National Pastime Out Rolls
Some more observations
National Pastime Out Rolls
We’ve talked a lot about National Pastime recently. In fact, if you missed it, the big discovery we had last time was that Clifford Van Beek simply swapped out numbers when he wanted to mix up his original pattern.
When I started looking through examples of this out number swapping, I realized that we can tell with very high accuracy which dice rolls are “out” rolls and which ones are “hit” rolls.
I haven’t gotten quite that far in my research yet, but I believe that there is a certian hierarchy to the “hit” dice rolls. Basically, the “best” hit number will be on dice roll 66, the “next best” on 11, and so on. We’ll look at that a little bit later.
However, what is absolutely clear is that Clifford Van Beek used certain patterns for dice rolls that always produced outs. In other words, there are certain National Pastime dice rolls that always give us out numbers. Similarly, there are certain dice rolls that always give hit numbers.
The Spread
I’ll show you what I mean:
This is a graph of all hit numbers (1 through 11) and their corresponding dice rolls results on all National Pastime cards. I removed all cells with a “0” to make it easier to read. This includes all players, not just pitchers.
From just a glance, we can conclude that some of these dice rolls are always hit numbers. Indeed, 66, 11, and 33 will always result in a hit number, no matter what.
Let’s go down the line from here.
15 is almost always a “hit” roll. Dice roll 15 occasionally produces a 22, a 23, a 37, a 39, or a 40. It also results in play result 30 on a single card: Glenn Spencer, a pitcher (of course) with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
22 is almost always a “hit” roll. A single player received play result 22 on dice roll 22: this is William Hallahan, a pitcher (of course) with the St. Louis Cardinals.
25 frequently is a “hit” roll, but not always. Sometimes it results in a 13 or a 14. There are cards with 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, or 23 at dice roll 25. A number of other cards have a 37, 38, 39, or 40 at dice roll 25. There’s also a single 26, a single 28, and a single 29 at this dice roll.
31 is occasionally a “hit” roll. Like 25, there are a lot of options here. It can result in a 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, or a 23. One player was unfortunate enough to have a 24 at dice roll 31. A few others had 28s and 29s, there is one 33, and then there are players who received a 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, and 41 at dice roll 31. My guess is that it’s one of the “weaker” hit dice rolls.
35 can be a “hit” roll, but it’s rare. only 24 players received “hit” rolls at 35. The others received a little bit of everything: the only non-hit results that don’t show up on dice roll 35 are 25, 30, 31, and 35. Perhaps 35 was “weaker” than 31.
42 is a hit roll in extremely rare situations. 5 players received hit numbers on dice roll 42. It housed a variety of results, including quite a few 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40 results, as well as a single 41. Most players, however, have a 13 on dice roll 42: 121, to be exact.
44 is almost always a hit. 6 players received play result 22 on dice roll 44.
51 looks a lot like 31, with some hits sprinkled among a bunch of outs. We’ve got a fine collection of play result numbers 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 at dice roll 51, and there are also players who have a 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, or a 41 at that roll. A small handful of players were unlucky enough to receive a 24, 28, or 29 at that roll. 22 others received a 13; I’m assuming that they were pitchers.
55 is clearly a hit number. 23 players received a 22 at dice roll 55. One additional player received a 40.
56 is a hit number for one player: James Welsh, who received play result 8 at both dice roll 55 and 56. This is almost certainly an error.
61 is a hit number for 15 players, all of whom received play result 9. It’s another one of those numbers that seems to be a little bit of everything for most guys. if it’s a “hit” roll, it’s very weak.
64 is the weakest of the hit rolls. One player received a 9 there, and one received a 10.
If you’re curious, this is what the full spreadsheet looks like:
Hits And Outs
We can turn this into a simple sample card:
I left blank spots for rolls that are sometimes hits and sometimes outs.
I also decided to call dice roll 42 an out roll, since it’s only a hit for 5 players. 56 is a hit in one situation, which is almost certainly a mistake. 61 is a hit for 15 guys, and 64 a hit for only two — hits rare enough for me to conclude that these are actually “out” rolls.
So who cares about this?
This information tells us two interesting things:
It lets us know the dice rolls we should look to for potential out swapping; and
It gives us some insight into play result numbers 22, 23, the error numbers, and the unusual numbers — especially that mysterious play result number 40.
More next time!