While suffering from a case of “replay burnout” I was looking for something to recharge my APBA battery and took an interest in Tom’s “Monsters vs. Terribles” idea. I had debated doing my tournament at the end of my 1905 replay but was so eager to get the 1903 season started that I dismissed it.
So I lived vicariously through the blog, and Tom very graciously allowed me to be a somewhat sizeable part of his MVT process, and finally decided that with my replay being more of a chore than fun the time had come for the tournament.
So here is how I did it. I am sure it could have been better organized, but I was now anxious to begin. I took all the teams from 1901 and 1905 and put them in a box and picked at random one team and rotated it through 4 stacks with the packets face down so I would not know until the end of the process who was in each stack. These stacks then became “brackets” much like the March Madness of college basketball. I gave them the oh so original titles of North, South, East and West.
Each bracket was then “seeded” like the tournament and the games will be played out. I am using 3 man rotations, no rain outs and injuries are game only. Bracket teams are listed in rank order
North Bracket
1901 A’s
1905 Red Sox
1901 Tigers
1901 Orioles
1905 Yankees
1901 Cubs
1901 Senators
South Bracket
1905 White Sox
1905 Cubs
1901 Red Sox
1901 Pirates
1905 Senators
1901 Dodgers
1905 Braves
1901 Indians
East Bracket
1905 Giants
1901 White Sox
1901 Phillies
1905 Phillies
1901 Cardinals
1901 Brewers
1905 Cardinals
1901 Reds
West Bracket
1901 A’s
1905 Pirates
1905 Indians
1905 Tigers
1905 Browns
1901 Braves
1905 Dodgers
1901 Giants
I will post the updates as they become available.
So a deadball tournament then? ;-)
If anyone is wondering, Scott finished his 1905 replay a while ago and has done some fantastic writeups. He’s been so prolific in writing them up and I’ve just slow in getting them out. I’ll be posting the rest of them soon.
No spoilers!!
Also Scott, sometime I’d like to see your opinion on how replaying a deadball season is different/more fun than say a current season. How do you prepare? What are the strategies you use in game?
just a thought.
Hi Tom,
Well regarding preparation I have not really done a lot of research for the 05-03 seasons as playing dead ball only for the better part of 4 years has pretty much given me an idea how it would be. But when I did the 1901 replay I was drawn to it kind of on accident. I was online looking for Hugh Duffy card pics as I had heard about this being an amazing card and found it right here as a Monster Monday card. I then saw the 1901 Napoleon Lajoie card on Amazon as part of a set, but preferred to buy it from APBA and bought it brand new. I then went to Baseball Reference.com and started looking at the teams in general.
I learned about Sam Crawford, Elmer Flick and the other stars of this seemingly forgotten era of the game and was ready to go.
However the differences in how the result numbers are placed on the cards in the 1903 set printed in 2013 as opposed to the other sets printed in the 1980’s is there seems to be more homers and only 1 error number on the new cards. Pitching grades determined seemingly different with the introduction of the ZZ, K and R ratings has thrown me a bit of a curve.
Defense was pretty non existent so overall team ratings are usually 3 with a scattering of 2’s. 1903 has no 1’s and 05 only a couple of them. So moving to the advanced fielding has really changed a lot for me as defense is vastly improved on some teams even with a 3 team rating and has affected scoring a bit.
For those of you who only know me from this blog probably think I am a pitching and defense kind of guy, but I was introduced to the game in the late 70’s and was a big fan of the power hitter card initially, but the first team I had any success with was the 79 Astros. I became a big fan of guys like Cheo Cruz, Sr. and Terry Puhl. I had a lineup filled with guys with 11’s and a smattering of power with a solid rotation anchored by J.R. Richard. What a shame it was that he was cut down so quickly.
I used the hit and run constantly and the other managers began to try and find a way to minimize my use of it, and that pretty much started my departure from playing in leagues.
I am definitely doing the 1984 season very soon, so I will be returning to a more modern era. The big difference from the dead ball era and the modern era is that pitching is KING. Most teams, even the bad ones have a couple of pitchers that can completely shut down an offense.
Combine solid pitching with a lot of speed and you see some very wild days at the ball park. In the end the better teams usually find their way to the top, but you see some different types of numbers in the box scores.