Double, Triple, or Limbo?

Back when I still followed and enjoyed baseball, there was a magazine I read called Baseball Digest, which featured a column titled ‘So You Think You Know Baseball?’, where a rare or unusual moment from a game – usually one that required a check of the rulebook – was presented, and the reader was tasked with making the correct call. Now, for my SP78 Replay season, I’ll let you make the call, on a play that occurred during an August 12th match-up between the Astros and Braves at the Astrodome, whose result you’ll be hard-pressed to find in any baseball rulebook.

First, I’ll set the stage. With the game scoreless with two out in the top of the second, Braves second baseman Glenn Hubbard stepped to the plate for the first time to face Astros starter Joaquin Andujar. For the season, Hubbard was batting just .168 in 51 games, with no extra-base hits and just one RBI, and he was making his first start at second base since July 31st.

The first Fast-Action card was out of Andujar’s PB range of 2-7, which put the forthcoming at-bat result onto Hubbard’s batting card. The next FAC card I turned revealed a Random number of 31, and when I went to check Hubbard’s card, I was surprised to find this:

Okay, now what? Do I award Hubbard a double or triple, or do I allow his card to remain in an endless state of transitional uncertainty? A quick online check of Hubbard’s stats told me that, during the actual 1978 season, he collected four doubles, no triples, and two home runs, which checks out with the numbers—and lack thereof—on Hubbard’s card. But where should that missing 31 go?

Thank you once again, Avalon Hill! I decided that, logically, it shouldn’t go in the triples spot, since he’d hit none in ’78, so I was left with a choice between a double and a home run. And because he’d hit just two homers that season, that one HR number on his batting card seemed appropriate, so I decided to assign Hubbard a double, which was still good enough for his first extra-base hit of the SP78 campaign.

So how would you have made the call? I guess a fourth option would’ve been to just turn over another FAC card and check a new Random number, but looking back, I kinda wish I’d given him a triple, which would’ve been his first in the major leagues, and no doubt the only one he’d collect for the remainder of the SP78 season.

22: The Month Hebner Made Contact

Over the course of a month’s time, from July 9th to August 6th, Phillies first baseman Richie Hebner did what many considered impossible: he broke the record for the longest hitting streak of the SP78 season, shattering the old mark of 20 – established by both Darrel Chaney of the Braves and Charlie Moore of the Brewers – with hits in 22 consecutive games. And he did so without fanfare, without one mention in newspapers or on newscasts, and without the knowledge of fans or teammates.

And apparently without the knowledge of the SP78 commissioner, either. I’d caught up with Chaney’s early-season NL-record streak after the fact, and followed Moore’s AL-record streak in June during the later stages of its three-week run, so when I finally decided decades later to record every SP78 player’s hits per game and track those streaks in real time, I figured it was also time to find out if anyone had surpassed the two current record holders. And sure enough, someone had.

Ten Years of SP78 Online Action!

Ten years ago today, after waking up early on a Wednesday morning and playing an SP78 game between the Reds and Expos before heading off to work, I pressed a button and—voila!—the Statis Pro 1978 Replay site was launched!

It was also the 32nd anniversary of the very first SP78 game played, back on August 22, 1980, when I was living in San Diego and just a month away from starting my senior year in high school. Thirty-two years and 1,252 games later, I was now living in Peoria, Arizona and working at a hospital in Phoenix, where I spent many a lunch hour working on getting this site ready for its debut.

SP78 Flashback: Game #30

I’ve been working on adding game recaps to the site for a few months now, and this most recent one, featuring a Dodgers-Astros match-up from April 10th, had enough off-kilter aspects to it to make it interesting enough—and humorous enough—to share in a Flashback.

The game, the thirtieth of my SP78 season and played in 1980, had my brother Scott managing the Dodgers, his favorite team, and featured some managerial decisions that might seem a bit avant garde today (and probably even back then). But don’t think I’m using this recap to pick on or embarrass him: I made these same questionable decisions quite a few times during these early stages of my season, and I even mention one of them in the recap’s game notes.

So if you’re interested in discovering why, thirty-five years after he retired, LA reliever Terry Forster still wakes up screaming from nightmares of this game, click here.