FittsWorld's Baseball Simulation Page
The story of my life-long interest in simulating the outcome of baseball games.

My fascination with baseball simulations began as a child.  I could not play baseball very well, but I knew that I could manage as well as Ralph Houk.  I envied him each Saturday as I watched the Yankee game of the week with my Dad.  After all, how hard could it be to write "4. Mantle,cf" on a lineup card?  ANYBODY could win a pennant with THAT team!

I began to play pretend games on the floor with my baseball cards and a marble.  The card would be used to stroke the marble at a fielder or "in the gap", and each outcome would be dutifully recorded in my ledger.  This early attempt at baseball simulation had two technical problems.  First, the game results were not statistically accurate.  The Whitey Ford card could stroke the marble with the same "power" as the Mantle card, and the bench players were even better because their cards were not yet creased by frequent plate appearances.

The second problem did not become evident until years later when I compared the value of a poor condition 1961 Mantle card to a mint version.  *smacks self on forehead* :-/

All-Star Baseball via Atari 400
We move from literally crawling to a brisk walk.

My problems were solved when I discovered All-Star Baseball, a board game played with cardboard disks to represent the players, and using a spinner to determine the outcome.  The player's stats were simulated by increasing the width of various sections of the disk, with Mickey Mantle having a much larger Home Run section than Whitey Ford.  All-Star Baseball was surprisingly accurate, which I proved by playing and recording on paper literally thousands of games.  I enjoyed this game into my college days, where I spent some intense sessions with my late friend, Curt Darnell.  All-Star Baseball has made a comeback around here in the past few years, as my son Eric has nearly worn out the spinners :-).

The introduction of personal computers in the early 1980's provided the tool to solve the major drawback of All-Star Baseball, which is scorekeeping.  My wife never understood the need to keep box scores of pretend baseball games, much less tabulating the results of multiple games into standings for a complete 162-game season.  However, a computer could store full seasons and present the results.  Now all I needed was a computer and some software.

My first computer simulation experience came via an Atari 400 computer with 16K (not MB) of RAM.  Baseball simulation software was not available for the Atari, and I consider those goofy action games to be the statistical equivalent of marble games.  So I taught myself Atari Basic, and wrote my own game program patterned after All-Star Baseball.

The "game engine" was simple, but reasonably accurate.  Each player's lifetime batting record was translated into a percentage of singles, doubles, triples, homers, and walks.  A random number was generated and compared to the batter's range to determine the outcome of each at-bat.  Any number higher than the player's on-base percentage was an out.  The computer recorded the game outcome, added the box score to the previous totals for the season, and printed the results to the screen in the form of standings and statistical leader boards.

Earl Weaver Baseball
The mother of all computer baseball simulations.

Unfortunately, the Atari program had major limitations.  The display was text only, and the lack of memory limited the program to two teams (which became pretty boring even for me after 162 games).  Since the engine was based on batting stats only, pitching skill had no effect on the outcome.  But I had tasted the promised land and so, after much "negotiating" :-), I purchased an IBM XT for the sole purpose of playing a new game program called Earl Weaver Baseball.

WOW!  I had hit the big time!  Real players, all the stats, realistic results.  And, since this was a computer program instead of a board or video game, I achieved a new level of dignity while pursuing my hobby.  But another problem soon emerged.  I had always played simulated games using players from the past... my childhood heroes such as Mantle and Mays.  Earl Weaver Baseball came with current players and some historic teams (not the ones I would pick either).  So by now you can probably guess what I did next.

After accumulating an impressive library of baseball statistics, I proceded to structure my own league of all-time greats called the All-Star League.  The process of determining who would play on each team was a labor of love, as was the literally hundreds of hours of keypunching stats.  The result was a product which met all my expectations.  It was statistically accurate, kept track of standings and leaders, and the VGA display also provided a graphical representation of the outcome which far exceeded those marble games.

Tony La Russa Baseball
The hobby matures into pure obsession.

I maintained the All-Star League through several revisions of Earl Weaver Baseball and another program that uses the same basic game engine, Tony La Russa Baseball.  Each new release provided an opportunity to "tweak" the team rosters, adding a current-era player when deemed worthy or "trading" a player to a more appropriate team.  This activity provided countless hours of enjoyment, and increased my knowledge of the history and strategy of the game of baseball.  I still break out the league every once in a while for old-times sake, even though the version of the game that I have is very dated.  I would probably still be playing Tony La Russa Baseball if the game engine had been kept current by the manufacturer.  There are new programs available, but they don't allow input of your own players and are very inaccurate.

The point of this story is not to promote my league as anything special.  I am sure many people have developed equally interesting leagues for these games, and I have even seen some of them posted on the web.  Instead, I hope that the readers who know me will now have a better understanding of my life-long obsession with this activity.  I know that other Tony La Russa Baseball fans would find a great deal in common with my progression.

I have posted the final rosters of the All-Star League below for those that might be interested.  For the sake of brevity, I am only showing the starting lineups for my favorite teams.  The final version of the league had 24 teams in 4 six-team divisions.  And by the way, the Yankees (with me as Ralph Houk, of course) usually won.

All-Star League: American League Teams
POS	Yankees	Red Sox	Athletics	Tigers	White Sox	Indians
C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 RP RP	Berra Gehrig Lazzeri Rolfe Rizzuto Mantle DiMaggio Ruth Ford Gomez Stottlemyre Guidry Ruffing Lyle Gossage	Fisk Yastrzemski Doerr Boggs Cronin T.Williams Speaker Rice Young C.Mays Clemens Tiant Parnell Kinder Radatz	Cochrane Foxx Collins Bando Campaneris A.Simmons Henderson R.Jackson Bender Waddell Grove Hunter Blue Fingers Eckersley	Freehan Greenberg Gehringer Kell Trammell Heilmann Cobb Kaline Newhouser Trout McLain Lolich Morris Henneman Hiller	Lollar Thomas Fox Melton Appling J.Jackson Minoso Baines Walsh Cicotte Wood Faber Peters Thigpen Wilhelm	Hegan Trosky Lajoie Rosen Boudreau Averill Doby Colavito Joss Feller Lemon E.Wynn Garcia Mossi Jones
All-Star League: National League Teams
POS	Cardinals	Dodgers	Giants	Pirates	Cubs	Astros
C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 RP RP	T.Simmons Mize Hornsby Boyer O.Smith Musial Brock Medwick Gibson M.Cooper Dean Brecheen Pollet Hrabosky Sutter	Campanella Hodges Robinson Cey Reese Wheat Snider R.Smith Koufax Vance Drysdale Sutton Newcombe Marshall Perranoski	W.Cooper McCovey Frisch Hart T.Jackson Youngs W.Mays Ott Mathewson Hubbell Marichal Antonelli Schumacher Lavelle Linzy	Burgess Stargell Mazeroski Traynor Wagner Kiner Waner Clemente Adams Law Veale Drabek Friend Face Tekulve	Hartnett Grace Sandberg Santo Banks B.Williams Wilson Cuyler Brown Vaughn Jenkins Warneke Holtzman Regan L.Smith	Ashby Bagwell Biggio Caminiti Thon Cruz Cedeno J.Wynn Ryan Richard Scott Dierker Niekro Sambito D.Smith
The remaining American League Teams are:  Senators, Orioles, Twins, Royals, Angels, and Blue Jays. The remaining National League Teams are:  Reds, Braves, Phillies, Mets, Padres, and Expos.

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