Realism

Sometimes the replay is stranger than reality

Realism

I’ve been a little quiet the past two weeks. I’ve been sick, and am finally feeling a bit better.

Being sick, of course, means that I had a lot of time to make progress in my 1949 Diamond Mind Baseball replay. And that’s where something pretty interesting happened.

The St. Louis Browns played a 4 game series at Fenway Park from June 23 to June 26. In real life, it was an absolute slaughter. Boston won all four games of the series, scoring a combined 48 runs and allowing only 7 runs to score.

It led to a few classic Gene Mack cartoons in The Boston Post. This one is probably my favorite of the bunch:

From The Boston Post, June 26, 1949, page 36

Things in my Diamond Mind world were a little bit different.

It looked like fiction would resemble reality after the June 23rd game, which Boston won easily:

I suspect that Diamond Mind Baseball’s computer manager pulled Starr out of the ballgame too early. St. Louis doesn’t have much of a bullpen, and it really showed in this one.

The June 24th game, in contrast, was really close:

It was a three run 8th inning home run by Vern Stephens that helped Boston come out on top.

And then came the June 25th game:

Mickey McDermott was only 20 years old in 1949, but he sure pitched his heart out for the Red Sox in this thriller. It was Bobby Doerr who won this with a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning, helping the Red Sox just manage to squeak by.

And the 26th was another classic:

Ted Williams, who is “only” hitting .409, scored the one and only run of the ballgame in the bottom of the first.

Boston swept the simulated series just as they did the real life series — but it was a lot closer.

The standings are a lot closer, too. In real life, Boston was in third place after this series, a full 5 games behind the Yankees. In Diamond Mind, it looks like this:

Boston is holding on to first place, but only just barely. The Yankees are coming into town on June 28th — and, of course, this series will mark Joe DiMaggio’s first game of the 1949 season. And don’t forget about the Cleveland Indians, who are playing much better in this replay than they did in real life.

And so bring on those Yanks!

From The Boston Globe, June 27, 1949, page 6