***1938 AA and IL Available for Download!!***

For those of you interested in minor league ball, I've gone ahead and rated two leagues from 1938- the
American Association and the International League. Both leagues had eight teams and played out a 154
game schedule. Oddly enough, Baseball Reference did not have complete stats, especially for the IL.
Consequently, the rosters are small, but enough to get you through a season if you overuse some of the
players by 10% or so. I did the ratings for selfish reasons: I've never played a season from the 1930's,
though I'm familiar with some of the big names when I began playing EI years ago with teams made up
from their Top 400, which was included with the game. Also, I recognize many of the players who went
on to the bigs and stayed there for at least ten years or more from my Retro 5Y League, which covered
the years 1948 to 1952. But the overriding reason I rated these leagues was my intention to use these
players in a draft league. I'll draft from this pool of sixteen teams, and see how it goes!

The ratings are available as an excel file. If you don't like a rating for any player, feel free to change it. I
kept the defensive ratings simple; outfielders with ten or more assists got a T1 rating. Anyone with a
fielding percentage above .990 was rated SD, and anyone with a fielding percentage lower than .900 got
hit with an LD rating. 20 SB and up got AAR ratings for steals. I went ahead and gave SUP ratings if they
had 40 swipes. I included total steals for each player in the ratings, so if you have a guy with no steals on
the year, just consider him a SLO runner. I also gave players with around 60 or more runs scored with a
base advance rating of AAR.

These files, like all downloads on this site, are free. You'll find them in the download section below. Let me
know what you think!

All 1-1-1's!!

November 30, 2024

"The Veet’s" EI Rare Event Deck, Part One

The fifth edition of Extra Innings reserves 12 numbers on the first roll chart for the gamer to use for Rare Events. EI uses three
dice of different color, mine are red-white-green, and when the dice are rolled, you read them in that order, giving you 216 possible
results. The twelve numbers that trigger a rare event are in the range 2-3-6 to 2-5-6. This means that anytime on the first roll that
the dice fall into that range, you would refer to the Rare Event chart. This is an optional rule, and if you so choose, you would
simply ignore a dice roll in this range, and move on to the second roll. Me? I like to use it.

But wait a minute! EI does not provide you with rare events. The game leaves it up to the gamer to decide what can happen. As
it says in the fifth edition rulebook, “We leave it to your choice whether you want to run the risk, for the sake of realism, of having
a power failure, torrential down pour or a player’s strike stop the game. Also, you might have other rare events you’d like to include.
If you want to stop the game for ten minutes to chase a stray dog off the field…or anything you find gives the game as you play it
added zest, you can introduce it in this range of First Roll numbers.” Well, after reading that, I went to work! Below is an early rare
event chart I typed up and still have in my EI chart binder, though it's one I no longer use. Note that I used eight of the twelve dice
rolls set aside for rare Events.

I used this chart for years. Then sometime in the mid-late 80’s, my good friend “The Veet” introduced something new for use in
an all-time franchise league we were in that was entering its fourth or fifth season. It was a small deck of thirty cards on which he had
written a different rare event on both sides of each one. At the top of each card he wrote either “Even” or “Odd.” The idea being that
if on the first roll you triggered a rare event, you would refer to the third die, and this would tell you how many cards to draw from
the deck. Depending on whether this number was odd or even, you would read the card that corresponded to this. On some cards,
both sides were either odd or even. If the third die was even, let’s say a 4, and you drew four cards from the deck and both sides of
the fourth card were “Odd,” you ignored the chance of a rare event, and moved along to the second roll. If the third die was even
and the top of the card said “Even,” you then read the rare event and applied it if the situation called for it.

When “The Veet” brought this idea up for discussion at one of our league meetings, I was against it. “Too many extra rolls to get a
final result!” I stammered. “Takes away from the rhythm of the game!” I continued. I used every excuse in the book. Then “The Veet”
said, “The situation in play more than likely won’t apply to what the card says. You’ll rarely use it. You’ll just move along to the next
roll!” So I gave that a little thought, then went through the deck. It had plenty of variety, much more than my original chart, and because
you draw a number of cards based on the number on the third die, the randomness of the whole thing made sense. Unlike the chart I
had created and had been using up to that time, where every first roll of 2-4-4 was a possible ground rule double, these would truly be
“rare” events. I adopted the rare event deck of cards and used that thing until it almost fell apart. In 2002, I created a word document
and transferred "The Veet’s" hand written card information in a way that duplicated both sides of the cards. I set it up to print both sides
on 4 x 6 index cards, and using a pair of scissors, cut them into the deck I use to this day. Well, just about. I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, on the home page of my website you can see one of these cards on a score sheet where the rare event came into play (right
handed pitcher homers…Nolan Ryan was in luck that day! Notice the star drawn next to HR on that score sheet. I put a star on every
play that came as a result of a rare event. I also put a star if a player made a nice play, such as an SD fielder taking away a base hit). As
I mentioned earlier, not everyone uses rare events. It’s an optional rule, and one that wasn’t discussed in any of the articles written by
the game’s designer Jack Kavanagh in various newsletters. Ironically, even "The Veet" stopped using it! What a rat! Just kidding!!

Hopefully I didn’t scare anyone off with how the rare event deck of cards works. Personally, I love the thing. It gives me just enough
added zest and to me injects those instances that happen that make baseball the greatest game on earth! You can bet I’ll continue to use
"The Veet’s" Rare Event card deck. Which brings me to what I brought up in the previous paragraph. Twenty two years is a long time to
use the deck of cards I printed in 2002. I have played EI all over the place. Indoors and out. In dry weather and in humid. I have played
with an ice cold brewskie in one hand, and the dice in the other. These cards have had it! Early this year I printed out a new deck,
changing a couple of "The Veet’s" original events to omit rainouts (I do not allow them in my universe…rain delays? Yeah. Rainouts? No).
I plan to use them in my next EI project. I’ll put the word file up in the downloads section if anyone is interested.

In part two, I’ll present some rare event occurrences that had an impact on games played.

Clockwise from bottom left: original hand written cards created by The Veet, ca 1985, printed version of card set first used in 2002, new set printed and ready to be cut.

November 26, 2024

UPDATE - TOP 8 1990 ALL DONE!!

The Top 8 1990 league came to an end, with the Mets taking the second half flag by one game over the Reds, capping
off a nail-biting final few days of the season and setting the stage for the best of seven championship series with the
Pirates.

Before getting into the details of the closing days of the season, let's take a look at how the clubs did; all the ups and
downs of the year!

First off, let me say that pitchers got the shaft this year. This is completely the fault of the commissioner (me) who
overused the starters and underused the relievers. Also getting it in the shorts were the Reds and the A's, as they both
finished the season with a cumulative 83-71 record, better than the Mets, who finished a game back with a cumulative
record of 82-72, yet made it to the championship series, much like the real-life Reds of 1981, who had the best record in
the NL, but sat on their butts watching the world series with the rest of us due to the split season utilized during that
horrible year of the strike. However, the Dodgers won that year, so I can't really complain too much, right?

Final First Half Standings

Pittsburgh    47 30 .610  -
Oakland       41 36 .532  6
Cincinnati    40 37 .519  7
Los Angeles D 38 39 .494  9
New York M    38 39 .494  9
Boston        37 40 .481 10
Toronto       35 42 .455 12
Chicago W     32 45 .416 15

Final Second Half Standings

New York M    44 33 .571  -
Cincinnati    43 34 .558  1
Oakland       42 35 .545  2
Boston        40 37 .519  4
Pittsburgh*   40 37 .519  4
Toronto       37 40 .481  7
Los Angeles D 33 44 .429 11
Chicago W     29 48 .377 15

*- denotes first half champion.

Final Cumulative Standings

Pittsburgh*   87 67 .565  -
Cincinnati    83 71 .539  2
Oakland       83 71 .539  2
New York M#   82 72 .532  5
Boston        77 77 .500 10
Toronto       72 82 .468 15
Los Angeles D 71 83 .461 16
Chicago W     61 93 .396 26

*- denotes first half champion. #- denotes second half champion.

Quick Links to In-Depth Coverage of the Top 8 1990 League

League Wrap-Up    Tid Bits   Final Days of the Season   The Championship Series    Championship Series Stats

October 3, 2024

The Variety you get From EI

As it says at the top of this thing, I've been playing EI since 1978. The game is fun to play. Sure, there is math involved,
and yep- it takes two rolls of the dice to get results. But with the formula given to rate any team you want, this game is
a bargain. There is something to be said for this. Look around at the prices for card sets for the other major game
companies. No doubt, those game engines are fun to play, and the cards are beautiful. I will not sit here and tell anyone
how to spend their money; I would buy another Strat set because of how much fun that game is to play, but I can still
use the '51 set I bought for my Retro 5Y League project and save some dinero for other stuff.

I was reading some of my old newsletters the other day, and one of them had results from an EI league I was in that
had two triple A teams, two Negro League teams, two Japan League teams, and two Mexican League teams.  Whoa!
A while back, perhaps on one of the Delphi Forums, someone rated the 2007 Japan League (or Nippon Professional
League) for EI. In some of my earlier rantings I've mentioned the twenty team Negro League ratings used in a King of
the Hill project a few years ago. The list goes on...Sitting on this hard drive is the complete EI ratings of all teams in the
three major leagues in existence in 1914 and 1915. I'm still undecided on whether I'll do something like a KOH tourney
involving all 24 teams in either year, but it's there for the playing and my cost is printer paper and ink and time. Oh yeah,
all the players are rated. I'm telling you, it's a beautiful thing. At the bottom of this page is a spreadsheet I came up with
that will rate hundreds of players at the press of a button. Look at the possibilities!!

I'm not an authority on the complete offerings of Strat, APBA or any other game out there, but if I were to take a guess,
none of them offer the variety of teams/leagues mentioned above. No company is going to offer this type of range of
leagues or seasons. Not everyone is interested. This is why EI is so appealing to me. My imagination dictates which teams
or leagues I will use. I could dig up stats from the Korean league and rate the teams. Given the stats, I can rate the 1940
South Atlantic League. I can create fictional teams, put my high school stats in the spreadsheet (.239, 1 HR). Have
stats? Then EI will take you to any ball field you want.

I guess I could go on and on, and I usually do, but what a value you get with EI. I don't want to get schmaltzy here. Not
my intent. I'm just sitting here, looking at the projects I've played with the wide variety of teams and players, and looking
ahead to future projects and thinking, "Man! That was a good call back in '78!"