1949 Replay Project Plan

Now that I have completed my 1930 replay (link) I am ready to move onto my next project - 1949. I did a 1949 replay back in the mid-1980's using the Basic Game, with only the twenty players per team card set (no extra players at all). At the time I had other plans for future replays, but somehow parenthood got in the way and I have only just restarted doing solo replays.





Ted Williams

For my 1930 replay, I chose to use APBA Baseball for Windows (BBW) instead of cards and dice (C/D) like before. As much as I might prefer actually rolling for each at-bat, the prospect of all the necessary records keeping was overwhelming, so I opted for the computer game instead. I also chose to use the APBA Transaction Manager (ATMgr) add-on which maintains and loads the actual lineups as used during that season, again, another huge time saver once it was all set-up. The net of all this was once I did all of my prep work and had everything set-up before I played a game, once I started it went pretty quick (~8 months to roll all of 1930, including the World Series). I was extremely satisfied with the results so I will use this same platform for 1949.


The prep work is well underway:


• I am re-reading "Summer of '49" by David Halberstam. It is not really an in-depth history of the 1949 season, but it does recount the Yankees - Red Sox pennant race in good detail and gives a good flavor of the times
• I purchased the recently re-issued 1949 season disk and card set from APBA. Every player is carded in this reissue, plus the Game Company has done serious tinkering with player cards in this set. This will be discussed below. And no, I don’t really need the cards, but I do like to flip through them when I am otherwise inbetweenie

• I like to collect the batting, pitching, fielding, and games-by-position out of Baseball-Reference.com (BBR) and dump them into a spreadsheet for easy access purposes

• I also collect all of the Master Game symbols for each player in that same spreadsheet. The Game Company doesn’t provide those sheets anymore, and I just like having them all collected in one place

• For 1930 I re-graded all pitchers using a Weighted Average formula. I have produced those grades for 1949 as well, but may not use them because APBA has done several things with this re-issue set:

1. They have minimized the downgrading of pitchers for lack of appearances
2. Seasons that don’t have a lot of strikeouts to begin with often lack pitchers with enough strikeout grades to accumulate the number of strikeouts they need. They are definitely using a different formula in this re-issue
3. The original 1949 set was famous (infamous?) for allowing too many walks - a combination of plenty of walk numbers on batters cards and too many pitchers with wildness ratings, the combination of which drove up the number of walk outcomes in a replay. This has been tempered somewhat on this reissue
4. It is my observation that player speeds have been knocked down (Average 9.5, on a scale of 1-20), but so have fielder arms (Average 30.5, on a scale of 20-40). There isn’t a lot of base stealing going on in 1949, but I don’t think it is really a case that players in 1949 were slower than previous, just a case of the game company attempting to force things to an average. The results shouldn’t change much because of this, but it will be a bit of a challenge to manage
5. Mostly, it is just nice having all the players accounted for. I had to manually card 92 players for my 1930 replay to get all the players carded - one less problem

• BBR also includes information for players making their ML Debuts, their ML finale, and details for most instances where players appeared on more than one team. I like to accumulate this data, massage it, and then eventually include it with the ATMgr transactions that I want to automatically occur during the season

• I also go through the BBR player log for each player to look for other key days: other season debuts or finales, team debuts, and finales for players who appear on more than one team, as well as extended absences. This data is accumulated as well and is also massaged and included in the final ATMgr transactions list

• The information for the eight tie games that occurred in 1949 has also been gathered. I really can't do much with it now, but as they occur during the season I want to ensure they get accounted for

• The 1949 season disk has been loaded and an organization created. The traded players have all been moved to their initial team, and al unassigned players have been assigned. I don’t like that all last names are capitalized, so I have corrected that, with the exception that I leave the Hall-of-Fame players with capitalized names (it's a personal quirk)

• I have also set the injury ratings to 1 (unless they were 0 to begin with), I did the same for pitchers fatigue ratings, and I set the Steal allowing ratings to A (unless they are G, R, or N). I want to control all of these manually and really don’t want the game to step in where I don’t want it too.





Joe DiMaggio

And that is where I sit right now. So what is left?


• I still need to get into APBA League Manager and ensure I have the league rules set-up the way I want. This would include installing the stadium files and setting them up

• I need to load ATMgr and ensure that lineups and transactions files are all correct. ATMgr does extensive validation testing when it loads files, mostly ensuring the names on the player's disk match up with the names in the ATMgr files. It can get pretty particular (e.g., "Charley" is not a match for "Charlie"), so this will likely require several attempts before I get a clean load

• I am still undecided about whether to use Weighted Pitching Grades or not, but I don’t have to decide right now, so I am going to think about it some more

• Part of the reason I am drafting this note now before I have the other tasks completed is that I want to get my Blogger blog setup. It takes two minutes to do, but I want to spend some time noodling with color choice, so don’t be surprised if you check back later and it looks different

• As far as the blog goes, I expect the content will look pretty much like the 1930 blog: A quick game synopsis for all games, a weekly summary, a weekly stats snapshot, and I will likely include more pictures as I fully expect there to be more (and better) pictures available to choose from

• Along with this note, I will be posting a collection of 1949 miscellanea as well. Before I start gameplay I will also produce a team-by-team season preview, to kind of set the stage for the activity to come

• I am sure I am forgetting something. Regardless, we will get it done and be ready to rock shortly





Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio

Once all this is completed then all that is left is to play the games. I don’t really have a specific start date in mind, but probably sometime in December, which, barring anything unforeseen, means I should be completed in mid-2019.