Game Recaps Are Here!

Well, more recaps are here, I should say, with more on the way! While I continue getting additional scoresheets scanned and prepped for the Classic Scoresheets section of the blog, I thought I’d start adding game recaps to the Daily Scores section as well, which you can find in a dropdown box on the main page (see photo below). Over the past few years, I’ve randomly posted over thirty for July (starting with the July 21st slate of games) and nine for August, and I figured it was time for me to start adding them more frequently, beginning with April.

I’ve already posted six new recaps over the past few days, which you can find here (look for the blue ‘R’ links next to the score, as seen below), plus I found one for July in draft form that I decided to post as well (and can be directly accessed here).

I’m having fun writing these up, so hopefully I can get at least one posted every day or two…we’ll see how it goes. With every handful I add, I’ll make note in the Recent Site Updates section found on the bottom right side of the main page. Also, I may throw in a few recaps for May and June as well, just to balance things out a bit; as with April, I discovered they’d had no recaps posted yet, either.

A Dilemma in Detroit

As many of you know, I stopped following major league baseball in 1994, when the players went on strike mid-season and basically killed my enthusiasm for the sport. Luckily I had my Statis Pro season, video and audio tapes of old games, and the minor league Lake Elsinore Storm to quench my thirst, but I would never again be a fan of baseball—current baseball—after that season.

Of course, someone had to pay the price for this indiscretion, and when I saw a newspaper photo during the strike of Lou Whitaker emerging from a limousine, smartly dressed with several gold chains hanging from his neck as he headed for a players meeting, he became that someone, and I immediately suspended him for the remainder of my SP78 season. Fair or not, he became my scapegoat, and since that day he’s missed 62 games of the Tigers season, and with Detroit in a tightly-contested AL East pennant race, he’ll not only miss the remainder of the regular season, but possibly some post-season games as well.

It’s now been twenty-five years since the players went on strike and—along with the owners—ended the ’94 season; obviously it’s also been that long since Whitaker last played an SP78 game (his final appearance was on June 10, 1978). Until he was suspended, Whitaker was batting .303, with six errors in 48 games played. During his absence, utility infielders Mark Wagner and Steve Dillard have platooned at second, batting a combined .276 with only five errors over 62 games; for the month of August, however, they’re both hitting under .200, and have turned just 33 double plays with shortstop Alan Trammell since June, compared to the 31 that had been turned by Whitaker and Trammell before the suspension, in a fewer number of games.

The New Scoresheets Are Here!

I’ve had some free time open up recently that pulls me away from my current behind-the-scenes SP78 work, so I’ve taken the opportunity to begin adding to the collection of game scoresheets found in the Classic Scoresheets section of the SP78 Museum header on the main page. Here you’ll find some of the more interesting, more memorable, and overall favorite scoresheets from my season; a short description of the game can be found under each thumbnail image, and if you click on the image, you’ll get a larger view, plus a brief history of the game and/or scoresheet underneath.

I last updated the page with a scoresheet from the game played during the trip my friend Steve P and I took to see the 1987 All-Star Game in Oakland, though I never did type up a history for it. That history has now been added; six additional scoresheets and their histories have also been added, with more to come over the next several days. And though I solved the earlier problem of a blank gap between the thumbnail images, it has now happened again, so I’ll be working on that little irritant as well.

Eventually, I hope to have over fifty scoresheets available to view on the site, with a few more sprinkled among the existing sheets when I get them scanned and finalized. Keep an eye on the Recent Site Updates column on the bottom-right side of the main page to keep track of my progress.

Interesting SP78 Ejection Factoids

In an e-mail I’d sent to my friend Steve P a few weeks back, I told him about a recent Statis Pro game I’d played, between the Pirates and Astros, where Bucs slugger Willie Stargell had been hit by a pitch thrown by Houston starter Vern Ruhle, after Stargell had homered two innings earlier. I was ready to have Stargell rush the mound in response, and prepared to eject both batter and pitcher from the game, but then I wondered: had Stargell ever been tossed in his career? I looked it up and found out that no, he hadn’t. So I sent him to first, and I ejected Ruhle instead, and that was that.

I’d also discovered that Robin Yount, another SP78er, had never been ejected, and he ranked #4 on the list—behind Stan Musial, Willie Mays, and Brooks Robinson—of non-expelled players who’d played more than 1,500 games in their careers. Steve responded to my e-mail a short while later, and he included a list that he’d compiled while researching my site, titled Interesting SP78 Ejection Factoids. I thought it would make for a fun and informative post, so here it is (all numbers are current through August 18th).