The OFAS Conundrum

What happens when the best of the best meet up?

The OFAS Conundrum

After the devastating 1982 baseball strike, J. Richard Seitz and his APBA company created a card set that was quite unusual.

The idea here was pretty simple. APBA created 25 man rosters featuring the best seasons for the best players from the “original 16” baseball teams. The teams themselves were represented by the franchises that remained stable in major league baseball from 1903 through 1952.

As you can somewhat see in the old advertising scan above, the rules behind this set were pretty simple:

1. Each teams had 15 players and 10 pitchers (though some position players received pitching ratings)

2. Players received cards only for one team: in other words, Eddie Collins wouldn’t play against Eddie Collins

3. Players were assigned to the teams with which they are most commonly associated (for example, Babe Ruth is with the New York Yankees, not the Boston Red Sox)

4. Players were required to have demonstrated high level talent over a number of years; in other words, you wouldn’t see any one hit wonders here. This isn’t completely consistent, however: for example, Dizzy Dean receives a card for the Cardinals.

5. Cards were based on only a single season’s hitting or pitching performance. The fielding ratings, however, were based on everything the player did over the course of a career.

6. The cards represented player seasons from 1894 through 1979.

There’s a lot to talk about here, and we’ll cover a number of these topics in the coming weeks and months. These include:

• Did APBA really find the best players for each team?

• What mistakes did APBA make in sticking together monster hitter and batter cards?

• What approaches have other games taken?

• What research have others done into this kind of setup?

More to come!