Posts Tagged Strat O Matic

Baseball Bracketing

It seems this time of year there’s a “bracket” for everything, modeled after the NCAA basketball tournament.  Some work well (SI.com’s “Best in Swimsuit”), some not as well (The Big Lead’s “Culture Bracket”).

Two baseball “bracket” setups are coming this week, as Was Watching is preparing a “Greatest/Favorite” Yankees tournament.  I hope that site proprietor Steve Lombardi decides on one of the two, because they are quite different questions.  I look forward to participating.

The other is on Baseball Daily Digest, which is teaming with Strat-O-Matic for a comprehensive, bracket-type elimination tournament with the 64 best teams of all time.  I’d be interested to see if they seed by record, or a subjective perceived greatness, or weighing teams against their own competition, rather than against teams all time.  I don’t know if those generally accepted superteams like the ‘27, ‘61 and ‘98 Yankees, ‘75 Reds, ‘84 Tigers and late-80s A’s teams translate to Strat.  And will the deadball era Cubs, Pirates and Red Sox be included?  “Selection Show” coming soon.

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I’m Just a Living Legacy…

Buck Leonard

Yesterday the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (hello, Bucket List…) announced its Legacy Award Winners for the 2009 season.  I like that they name each award for an appropriate Negro League star (Buck Leonard for the batting champion, ‘Cool Papa’ Bell for the stolen base king, etc.).

Interesting that none of the awards is named for Satchel Paige, and the MVP is named for Oscar Charleston rather than Josh Gibson.  I think it’s good that someone like Rogan, who has kind of been lost in the shuffle, gets his due — would anyone pick him if you asked them to name the top five, or even top 10 Negro Leaguers, off the top of their head?

I’m also interested to hear feedback from Strat-o-Matic players who have used the new Negro League card set, produced through exhaustive and extensive research by Scott Simkus, who has worked on the project for over a decade.  Looking at the rosters, there are many players I’m not familiar with.  Here is an interesting interview with Simkus on WGN TV in Chicago on the project.

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