare series: seven strikeouts in 11 plate appearances. Yeeeah.