Single Distribution in National Pastime

Another step into the mystery

Single Distribution in National Pastime

Singles in Clifford Van Beek’s National Pastime were limited to play result numbers 7 through 11. Unlike APBA, no other play result numbers can result in a single.

As we’ve noted before, there is a difference between what each of those singles numbers do. 11, for example, is usually followed by a stolen base. 10 also has stolen base potential, though it’s not as frequent as 11. And the base hits themselves have different RBI and base running results:

Now we can take a look at how frequently each of those numbers actually come up on the National Pastime cards.

The results are actually a little bit surprising. For example, play result 7 comes up more frequently than play result 9:

10s and 11s are relatively rare. This makes sense: there were 599 stolen bases in the American League in 1930, and only 481 in the National League, numbers that are relatively low.

Stolen base frequency in the National League in 1930 wasn’t exactly at an all-time low, but it was pretty close:

The same is true of the American League:

Out of curiosity, I divided up the singles by player position. This is what I found:

The most surprising thing here is that there were 4 10s assigned to catcher cards — something I wasn’t expecting. It’s also interesting to note that Clifford Van Beek tended to assign 7s and 8s to pitchers instead of 9s for whatever reason. I believe most of those 7s show up on dice roll 11; dice roll 66 is almost always a 6 for National Pastime pitchers:

I still don’t know quite what the logic was behind assigning every player at least one power number, or why certain players received 7s and 8s instead of 9s. If you have any theories, please let me know.