Number 3

The Dice (a.k.a., "The Random Dice"- K.P.)

I've used the same set of dice to play EI that I bought in a game shop way back in 1980. They have rounded corners, not square. Sometimes when you roll them, one or more will spin around for a bit before giving the result, an effect The Veet describes as "The Random Dice." Well, what else could they be, right? What drives me nuts about them is that it seems that the red die is biased towards the '1.' I'm nearly convinced of it, though I've never had it checked for balance, or whatever dice experts use to ensure that the bones are not loaded. It's really coming to bear during this Retro 5Y season, as 1948 was the year walks reared their already ugly head to new heights. It is my understanding that 1949 is worse, but that walks tail off beginning in 1950- this from Bill James, who's got some smarts it says here...

So, when I begin a ball game, I roll the "first pitch" and at the same time I'm thinking the red die is going to be a '1,' meaning the leadoff batter is going to draw a walk. In my most recent seven games, here's what the leadoff batter did in his first at-bat:

Bitters:
Marion groundout 6-3
Marion groundout 1-3
Marion single to left
Marion strikeout

Lecheros:
Murtaugh strikeout
Murtaugh strikeout
Murtaugh groundout 1-3

I'm telling ya, I sometimes worry 'bout nuthin'. At any rate, when the season began, I was alarmed by all the walks, and wondered once again if the dice were the prob. It just so happens that I have a set of APBA cards for 1948 that were home brewed by some fellow who apparently knows his stuff, and hey- free is good, so I printed them out and took them to my buddy Eddie's for a game. He's an APBA veteran who knows a thing or two about when to pull the infield in, or call for a sac bunt. So over a couple of brewskies we took a couple of stock teams with the aim of finding out if there would be more walks than strikeouts in the game. He took St. Louis and I took the Reds, and though I forget all the fine details, both starters had more walks than K's, though in all truthfulness it may have been they walked as many as they struck out. I do remember that it wasn't a high number. It was more like 4 walks, 3 K's, something along those lines. Eddie even gave me a set of dice to use in place of my nearly forty year old ivories. Okay, one game...not much of a sample, but enough to convince me that this was the kind of season to expect. However, being the stubbon pea-brain that I am, I tried other options. There's an Excel EI Helper that you can download for free here that is a pretty clever little bit of hacking, and one of the things it does is roll the dice for you. I saw no difference in the number of walks given up. I used Eddie's dice (red-white-purple, by the way...) with the same results.

So, what is my conclusion? Without keeping a written record of each dice roll, all I have is a gut feeling, which incidently goes well with my big gut, that my random red die is biased or loaded towards coming up '1,' but have zero proof. After all, I've played thousands of games of EI through the decades. And ya can't finish a game of EI if the first or second roll comes up 1-x-x on every roll, I mean, someone's making outs, right?