Stan Musial's Stance

1977 Topps Ted Simmons

Spring Training continues on it’s merry way. So far the controversy has been kept to a minimum, at least from my perspective; most of it centered around Mark McGwire’s arrival. Even Brendan Ryan’s surgery only caused a small ripple.

For the beat writer or lucky blogger in Florida, this isn’t much of an issue. For the reporter there’s always an interview to hold with a player, front office type, or Cardinal legend. The local blogger could describe the ballpark, weather, or local culture. But for those of us not in situ, finding things to discuss gets hard.

So here’s something interesting.  Jeff Polman is a writer by trade, and a baseball fan. While looking for new projects a while back he hit on the idea of replaying a season from baseball’s past. Nothing novel there; I remember trying something similar as a 9-year old. Jeff took it a step further though and decided to blog about the replay season in the writing style of the time. No 9-year old I know could pull that off, and very few writers can do it well. Jeff can, which makes it very cool in my opinion.

Jeff finished up his first replay effort of the 1924 season.  You may have seen some of his Twitter summaries of the action last week.  In looking around for the next season to replay, he decided to advance the clock 50 years or so to 1977.

I have no idea why he picked that season. I do know 1977 holds a special place in my heart, since the first MLB game I attended happened that year (which I have written about previously here). I don’t know if Jeff was aware of that, or if he picked a Cardinal BBA blog at random, but he did decide to invite other people to join the fun by managing one of the 1977 teams, and he approached me regarding the Cardinals.

So I am divining Vern Rapp in a replay of the 1977 season. There are 15 other writers pulling the strings for the other 15 teams, and a complete list can be found here.

The simulation will be conducted using Stratomatic cards. I am only familiar with Strat in passing, being an old APBA man myself. But, a lineup and rotation must be constructed, so off to baseball reference I went.

• LF – Brock
• SS – Templeton
• 1B – Hernandez
• C – Simmons
• CF – McBride
• 3B – Reitz
• RF – Scott
• 2B – Tyson

Pitching for the Cardinals:

• Forsch
• Rasmussen
• Denny
• Falcone
• Underwood

There will be Tweets about the league as well.  And if his first post is any indicator, this should make for great reading during the summer.  I will be doing the occasional story during the season from my managerial perch.

If I finish close to 83-79 it will be a victory. If I can keep everyone clean shaven too it will be a TOTAL VICTORY.