Fighting Boredom

Keeping your Replay Fresh

Fighting Boredom

We’ve all been there. Your big baseball replay project, which looked so interesting and like so much fun at the beginning, winds up feeling like a drag.

It usually happens sometime in June or July. When the good teams start pulling apart from the pack, it becomes really difficult to sit down and play out those meaningless games between the also-rans (or, in some cases the utterly hopeless).

So what do you do to keep your interest?

Wisdom from the Ancients

This is actually one of those topics that comes up again and again in the long and storied history of baseball replay projects.

Take, for example, this 50-year-old (I’m not kidding!) article by Robert Schmierer, a famous name in the old APBA Journal before replay columns were a monthly feature:

From The APBA Journal, November 1973, page 5

Now, we don’t need to go cut out Sporting News boxscores, much less save entire issues. All of this is available electronically and is relatively easy to obtain. And the necessity of validating statistics every 200 games or so has been remedied by computers — though finding a good computer tool to help tally your board game replay stats is not easy!

As far as “forcing” yourself to play is concerned, however, I think there might be a better way to get through those tailender series.

Newspaper Research

My personal preference is to do research in original newspapers.

Now, I want to make myself clear. I’m not talking about reading every single possible newspaper before you play games on a given day. I’m not talking about even reading the newspaper from the home team. I’ve tried doing that before, and have found myself spending so much time reading and so little time playing that the replay lost all meaning.

Instead, use newspaper research wisely — as a helpful distraction and a morale booster when you really need it.

If you browse around a little bit and experiment, you just might find some gems, too.

For example, you know as well as I know that you can find original newspaper articles in books like The Unforgettable Season, which is about that famous 1908 National League Pennant Race. But do you know what 1908 newspapers actually look like?

Take a look for yourself:

From The Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1908, page 6

This isn’t a one-off, by the way. Browsing through any of the 1908 Chicago Tribune issues will give you more than your fair share of interesting news-related cartoons. These appeared on the front page as well, believe it or not.

If cartoons aren’t your thing, you can occasionally find photos from the earliest days of baseball — including some you likely have never seen before. Have you ever seen photos of the Chicago White Sox from their 1908 AL campaign?

From The Chicago Tribune, September 7, 1908, page 7

There are even earlier photos out there, believe it or not. The Philadelphia Inquirer had the best, in my opinion. Have you seen this one before?

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 27, 1901, page 6

That’s right: that is a photograph of the very first Philadelphia Athletics home game. It’s been sitting in the archives for over 120 years now, largely ignored by historians and baseball fans in general. And there are more treasures like this out there!

Now, you and I both know that the 1908 pennant race was something special. What about those losing teams, you ask — can the newspaper help us there?

Indeed they can — especially for older season.

Take the woeful 1902 New York Giants as an example. At 48-88 (.353), it can get really tedious to watch them continuously lose games — especially before the controversial deal that brought half the Baltimore Orioles over.

However, a little dose of 1902-era yellow journalism will cure what ails you:

From The Evening World, July 12, 1902, Page 1

I, for one, love to read front page articles about how the 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates, one of the greatest teams of all time, somehow had respect for a Giants team that couldn’t win more than a third of its ballgames.

If you don’t care for sensationalist journalism, you can always find other bits of intrigue in other publications. The New York Tribune, for example, loved throwing jabs at the hapless 1900 New York Giants whenever it had the chance:

From New York Tribune, June 7, 1900, page 4

And, as far as I’m concerned, there has never been a daily newspaper with better coverage than The Cincinnati Enquirer of 1900:

From The Cincinnati Enquirer, June 7, 1900, Page 4

This excerpt is about a fourth of the sports page from June 7, 1900. There’s simply too much text here for me to reproduce the entire screen. It’s quite remarkable.

You’ll also find all sorts of strange stories if you look. Check this out from June 1901:

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 16, 1901, page 15

That’s right — too much rain to play in the American League, but not enough to cancel the National League game. You won’t see this kind of writeup in your standard Retrosheet or Baseball Reference boxscore.

I could go on, but you get the point. If you use it sparingly, you’ll find that these old newspaper accounts really can add life to your replay. Give it a try.