Wanna bet?
 

Some of you are old enough to have experience playing simulated season replays with APBA or Stratomatic dice driven board games or both. Some of you may still do.

If you were a stat freak in doing so, compiling statistics in the ante-computer era required time, diligence and was fraught with unintentional errors.

For example after several hundred games, you would discover that the sum of the pitchers’ strikeouts was different than the sum of the batters’ strikeouts.

If you were obsessive compulsive and encountered such an inconsistency, you could spend hours reviewing hand scored game sheets to find your error.

At the end of a season those linked stats between batters and pitchers just had to match.

Older real baseball records have been corrected years later with the advent of retrosheet and other computer assisted compilations. But if one returns to the nineteenth century or Negro League baseball many games are not completely recorded.

You could also consider vintage minor league stats, which can be virtually non-existent or at least not preserved. Finding even a correct roster for the 1909 Rocky Mount Railroaders is a challenge.

Let’s define major leagues as the American and National League only without nineteenth century stats from other AL precursors.

So here’s the bet. Using any sources available for all major league games only, do you think you can prove that the total number of pitchers’ strikeouts equals the total number of batters’ strikeouts and that that number is correct. I say “No”.

Wanna bet?

I doubt it.

But your post really dredged up some fun memories. My Strat leagues were a ton of fun in the 60s and 70s. I used this to find averages....

Attachment 363409

...until I discovered this!!

Attachment 363410

It was life changing.

I played Strat-O-Matic compulsively in 1964 and 1965- Brooks Robinson was my 1964 MVP- and I always used Batting Averages at a Glance to do my calculations. And I still have my slide rule in the top drawer of my desk, and I l know how to compute a batting average using it. I guess we are both about the same age (67).

It doesn't answer Frank's question, however.

I'm just shy of 67

And my answer (if I'm understanding the question correctly) is that I doubt I could reconcile the two totals.

I would need some aggressive odds to bet against you on this one. And even then I don't think I'd wager much.

We used a slide rule in Chemistry class to do the various calculations. That was 1967-68. The pocket calculator wasn't in service until 1971.

One of my favorite lyrics from one of the great songs of all time.

Don't know much about algebra
Don't know what a slide rule is for
But I do know one and one is two
And if this one could be with you

I confess to my own OCD with regard to my OP. I was introduced to APBA in 1953 at the age of 6. Soon thereafter I began compiling stats from the game. Somewhat later I completed a 1956 season replay. With hours of reconciliation I was able to maintain a stat balance, but managing to “reality” was another problem. The best example of this was keeping Joe Adcock from hitting too many home runs. He hit 53 all together, but I played Frank Torre at first base for most of September, so Babe Ruth’s record would not be broken. I think Adcock ended up with only about 400 ABs to accomplish this goal. Babe thanked me.;)

..... What a wonderful world this would be

Sam Cooke

Yup. If it gets much better than that, I haven't heard it. His early loss is right up there with Buddy Holly's, one can only imagine how many great songs they still had left to write.

My brother and friends played relentlessly in the early 70s. APBA came out with "extra" cards that as I recall you tore from a perforated sheet and there were some real anomalies like Ken Brett having 6 "1s" on his card that led to endless disputes about what was fair.