Thank you riji4191 - I admit I am having a blast. I am not sure though when I play solitaire leagues I rarely see earth-shattering batting performances. So you may be right. But after we all we are just now leaving the deadball era behind for good (as it made a little return during WWI). So let's see how the 1920s shape up. If they see deflated numbers I will chalk it up as you suggest, or else to the austerity polcies of Ms. Merkel and the European Central Bank, whose impact we feel even on this side of the Alps ! 

addendum: I checked because on the stats page OOTP allows you to find out how closely the results of a season have mirrored RL: for 1916-1919 for some reason, HR/AB are down between 11% and 16%. Batting average was up around 2-4% instead compared with real life. So your intuitiion here is right. Ruth ended up with 35 homers for 1920 (see below), a season in which he hit 54 in real life. I can adjust the modifiers upward during the preseason, but want to see if this continues for more than another season before actually intervening - see "The Universal Basebal Assocation, J. Henry Waugh, Prop." by Robert Coover on why this is inadviseable. See also "Flood, Noah" and "Gomorrah, Sodom and..." for other examples. (if you know that book you understand the Biblical references in relation to it, and if you don't know the Universal Baseball Assoc. etc. book read it now). 

1919

 

Kennesaw Mountain Landis spent the last several years crushing the democratic labor movement called The Industrial Workers of the World or IWW, who yearned for industrial democracy, for workers to run the workplaces as democratic republics. Landis handed out one after another harsh sentence, and injunctions against strikes were ready at hand when he was on the bench. Yet when Joe Hill, the big Swede who wrote so many songs beloved of the working people of America was put before a firing squad in Utah, when the American Legion castrated and lynched Wesley Everett , the IWW activist who had led Free Speech fights and organized workers in the big forests of the Pacific Coast, Landis was nowhere to be found.

 

Now he holds a new position: Commissioner of Baseball with the kind of dictatorial powers that up to now only the owners have held – over each of their own teams, at least since the same sort of democratic workers’ democracy movement was defeated when Monte Ward’s Players League went down – over the whole of baseball. Good thing Honus Wagner, himself a Socialist of the stripe of Eugene Debs who remains in prison in Atlanta. But then Atlanta Penitentiary  likewise holds Mr. Marcus Garvey, widely recognized as the most widely followed leader of the descendants of Africa, who are excluded from playing in major league baseball for no reasons this reporter has ever understood. Word is that the new Commissioner or may we call him Czar or Kaiser of baseball has no intention of overturning that injustice either.

 

Instead he has driven 8 players formerly with the Chicago White Sox, one of them the great Shoeless Joe Jackson, forever from the game over allegations of throwing the pennant race of 1919 to the Cleveland Indians who won it by 8 games over the 79-61 White Sox. Each of the 8 have one more season to play ball, pending appeals in the courts that we are told have no hope of overturning the decision. So if you can make it to your local park when the White Sox are in town,  or to Comiskey in 1920 be sure to do so as it will be your last chance to see Ed Cicotte, Buck Weaver, Joe Jackson, Lefty Williams and the others.   If it was tranquility and tradition and a return to normalcy that we expect watching baseball this year in the hopes of quickly forgetting the Fog of War, alas, these new turns of events would appear to promise not a return to, but the further destruction of civilization as first Europe and now American baseball go into decline. Can anything, anyone save baseball? From itself? From money and corruption? From its own Commissioner? Time will tell.

 

In the meantime, it was Cleveland, fair and square or not, against the Giants in the World Series in 1919, New York having outlasted Cincinnati and Chicago in a gem of a National League pennant race. Jesse Barnes won 21 games for the Giants, and Art Nehf 15. Dutch Reuther and Hod Eller won 34 games between them to nearly pull it off for the Reds, who had good hitting from Ed Roush and Heinie Groh, the latter going .316 with 4 homers. The Cubs, for their part, had Grover Alexander (21-9, 2-07) and Hippo Vaughn (23-13, 2.78) but weak hitting, and came in a close third.

 

Cleveland’s Stan Coveleski may want to quarrel with the Kennesaw Landis theory of how the pennant race was decided, as he contributed a 27-9 record and a 2.59 ERA. Teammate Tris Speaker might agree with Stan, as he hit .307. Shoeless Joe Jackson, shockingly gone from baseball forever, hit .357 with 9 home runs, hardly the performance of a man throwing a pennant race. Ed Cicotte and Lefty Williams won 43 games between them for the White Sox. But both pitchers have only next year to play as the appeal winds its way through courts that seem to only side with owners, never with workers or their advocates these days.

 

But I digress. The World Series was back to a best 5 out of 9 format this year and the Cleveland Indians who supposedly should have ended up second in the AL did not show it when they beat the Giants 5 games to 2 to be the champions of the baseball world. No one has suggested that John McGraw threw the World Series, lest they lose their teeth before they complete the sentence.

 

A new star, George Sisler, first baseman for the St. Louis Browns, led the majors in hitting with a .363 average, in a season when offense thankfully made a comeback. Babe Ruth, yes, you know the pitcher for the Red Sox, Babe Ruth who has been playing outfield more often than pitching, hit 25 home runs, two short of the all-time record, to win the home run crown and posted a .304 average. And across town from Sisler, another new star, Cardinals’ second baseman Rogers Hornsby hit .340 to lead the National League. Ty Cobb had to settle for .336. Maybe renewed hitting can restore Baseball. Who knows?

 

The Cards also had the NL rookie of the year, catcher Verne Clemens who hit .301 on the season. The AL ROY went to Dickey Kerr, who went 13-4 pitching for the White Sox.

 

Coveleski appropriately won the Rube Waddell Award for best AL pitcher, and the first renamed Christy Mathewson Award even more appropriately went to a New York Giant, Matty’s old team – to Jesse Barnes for his 21-13 mark and 1.95 ERA.

 

Hornsby and Ruth were the MVPs in each league. 

 

 

1920

 

Dear reader, do you want to know what tragedy is? Tragedy is Gene Debs winning one million votes while in Federal Prison for telling us not to get into a war that now we regret getting into. Tragedy is a flawed President touring the country desperately to bring about peace at last and forever with a League of Nations, only to fall ill and fail to convince the country to enter that League. Tragedy is a peace treaty so onerous it will sooner, or later, bring to power in the defeated Germany new leaders determined to get revenge, even as the economist John Maynard Keynes writes in his book “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”. And tragedy is what has happened in the 1920 baseball season.

 

Facing the pending expulsion for all time from baseball for 8 of its players, some of them great ones, like Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ed Cicotte, Lefty Williams, and Buck Weaver, the Chicago White Sox fought neck and neck with the Cleveland Indians all season for the American League pennant.

 

Why tragic? First of all think of it: if the White Sox won the pennant, it would add fuel to the fire. It would seem to confirm Judge Landis’ claim that the Sox should have won it last year as well, and so seem to provide evidence that they threw it all last year to make money from gamblers. If they lost, it would seem that they threw it again, to make it appear they lost it fair and square last season too. And the Indians? No matter how well they played, how good they were, they were bound to be a footnote in history, their triumphs forever shadowed by the idea that they were second-rate.

 

The race went down to the wire. The Indians finished 95-59, the Sox 94-60. One game difference. Is something thereby proven? No.

 

Further tragedy: the outcome itself, as the losers of the race also lost their appeals in the courts. Judge Landis won. The 8 men are out. And so it appeared was baseball.

 

But the pennant race, despite the fans’ alienation at crooked, or allegedly crooked pennant races, stirred a lot of excitement and interest and the added publicity only made it more dramatic. And the other factor keeping baseball alive this year was Babe Ruth and his new team, the No, No Nanettes, oh, I mean the New York Yankees, for whom Ruth hit – hold on to your hats – 35 – yes 35 unprecedented home runs, shattering the previous record of 27. The Red Sox must already rue the day that their owner, seeking financing for a Broadway musical of all things, sold off a player who has made the game seem fresh with a new way of playing, largely adapted from the batting stances of Joe Jackson himself.

 

The Yankees ended up 3 games behind Cleveland in third place. What a season !

 

Wilbur Cooper won 25 games and Babe Adams won 23 and the Pirates won the National League pennant, with Max Carey (from Mr. Debs’ own Terre Haute, Indiana), hitting .313. The Reds came in a close second, 3 games back of 98-56 Pittsburgh, as Ed Roush hit .343 and Dutch Ruether won 22.

 

The lead in the World Series shifted back and forth with Cleveland winning the last two to win it in a full 9 game Series. The only thing marring it was that the 9^th and deciding game was a 14-6 slugfest, and not a nail-biter.

 

But on the whole it was a good, exciting season. Hitting was back, Harry Heilmann of Detroit hitting .370 to lead the majors, 6 points ahead of George Sisler. Irish Meusel edged out Rogers Hornbsy for the NL batting title, .353 to .351. Elmer Smith’s 18 home runs were just better than half of Ruth’s new record-breaking total.

 

Hornsby and Ruth repeated as MVPs of their leagues. Cooper of Pittsburgh won the Mathewson Award, and Red Faber of the White Sox went 22-12, with a 2.86 ERA to win the Rube Waddell Award.

 

Jesse Haines won 24 games for St. Louis to win the NL Rookie of the Year award, the AL award went to Yankees’ outfielder Bob Meusel, who hit .335, only 18 points off his brother’s NL leading average. 

1921

 

Mark Twain apparently had not been seen for some months at one point and newspapers were reporting that the great writer was dead. Twain held a press conference and told reporters “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

 

The same might yet be said of rumors of baseball’s death: and hitters may have saved it. In the front row of those hitters is Babe Ruth, who set a new record with an astounding 35 home runs. But this year he made sure that that record would not stand for long. How many home runs can a player hit in a season?

 

73.

 

That number is the new record for home runs in a season. And it is, literally and figuratively a whole new ballgame.

 

George Sisler had to content himself with batting .410 to lead the majors, something that WOULD have been the talk of the town, but with came in second as a big news item behind Ruth’s Herculean task. Ruth hit .402, and so Sisler kept him from a Triple Crown.

 

In third were two wonderful  pennant races, as the Yankees of Ruth, the Browns of Sisler and the two-time AL champion Indians spent all season fighting it out, and in the NL the Giants, Cardinals, Reds, and Pirates ended up separated by just 2 games when the dust had cleared.

 

In the end, the Yankees won 92 games, one more than Cleveland and four more than St. Louis, and the Cardinals won 98 to the 97 won  each by the Giants and Pirates and 96 of the Reds.

 

So it was a season to remember, one to save the game. And to boot, our new President, Warren Harding, promising a return to normalcy (a return to decency and civil freedoms would be sufficient) has pardoned old Gene Debs who left prison, was a guest that White House where once he might have presided. So the man who once said “I could have risen from the ranks long ago, I prefer to rise with the ranks, I could gone to Congress long ago, I have preferred to go to prison” is a free man, though the Palmer raids warn us against being yet too sure that normalcy and civil freedoms are fully restored. But then, the Constitution is always the first casualty of war isn’t it? If baseball is not added to the list of casualties in the end, we shall be grateful.

 

Bob Meusel, last year’s ROY in the AL hit 24 home runs for the Yankees, a feat that just a year ago would have been considered a historic event. And the only man nicknamed “Home Run”, now playing for the Yankees at third base, hit .318 and 13 home runs, again, once a good number and good enough to lead leagues and win Frank Baker three MVPs in a row as he once won, now a pale imitation of the real thing.

 

Ken Williams hit 33 home runs for the Browns, to give St. Louis a real one-two punch. Jack Tobin hit .377, the same as Ty Cobb of Detroit, whose own teammate Harry Heilmann hit .394 with 25 home runs. Detroit leftfielder Bobby Veach hit 22 home runs. Eddie Collins hit .379. Tillie Walker hit 29 homers for the Athletics.

 

Nor was the home run festival and offensive offensive limited to the American League: Rogers Hornsby hit .403 with 25 home runs. Bob Meusel’s brother Irish hit .338 with 30 home runs for the Giants. Zack Wheat hit .326 with 18 homers for Brooklyn. and Cy Williams hit .293 with 20 home runs for the Phillies.

 

The home run was the real star this year. It has changed the game overnight and added a new degree of excitement that we have not known before. People came back to the parks to see it, gradually letting Judge Landis, the so-called Black Sox, and the war gradually recede in their memory.

 

The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees by 5 games to 3 in the World Series, and the scores of the last three games were: Cards 15, Yankees 1;  Yankees 11, Cards 3;  Cardinals 13, Yankees 2.

 

Hornsby and Ruth were foregone conclusions as MVPs.  Even in such a hitter’s year, Wilbur Cooper went 26-11 with a 2.44 ERA for the Pirates to win the Mathewson award. The Yankees Bob Shawkey went 22-11 with a 2.95 ERA to win the Rube Waddell Award for best AL pitcher.

 

First baseman Earl Sheely of the White Sox hit .328 with a now modest seeming 13 home runs to be the Rookie of the Year for the American League. The other Chicago First baseman was another rookie, Ray Grimes, who hit .359 with 9 home runs to win the award in the NL. 

so offense seems to have jumped considerably for 21 did you bump the modifier? if not are the default settings some how derived off of the R/L league stats for each individual season

No I didn't. I set it to recalculate the player ratings based on RL stats before every season. So this is a jump - startling I agree ! - that is presumably with the range of possible statstical outcomes for OOTP. 

It is pretty amazing. But no, I did not want to start messing with it unless well into the early 20s offense continued to be non-existent. But it came back and how !! 

1922 - The Greatest Comeback in History in a Year of Return to Normalcy (sort of): 

 

1922 was a year that saw the trend toward hitter both ratify itself as the new reality of baseball and moderate its intemperate beginnings of 1921 just a bit, and also saw a bit of novelty in the pennant races.

 

We just missed either an all-Ohio or all-New York World Series: from May all the way up to the very last week of the season not more than a game ever separated the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians, and not more than 2 games separated the New York Giants and the Cincinnati Reds.

 

In the end, the Cincinnati Reds won the National League pennant by 4 games over New York, and then won the World Series by 4 games to 3 over New York, in the pennant race it was the Giants, and in the World Series the Yankees, that fell to the Ohio River boys. The Great Lakes Ohio team, the Indians came up just 3 games short in the end behind the 95-59 Yankees and the Reds finished with 98 wins and a World Championship.

 

The hitters’ fest continued as Mr. Rogers Hornsby hit .414 to lead the majors and Mr. George Sisler hit .398 to lead the Junior Circuit.  Hornsby won the National League Triple Crown, batting in 142 runs and ending up  with 39 home runs – one more than Mr. George Herman Ruth who fell back to earth from Mount Olympus with a mere 38, up to last year a record-shattering performance, but now merely good enough for the AL home run crown. Pittsburgh’s Max Carey stole 61 bases, just to let us know that someone recalls how the game used to played long ago – that is up until the end of the war and the Black Sox Scandal. Otherwise, you would think that it was Judge Landis – excuse me, Commissioner Landis, who was actually doing the pitching.

 

Except that real big league pitchers still managed to turn in a few really good performances on the season despite the new balance of power in baseball – Cincinnati’s Dolf Luque went 21-10 with a major league best 2.18 ERA and his teammate Eppa Rixey won 28 games, most in the majors,  with a 2.83 ERA for the World Champions.  The great Walter Johnson – you remember him – won 24 and lost 8 with a 2.92 ERA and the Senators threatened all season long to make it a 3-way race in the AL but Washington ended up a respectable third 7 games behind the Yankees. Mr. Johnson has now, in a career that began way back in 1907, won 313 and lost 202,  and his lifetime ERA is a mere 2.29. He has struck out 2806 batters in that time, and that is more than anyone ever.

 

The Reds won by hitting but with only doses of power – no Red hit more than 7 home runs, but four hit more than .340: Roush, Hargrave, Duncan and Daubert. The Giants, who stayed right behind the Reds all the way to the end, had a whole lineup of .300 hitters: High-Pockets Kelly hit .339 with 23 home runs, Irish Meusel hit.317 with 16 homers, Ross Youngs hit .349 and Casey Stengel .320.

 

The Indians were powered by Tris Speaker who hit .358 with 9 homers and two great pitchers: Stan Coveleski and George Uhle who won 49 games between them.

 

But the greatest story of the year was the greatest come-from behind victory ever in the World Series.

 

Bob Shawkey and Waite Hoyt stopped the Reds’ hitting in the first two games – Shawkey shut them out 5-0, and  Hoyt outpitched Johnny Couch 4-3 in game 2. Back in New York, Bob Meusel had three hits including a triple and second baseman Aaron Ward hit a home run and New York blasted Cincinnati 11-1.

 

New York was up 3 games to none. It sure seemed time to stick a fork in the Reds. But the great Luque outpitched Shawkey in game 4 by 4-2, and then Pete Donahue outpitched Waite Hoyt by 3-1 in game 5. It was now 3-2 Yankees in the Series, which shifted back to Cincinnati.

 

 

Game 6 was a an all-time classic: Eppa Rixey against Bullet Joe Bush for the Yankees and it went into the 11^th inning all tied 1-1 when with one out, Whitey Witt reached second base for New York on an error by Reds’ shortstop Ike Caveney.  Babe Ruth was wisely walked intentionally, but with Bob Meusel up, Rixey threw a wild pitch to advance the runners. So Meusel too was walked intentionally.  A sacrifice fly by Wally Pipp got a run in and the Yankees led 2-1 with just three outs needed to win the World Series.

 

The Reds opened the bottom of the 11^th with a single by third baseman Sam Bohne.  The Yankees brought on Sad Sam Jones to pitch and Jake Daubert walked on four pitches. Pat Duncan singled to load the bases. Still no one out.  George Burns then singled in two runs to win it and tie the Series at 3 games apiece !

 

Game 7 saw the third round between Luque and Shawkey, with each pitcher having one won game so far in the Series for their team. One would have to win a second game to win it all. Shawkey helped his own cause out by tripling and scoring a run in the fifth and it stayed 1-0 New York into the bottom of the 8^th inning.  Pinelli walked with one out in the Reds’ half of the 8^th, Bressler walked to put two men on with Luque due up. Luque bunted the runners to second and third, with two out.  So two out, two on and the Series riding on the shoulders of Sam Bohne, who singled both runs in for a 2-1 Reds lead. In the 9^th, Meusel struck out swinging, Elmer Smith grounded out and with two down Home Run Baker gave New York one last hope with a single. But Jumpin’ Joe Dugan grounded out to short and the Cincinnatis were champions, having come all the way back from down 3 games to none to win four straight – a feat that may never be matched if baseball is still played in a hundred years’ time !

 

Babe Ruth had to accept the MVP award in the AL as his only compensation for a second World Series loss in two years, and Hornsby naturally won it in the NL. Luque deservedly received the Mathewson Award for best pitcher in the National League, and Walter Johnson won the Rube Waddell Award in the AL. Cubs’ left fielder Hack Miller hit .379 with 20 home runs and  and Topper Rigney of the Tigers hit .321 to be the Rookies of the Year for 1922.

 

A return to normalcy? It would appear so, even if the shift in favor of the hitter, either because rumors of a more tightly wound ball or some other reason is at work, so long as it leaves room for pitchers of Luque’s and Walter Johnson’s qualities. 

Happiness...in real MLB and in simulations... is the Yankees blowing a 3-0 lead in a postseason series.

It's a bit of schadenfreude, I freely admit.

d'oh ! And here I thought: ha ! this sucks (for me as a Yankees fan) but at least the whole "never been done before the Red Sox did it in 2004' thing is already passe'. But no !! leave it to contrarian23 to outmaneuver me even when I am in a deity-like position with regard to my own baseball SIM world ! 

rats. 

:-)

oh the winter wind whipping in the night air will feel a little warmer this year the mighty yankees have blown a 3-0 lead

Posted by rjj4191 on 2/24/2015 8:07:00 PM (view original):
oh the winter wind whipping in the night air will feel a little warmer this year the mighty yankees have blown a 3-0 lead

You can say that again!

Wait till next year ! 

about which, will SIM the season right after lunch. Stay tuned.

1923

 

A tale of three cities and the story of mass production, while the Yankees' slogan remains "Wait till Next Year !"

 

Once, not so long ago, it was the worker that controlled the job and the work, and the workplace. It was craftsmen who knew how to do things, how to make things, and these various knowledges were trade and craft secrets – mestieri – mysteries – to use the word still in favor in the  Italian language for a craft or trade. Much the same was true of farming of course. Work was knowing how to do something and then doing or making it with the skill of one’s hands and eyes and mind.

 

Then came Mr. Frederick Taylor, who studied how to break jobs down into individual movements, and passed this knowledge on to the owners and managers and supervisors. This allowed for recruiting less highly skilled workers, off the farms or from overseas, en masse, to work in the new mass production factories, in which men and women carried out one single operation all day long. It was but a step further to replace that movement made by arm or hand with the same movement made by a machine.

 

But the result is unmistakable: the vast increase in production and productivity. The skill of hand and eye of the individual craftsman is replaced by mass production.

 

Is this not in its own way the secret of what has happened in baseball as well? The careful skill, the slow, intelligent production of one run at a time has given way to mass production of runs. To be sure, the metaphor cannot be pushed too far – Mr. Ruth, Mr. Hornsby and the other power hitters of our time are highly skilled in their own way. But they do need to watch as carefully where the infielders are positioned, so as to put “English” on the ball to “hit ‘em where they ain’t”, but rather merely to hit the ball square and send it flying to the gap in the outfield or over the fences.  Likewise, pitchers increasingly, seeing the opening created for them by hitters swinging for the fences, now concentrate on striking batters out more than on carefully crafting pitches to the same skilled batter to just hit it wrong so that the ball meekly rolls to a second baseman for another infield out.

 

So go the 1920s for better or worse, for the working people, for work, and wealth and democracy and baseball. Where this will all lead we shall see.

 

It led to 55 home runs by Babe Ruth, well short of his still astounding record of 73 in 1921, but a heck of a lot all the same.  Hornsby batted .380 with 22 homers. Harry Heilmann .362 with 23 home runs. Dazzy Vance led the majors with a 2.37 ERA and 199 strikeouts.

 

 

But it was three cities that dominated baseball this season in both leagues: New York, St. Louis and Chicago. In the American and the National League the same three-way race continued down the last days of the season. Here is how it ended up: New York won both pennants, Chicago took the silver, and the Browns the bronze medal  in the AL, and the Cardinals in the NL with the Cubs in third place.

 

New York versus New York in the World Series ! And the Yankees in their third straight World Series. But alas for the Bronx and their fans, the Yankees seem to be under a curse, as if the purchase of the great Babe Ruth from Boston meant that they  were condemned to be disappointed in the Fall Classic.

 

This year, if “the curse of the Babe” there be, it surely held up. The Giants swept the mighty Yankees in four straight games.

 

Two Meusels excelled: Bob hit .330 with 11 home runs for the Yankees, and his brother Irish led the attack at the Polo Grounds with a .351 average and 14 home runs.  Art Nehf won 17 games for the World Champions. Hank Gowdy and Ross Youngs also hit .300 in a well-rounded offense.  The second-place Cardinals had not only Hornsby but first baseman Jim Bottomley who hit .370 with 15 home runs. Meanwhile, in Chicago Grover Cleveland Alexander – who must be 100 years old by now – won 23 games for the Cubs. The Cubs’ crosstown rivals had pitcher Red Faber who won 22 games for them. And Ken Williams of the Browns hit 29 home runs in a nearly successful run by the other St. Louis team.

 

Hornsby and Ruth continued their monopolies on the MVP awards, and Urban Shocker won 24 games for the St. Louis Browns and the Waddell Award for best AL pitcher and Dolf Luque of the Reds’ 23 wins were good enough for the Mathewson Award in the NL. Pitcher Mike Cvengros of the White Sox won 15 for the Rookie of the Year Award in the AL, and second baseman George Gratham hit .299 for the Cubs to win the NL award. 

what a wonderful tale and a fanciful world we live in, while this glorious retelling of our beloved stick versus ball battle leads us to say for the evil empire of new york these magical 4 words "wait till next year"

I have to be out of town for the next two days teaching, so if I get a chance when I get home late I will try to SIM the next season but it might be Saturday before I get a chance.