Roger's 1949 APBA Replay

The 1949 regular season is over and it is now time for the replay World Series. Boston (AL) and St. Louis (NL) both dominated their leagues this year and the expected struggle between these two baseball behemoth's is causing quite a buzz. The games will be televised, although it is not certain exactly how many people in either of these markets actually have televisions. It is expected that bars and department stores that have them will both draw a pretty good crowd though. Obviously, neither of these teams truly made the 1949 World series, so I am going to make some accommodations: Neither team had to fight down to the last day of the season to determine their fate and in fact, both teams clinched the respective pennants well ahead of the season's end. I am going to assume that both teams had ample opportunity to provide some rest and to get their pitching aligned the way they wanted. The 1949 World Series didn’t have any off days because both teams were located in...

St. Louis (105-49, 96-58, +9) Similar to Boston in the AL, St. Louis got off to a fast start and held on from there. They went 5-0 in Week One, slipped behind Pittsburgh into second place in Week Three, but then led the NL from there through the end of the season. Along the way both New York and Boston made a push to catch them, but with the Cardinals playing a consistent .700 level of ball they could get close but couldn’t quite finish the job and St. Louis ended up winning the league by 11.0 games over Brooklyn. Enos Slaughter While Ralph Kiner would likely get the MVP award, one of the reasons would be that Stan Musial , Enos Slaughter , and Red Schoendienst all would split votes away from each other. At about the 2/3’s point of the season, Slaughter went 14-for-18 in a series against Chicago (including two 5-for-5 games) and his average shot up over .400. Instead of immediately leveling back down, there it stayed until there were about ten days left in the season and ...

Boston (107-47, 96-58 , +11) This was the season for the Boston Red Sox. By the end of Week Two they had established themselves as the front runners and by the end of Week Eight they had a 9.5 game lead. Both Cleveland and New York made runs at first place later in the season but the Red Sox never folded. Of course, Boston did have the occasional bad week but they ended up the season with a .695 winning percentage, and while Cleveland and New York could muster a few weeks of performance at that level they just couldn't maintain the .700 winning percentage necessary to catch the Red Sox. Ted Williams One of the joys in doing a replay is that you get to see the all the stars at work and Ted Williams was the star of the 1949 season. Even the crustiest of sportswriters would be hard pressed to find a reason to give the MVP to someone else. Williams led the league in Batting Average (.377), Hits (212), Runs (165), RBI's (178), Homeruns (56), Walks (260), Total Bases (4...