This blog chronicles a replay of the 1934 Major League Baseball season. It will also contain a lot of supplementary information about the game and the players in this time period, as well as what was happening outside of baseball during this era. The blog's main purpose is to learn about baseball in the 1930s, using the replay as a teaching vehicle around which to add supplementary material.The replay portion of this blog is done with Strat-O-Matic (SOM) baseball, a game that was invented in 1961 with cards for each player simulating their actual statistics. SOM is now available on computer, which is how I play the bulk of my games, with the computer taking one side (or sometimes both sides). More about Strat-O-Matic Baseball and the company can be found here:
http://www.strat-o-matic.com/whyplay.htm
1934 is one of only three seasons that Strat-O-Matic has reproduced in the period from 1930 until the late 40s (the others being 1930 and 1941). I mainly chose 1934 because it saw one of the best teams in Detroit baseball history. Throughout this blog, I'll be introducing the star players of that year and others who were an important part of the game during that era. I'll also be adding additional, related posts including book reviews and other snippets of information I learn about baseball in the 1930s.
Only the game results and statistics (e.g., league leaders, etc.) in this blog are fictionalized. Everything else, including baseball news "outside the lines," is from real life events as they occurred. In order to make this entertaining, I'll also include real events from outside the baseball world as they happened. Following this blog should, if I do this right, feel like you're following the 1934 baseball season in the newspapers as it unfolds.
Some abbreviations to know:
IRL (in real life): Occasionally, I'll discuss how the season actually progressed in comparison to my replay. When I wish to discuss what happened in the actual 1934 baseball season, I'll refer to it as "IRL."
HA (Historical Abstract): when I refer to a player, I'll sometimes add his ranking among all Major League ballplayers according to Bill James's Historical Baseball Abstract, e.g., Boston third baseman Bill Werber (BA78). James, a famous baseball historian who uses a statistically based methodology called "Sabrmetrics" for analyzing all aspects of baseball, has ranked players at each position, relying heavily on a method he calls "win shares." There are other sites that explain this system in great detail, e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win_shares
