Number 1

The Random Foundation of the 5Y League

I know what you're saying..."If this is 1948, where are Spahn and Sain?" "Who else are we missing?" Good questions. Johnny Sain belongs to the B's. Warren Spahn never got picked. The 5Y League is based on a completely random draft process, which begins in the first season. A game that uses individual player cards is easy to draft. The first 5Y League season used a homemade set of Statis Pro cards. The cards were sorted by position, shuffled and placed face down. Ten team names went into a hat, and the first team name picked out had the first pick in the draft. After the draft order was set, each team in turn picked a card beginning with the deck of first basemen. You could end up with a star, or a guy with 30 at-bats. Each team selected fifteen position players and ten pitchers which made up the twenty-five man roster. An additional ten players were picked in the same manner for each team, and this provided players to be brought up once one of the original twenty-five exceeded their actual at-bats, or innings pitched, give or take 10%. This extra set of ten players was made up of one player for each position, and a starting pitcher and a relief pitcher. These players belong to the team that picked them for the duration of the 5Y League.

Johnny Sain is in this group of ten for the B's. These players cannot be brought up until one of the original roster players exceeds their actual playing time. The only exception is when one of the original roster players is injured for fifteen games or more. Yep- I use the injury chart that came with the 5th Edition, and no one is immune. In order for Sain to be brought up, barring an injury to one of the starting pitchers, one of them will need to hit their actual IP for 1948. The B's have a five man rotation, with a host of spot-starters. Their starting five with their actual IP in parenthesis are Joe Dobson (245), Vern Bickford (146), Marino Pieretti (120), George Munger (166) and Monte Kennedy (114). Bickford already has about 105 innings under his belt in the replay, while Dobson has 107. Because of the spot starts, it may be a while before Sain gets the call.

Likewise for Spahn, who is one of 40 starting pitchers up for grabs. Getting him is a matter of chance. To be elligible, a team has to have need. In other words, a team must first exhaust all the actual IP of one of their original roster starters (who would then be replaced by one of the pitchers on the ten man "reserve" roster), followed by exhausting all the actual IP of one other starting pitcher. This would make room on the roster for a "random pick" of any available starting pitcher. With Statis Pro, or Strat or any other game with player cards, this is a simple matter of taking the stack of unselected starting pitcher cards, shuffling them face down, then picking one of them. You might get Spahn, you might get Early Wynn (5.82 ERA, 198 IP. Gives up 10 3 2 4). With EI, the selection process is a little different.

The sixteen teams are divided into groups of four, each team in a group given a number from 1 through 4. Each group is also numbered 1 through 4. One die is rolled. Results of five and six don't count. First roll gives you the group number, second roll gives you the team. Depending on the number of starting pitchers available, the third roll will give you your next player. If there are two starting pitchers on the team you are picking from, a roll of 1-3 gives you the first player, 4-6 the second. As the song goes, "This is how we do it..."

A couple of relief pitchers have been selected this way, and unfortunately it's been a little painful for the teams involved. For example, the Blues couldn't wait to get rid of relief pitcher Marv Rotblatt, who gave up 20 6 3 8 in 18 IP. It's hard to go to this guy when you are the second place team in the division, but he stays until his IP are reached, so they play him here and there. Eventually, he hit his limit. It so happens, around the same time two other relievers on their squad hit their limit, so they brought up their replacement, then got two random picks, one of whom was Jim Prendergast, a lefty who sported a 10.06 ERA in 1948 in 17 IP. He gives up a whopping 27 6 3 8...How this will impact the Blues in their quest for the Gold Pennant remains to be seen. But this randomness creates just enough chaos in the league to make it fun and interesting for this old commissioner.

Among others, Dick Fowler,  Elmer Valo, Carl Erskine, Frankie Baumholtz, Ewell Blackwell, Johnny Vander Meer, Howie Pollet, Harry Brecheen and my buddy Clint Hartung are all up for grabs as of this writing.

Happy rolls!