Someone else ran this theme a long time ago and it was fun putting together a team. So with due respect to whoever did it previously, I thought I'd try to get another season going.
The Oracle of Baseball is a feature in the Frivolities section of Baseball-Reference.com. It's a baseball version of the Oracle of Kevin Bacon that connects any actor to Kevin Bacon. Here's the link to the Oracle of Baseball:
www.baseball-reference.com/oracle/
For this theme we'll use the "Find a Chain of Teammates". That allows you to enter any two players you like and it will generate a chain of teammates that connects them. For example here is a chain that connects Tris Speaker and Pete Rose:
Tris Speaker played with Babe Ruth on the 1915 Boston Red Sox
Babe Ruth played with Ray Mueller on the 1935 Boston Braves
Ray Mueller played with Joe Nuxhall on the 1944 Cincinnati Reds
Joe Nuxhall played with Pete Rose on the 1963 Cincinnati Reds
Find a chain you like and construct a team as follows:
- Each player in the chain, including the first and last, must be on your team. You may twist that player to any year of their career.
- The remainder of your team is made up from players on the teams that connect the first and last players in the chain. These players CANNOT be twisted. You must use the season they played with your chain players. [If someone played only a partial season on a connecting team you may use either their partial season with that team or their combined, full season stats.]
If I were making a team from the chain above I'd have Speaker, Ruth, Mueller, Nuxhall, and Rose on my team and I could use any season from their careers. The other 20 players would come from the rosters of the four connecting team-seasons, and those players could not be twisted. So for example I might complete my outfield with the 1963 Vada Pinson.
Roster rules:
- $90 mil cap
- No WW, AAA, or DH.
- Trades are allowed
- First and last chain players are unique for first/last. But those player can appear on other rosters as connecting players or if they played on a connecting team.
- There are not limits on the chain. It can be as short or as long as you like.
- You must have at least one player from each connecting team on your roster.
- Clones are unlikely, but possible. In the chain above if someone played with Joe Nuxhall on both the 1944 and 1963 Reds you could use both seasons of that player.
- Use a stadium that was home to one of your connecting teams
- We'll align based on number of years between first and last connecting teams. The chain above is 48 years between the 1915 Red Sox and 1963 Reds.
When you sign up put your chain in the post. I couldn't figure out how to cut and paste from bb-r.com, so you might just cut and paste the sample chain above and fill in your specifics. Though yours might be longer or shorter.
12/8/2012 4:02 PM (edited)