BASEBALL SERIES IN HEAVEN

(Series Analysis - Key Stats)
 

Well, when we had the idea to play this series, we thought the Yankees would be scoring a ton of runs as well as hitting quite a few homers with Ruth, Maris, Mantle, Gehrig, Dimaggio and several other power hitters. Now don't get me wrong, the Cubs had a few power hitters of their own too, like Wilson, Hornsby, Banks, Hartnett and Santo but not like the Yanks.  But since these came from the cards used in Baseball 365 on-line play, the All Time Great set, and if you have read some of my earlier reports dealing with some teams I have managed there in leagues I have played, if you have very good pitching on your team with little or no homers or ballpark homers on their pitching cards, a system I learned from a very successful manager who plays there and has won quite a few leagues ... I was able to win a league too with four, 300+ inning ace starters.  So the type of pitching my Cubs showed in this series can truly happen.

Now, the final stats calculated from this series really do speak for themselves - the Cub hitters totally outhit the Yankee hitters, an onbelievable .362 to .238 average in the 3 games with 21 runs vs. 11 runs and an almost 100 percent higher on on-base percentage.  This of course could have been luck - but both Larry and I used the same on-line dice roller - although it did seem I had quite a few more rolls on the hitter's cards. However, the Cubs had some very good pitchers (their cards) as compared to the Yankee pitchers (or at least the players Larry selected).  But if memory serves me correctly, the Yankee championship teams of the past were better known for their superior hitters than their pitchers.

Now, I am not allowed to show the total strat-o-matic card images here of the players we choose for the series within this report although, in a new section for this page I can show player's stats and ratings.  The Cubs had four what we would call "Ace Starter" cards which you would love to have such a pitcher on your league team in the likes of Three Fingers Brown, Pfiester, Ruelbach and Taylor, all early 1900's deadball era pitchers (just singles, no walks or homers) and Alexander and Schwartz (Maddux) were not so bad at all either.  I was able to use Pfiester and Ruelbach in relief -- Three Fingers did well till he gave up the back-to-back homers to Dimaggio and Ruth - but the relief staff allowed only 2 runs in 18-1/3 innings - not sure what the ERA is for this but its pretty good.  Only in Game 2, did the Cubs get shutdown late but they had like 3 scoring chances through the 9th to win a one run game and just couldn't do it otherwise the series would have been all Cubs. 

The Yankee starters really couldn't shut down the Cubs hitters as their ERA was 10 earned runs in 10-1/3 innings or almost 9 runs per game.  Now I do admit we did add "Shoeless Joe" to the Cubs who hit over .500 and this definitely helped them (this was allowed as I explained earlier for our story) and we did add a non-Cubs card for Alexander and Dean who were involved but not so much -- but still with the hitters the Yankees had - it could have gone a totally different way.  I think a key to the Cubs strategy which I used to the hilt was to setup late in the game the best lefty-righty matches with the Cub's relief staff. The Yanks lose their power with a good left handed reliever who can shutdown the big four Ruth, Gehrig, Maris and Mantle (even though Mantle is a switch hitter, he had way less power vs. lefties).  Originally Manager Schwartz was going to use Vaughan for relief (a good early 1900's lefty starter for the Cubs) in game 1, rest in game 2 and start in game 3 but he decided to have 3 lefties relievers available (Vaughn, Pfiester and Weimar) all three games plus he had a righty reverse reliever in Brosnan.  You see the Cubs used these key relievers much more often then the Yanks did who only use each reliever who came in, in just one game only.

So the two keys to the Cubs success were they were more consistent beating up the Yankees' pitching and scoring runs plus the great relief work they saw to shut the Yankees down and hold their power hitters at bay.  Also too, the Cubs had a bit more speed (although they either couldn't get their leads or the chance to steal was cut way down by the catcher's and pitcher's arms) and they could play small ball a wee bit better which did produce three key hits using a hit and run.  So our main character Joseph Schwartz, a pitcher for the Cubs' team and their manager did well in this series relatively speaking.  He just had that one bad pitch to Clete Boyer which resulted in a grand slam homer, this was his only blemish.  He pitched the final inning of Game 3 without any problems though.  Congrats Joseph on having your chance to live you dream!

Now before I complete this report with some stats on the card images we used - I want to say a few final things about the story that will be connected to this series.  My intention is to continue, in a way, the story left untold when the character, Terence Mann, in the movie "Field of Dreams" (Note: he was not in the original story written by W.P. Kinsella, "Shoeless Joe"... he had added (replaced) to the story of the film as Kinsella put into his original story the real fictional author, J. D. Salinger, the author of the book, "Catcher in the Rye".  I remember reading this book in high school and deals with baseball - but when Bill Kinsella's book went to the big screen, Salinger threatened to sue if they included him. So the movie production team had to create a totally new character and that is where Mr. Mann came in) enters into the gateway to Heaven in the cornfield, where all the baseball players are coming and going from. So I want to talk about what happens to Mr. Mann on the so called "other-side" as it has been called.  Also Bill Kinsella passed away in 2016, so naturally we will meet him over there as well.  Plus we meet "Shoeless Joe" and I am sure I will have "Moonlight" Graham show up as well as the young man and the ballplayer as "Moonlight" was a baseball player in real life as well.  I will try to answer and expand upon all the questions we are curious about that the movie brought up. 

Next, I will take the reader of this book into fantasy baseball and explain how the three games were played and that I didn't have to make it up in my mind. And finally I will tell my personal stories related to the book, movie and baseball field in Iowa, which includes my interviews with Bill Kinsella, a family member of the farm where the movie production built the baseball field for the movie and the current owner of the baseball "Field of Dreams" ballpark. Finally I will write about my own experiences that took place during two visits to this magical field. As I said before, this will be a very different type of book and one which I predict could be my most successful ever.  Hopefully, since this story is going to come from a chapter in my paranormal novel trilogy with my friend Karen (who is a novelist) - this could help this trilogy be its own movie one day. Anyway, this is what Heaven is all about - dreaming big and knowing that any dream you can dream, can happen there - that is if you believe in Heaven.  I mean all these stories about Angels and Ghosts, has to have some truth and they must come from somewhere - right?  So if this book project, which I am calling now, "How They Play Baseball in Heaven" resonates for you - send me a private email - so you can be one of the first to get this next crazy book your Wolfman plans to write ...

Ok to finish this report and give you a bit more feeling about the superior MLB players we were managing in this series, in the next section is a partial view of the cards with the player's stats and ratings of their skills without showing the strat card image itself. If you are a member of the on-line SOM Baseball 365 system, you can view these cards in the latest All Time Great Set and while I am here, may I highly recommend checking out Baseball 365 from SOM if you haven't tried it already. There is a whole other world over there of strat gamers, our extended family who are playing full 162 game leagues in 54 days with a few days more for their playoffs and uncovering their league champions along with some very interesting tournaments too.  This version of the game is a bit different with its rules and player's usage but it works a lot like the computer game in how you build a manager for your team to play a 3 game series each night but it does also contain its own excitement. One of these days I will go back and play in another league. All operations and management of your team and the playing of the league games is done on-line through this system which makes it highly enjoyable and easy to do. You can even watch a replay of your league games batter by batter afterwards.  Go to our resource page to see how to explore or play with Baseball 365.

-- Wolfman aka Joshua Shapiro or is that Joseph Schwartz?

CUB HITTERS
 

YANKEE PITCHERS
 

CUB PITCHERS
 

BASEBALL SERIES IN HEAVEN, PART II
(Boxscores of each game with a summary of the results)
Click Here to re-read Part II of this Report, the Game Boxscores

BASEBALL SERIES IN HEAVEN, INTRODUCTION
Click Here to Re-read the Introduction to this Report