August Injury Report – Week 2

The following is a list of injuries to players which occurred between August 8th and August 15th of the the SP78 season, with injuries noted by date, team, player, and number of days or weeks missed.

August 8th

LA:  While sitting in the dugout talking with pitching coach Red Adams, relief pitcher Charlie Hough was struck on the arm by a foul line drive off the bat of Padres shortstop Ozzie Smith, the second batter of the game. Hough was not hurt, but for precautionary reasons, he was not used in the game, but would be cleared to play the following day.

CLE: In the first inning of their game against the Red Sox, Indians batter Jim Norris was struck on his right elbow by a pitch from Luis Tiant; he was replaced by a pinch-runner and left the game. X-rays showed no breaks or fractures, but Norris would miss four more games due to numbness in the elbow and arm.

August 9th

SF: During pre-game warm-ups, outfielder Larry Herndon pulled a thigh muscle while running wind sprints and would not participate in that afternoon’s contest. He would return to action the following day.

August 10th

OAK: In the second inning of their game against the Angels at Anaheim, A’s rookie Dell Alston ran into first baseman Ron Jackson while rounding the bag after his base hit, and left the game with an unspecified injury. He would miss seven games with what would later be classified as ‘lower body trauma’.

CAL: In the same game, Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock was injured chasing a shallow fly ball off the bat of A’s slugger Rico Carty, a violent collision that again involved first baseman Ron Jackson. Bostock would be lost for a week due to minor head injuries and dizziness, while Jackson was unhurt and remained in the game. It was Bostock’s fourth injury of the SP78 season, good for 22 games missed.

August 13th

NY-N: Another collision between a team’s first baseman and right fielder occurred in a match-up between the Cardinals and Mets at Shea Stadium; in the seventh, a routine fly to right by Dane Iorg fell for a double when Mets outfielder Elliott Maddox slammed into first baseman Willie Montanez, knocking both men to the ground. Montanez was not injured, but Maddox had to be helped off the field, and would be placed on the 15-day disabled list the following day due to a severe neck sprain.

SF: In the sixth inning of a Giants-Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium, Giants reliever Charlie Williams faced just one batter, walking Lee Lacy on four pitches, before signaling to manager Joe Altobelli that he needed to be taken out. He’d go on the 15-DL the next day, suffering from back spasms.

August 14th

CHI-N: Once again, a first baseman and a right fielder collided while chasing a fly ball, sending one man to the disabled list: Bill Buckner, who had settled under a pop-up from Braves batter Darrel Chaney, but never made the play when outfielder Jerry White crashed into him from behind, allowing the ball to drop as both fielders crumbled to the grass. Only Buckner left the game; he was placed on the 15-day DL with what the Cubs team physician described as ‘slight damage and contusions to the back and neck’.

MIN: In one of the more unlikely injuries of the season, Twins starter Gary Serum left the game against the Indians after just 1.1 innings pitched, due to the after-affects of food poisoning. He’d been stricken a few days earlier, and had felt well enough to make the start, but the exertion of pitching just one inning drained him of all energy, and he quickly became both exhausted and nauseated. He would miss one more start before feeling ready to pitch again.

August 15th

HOU: In his first day back after coming off the disabled list, outfielder Denny Walling pulled a calf muscle while taking his cuts during pre-game batting practice, and sat out that day’s game against the Cardinals. He returned to action—albeit as a pinch-hitter—the following day.

MON: Lance Parrish joined the growing list of players running into first basemen after base hits, doing so in the fourth inning of Montreal’s game against the Giants at Olympic Stadium. Parrish would depart for a pinch-runner and would miss the next three games with a knee injury, the result of falling to the stadium’s hard artificial turf after the collision. Mike Ivie, the recipient of Parrish’s wayward impact, remained in the game.

NY-N:  First baseman Willie Montanez was out for three games after chasing a foul off the bat of Padres batter Jerry Turner at Shea Stadium and stumbling into the home dugout, where he twisted his left ankle. X-rays were negative.

SEA: M’s shortstop Craig Reynolds collided with left fielder Tom Paciorek during their game against the Orioles at the Kingdome in Seattle; Reynolds was the only player hurt, and left the game with a strained shoulder. The injury was severe enough to land him on the 15-day disabled list.

TWISP Notes #71

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TWISP Notes
October 1, 2019

• LA starter Doug Rau was forced to leave the August 19th game against the Mets in the second inning with what Dodgers pitching coach Red Adams called ‘stiffness in his left shoulder’. Rau has been listed as day-to-day, but will likely miss his next start.

• With the Blue Jays extra-inning loss to the Twins on Saturday, which saw them without a left-handed reliever when the Twins sent four left-handed batters to the plate in the extra frame to win it, Toronto manager Roy Hartsfield will be looking to Syracuse for a southpaw to add to his all-righty bullpen. The likely candidate is Mike Willis, who in 17 games with the Jays earlier this season was 0-0 with one save and an unfortunate 7.64 ERA.

• The resurgent Pirates have suddenly found themselves in second place in the NL East, having won 10 of their last 13, which included three wins in a four-game series against the division-leading Phillies. For the moment, however, the Phils can rest easy; the Bucs are still 14½ games back.

• With voting on Tigers second baseman Lou Whitaker’s return to major league action stalling at 13 votes (11 for his return, and two for keeping him suspended), the commissioner’s office will now make a decision regarding Whitaker’s status, taking into account the preferences of SP78 voters as well as the input of other AL team administrators. No date has been set for this announcement.

• The first game of the just-completed August 19th slate, a Padres-Expos match-up at Olympic Stadium, was the 100th game to be played at site AZ18 in Peoria, Arizona. The site is the fourth to reach the coveted century mark, and with 112 games now hosted, AZ18 is just 33 games behind ESC7 for third place on the all-time list.

• Dusty Baker of the Dodgers returned from the 15-day disabled list on the 19th; to make room for him on the roster, the club sent outfielder Joe Simpson—who had one hit in two at-bats during his three-week ML stint—to the Albuquerque Dukes of the Pacific Coast League.

• Boston’s Luis Tiant tied an SP78 record for runners picked off in a game by a pitcher when he nailed Oakland’s Miguel Dilone and Mitchell Page on August 19th at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Tiant now shares the record with Geoff Zahn of the Twins and Dave Freisleben of the Indians.

• White Sox second baseman Jorge Orta slugged his first career grand slam on Saturday, in the sixth inning off Tribe starter Mike Paxton, in a 7-3 Sox win at Municipal Stadium. The blast erased a 3-1 Cleveland lead, and was Orta’s only hit of the night after collecting three walks in his other plate appearances.

• My week-long ‘check the SP78 schedule and make sure each team is on track for 162 games played’ project has been completed, and I was surprised to find I’d only made only a handful of errors overall. Twice I’d flat-out failed to schedule games, and three times I wasn’t aware that single games were actually doubleheaders (thanks to the confusing term ‘twilight night’ I’d found on some schedules). I’d also had a postponed game that I didn’t realize was the last meeting of the season between the two teams, and since I want every team to play their full 162 games, I had to wedge that contest in where both teams happened to have an off day. Now, with so many games to add into the August-September schedule, I’m thinking I might have them all played on the October 2nd ‘free day’ between the end of the regular season and the start of the post-season…and maybe even turn October 3rd into a make-up day as well.

• My next project will be scanning the remainder of classic scoresheets from my list and adding them to the site, as well as figuring out how to get them lined up properly into rows of four. I think I’ve found the solution, so we’ll see if it works.

August 21st is McDonald’s Junior Jays Day at Toronto!

 

If I Had An SP78 DeLorean

Throughout the nearly four decades that I’ve been playing my Statis Pro 1978 Replay season, I’ve often wondered what I would do differently if I could go back in time and start my season over again…to somehow return to 1980 and implement ideas, and correct mistakes, and make changes to aspects of the board game that have plagued me for years. And by doing so, make my replay season a bit more realistic, and in the long run, easier to deal with stat-wise.

So with that in mind, I think I’ll pull a Marty McFly, hop into a 1982 stainless steel DeLorean, and travel back to the dawn of the 1980s, when I was a junior in high school, living in Rancho Bernardo, California, and ready to start my replay season. Listed below are the ten changes, modifications, and general wish-list items I would have incorporated from the start, if given this opportunity.

Prep Time

When I sat down on the floor of my bedroom to play the very first SP78 Replay game, I just wrote out the lineups and started playing, with zero preparation made for the coming months of the season: I had no blank stat sheets printed, I had no lineups set, I did no double-checking of 1978 rosters, and I had no process in place of how I was going to keep track of information throughout the season. In other words, I was ill-prepared, and looking back, I wish I’d taken more time to get these things in place, so I wouldn’t create so many headaches for myself later on.

I also wish that, from the start, I would’ve kept track of game sites and times, and taken more photos of games and the locations where they were played, and overall been a tad more organized with my stat-keeping.

Opening Day

I have no idea why I chose August 22nd to begin my season, except for maybe I had nothing going on that late-summer Friday afternoon, and figured it was as good a time as any. Not that it makes a difference to my season, but now I wish I’d picked a more memorable date to start with: perhaps a day when I’d gone to see a Padres game, or the final day of the real 1980 season, or while watching the 1980 World Series, or even on the one-year anniversary of when I’d purchased the game, on November 15, 1979.

But in hindsight, I’d probably go with August 3rd, the birthdate of my friend Bob, who’d introduced me to the game, and would’ve joined me in replaying the season if he hadn’t passed away earlier that year. However, there is one aspect of August 22, 1980 that might make it a more notable opening date to my season: if written out numerically (08-22-80), it becomes a palindrome.

Don’t Trust Avalon Hill!

Yes, I trusted—or maybe assumed—that the makers of Statis Pro Baseball would print every 1978 card with its player’s Opening Day team…nooooope! As I found out years later, dozens of players were assigned to teams they’d been traded to during the season, with some even assigned to teams they’d been sent to as late as September, for chrissake! Also, players who’d started the season in the minors were given ‘real’ player cards, as if they’d started the year on the parent club, while A’s pitcher Rick Langford, who appeared in 37 games and spent no time in AAA, wasn’t even given a card or a spot on the minor league ‘fringe player’ sheet! And in a now-infamous move, Avalon Hill printed two cards apiece for Tommy Hutton and Dan Spillner, with Hutton playing for the Expos and Blue Jays, and Spillner playing for the Indians and Padres!

What I should’ve done, and is my biggest regret from this list, was buy myself an issue of Street & Smith’s Official 1978 Yearbook (it was only $1.50!) and double-checked every team’s roster, and made sure every player was on their Opening Day team, since it was my intent from the very start to see how each team would’ve done if there had been no trades or free agent signings during the ’78 season.

TWISP Notes #70

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TWISP Notes
March 25, 2019

• The August 18th game between the Astros and Pirates, which was called due to thunderstorms at Three Rivers Stadium with the Bucs leading 15-1, was just the third time in SP78 history that a game had been first delayed by rain, then later called. The last time this occurred was in 1988, during a May 7th match-up between the White Sox and Red Sox at Fenway Park.

• Two new sites were added to the SP78 host locations list, when I ventured to New Mexico with my friend Steve P in February and played a trio of games there, all in Las Cruces. The first was played solo at the Thomas Branigan Memorial Library, which was labeled NM3, between the Red Sox and A’s; that night Steve joined me as we played the second game of the trip at site NM4, the Comfort Suites on Telshor Boulevard, between the Steve-led Royals and the Rangers. One more game was played the next morning, at the already-established site NM2, his former home in Las Cruces that was now empty and waiting to be sold.

• The two games played at NM3 and NM4 that Friday equaled the SP78 mark for number of sites hosting games in one day, a feat which had also been accomplished in 1983, 1985, and twice in 1994.

• In the Minnesota-Toronto contest at Metropolitan Stadium on August 18th, first baseman Rod Carew went 5-for-5 with four singles and a double, boosting his season average to .313, as the Twins topped the Jays 8-4. It was Carew’s first 5-hit game of the season, and lifted his current hits total to 161.

• The August 16th game between the Yankees and A’s played at site AZ18—my current apartment in Peoria, Arizona—was the 78th game hosted by the site, bumping it into 4th place on the all-time games-hosted list, past site SNB in San Bernardino and behind AZ8 (218), ESC11 (183), and ESC7 (145). The site is currently four games shy of the coveted 100 games-hosted mark.