simming the negro leagues

Strat-O-Matic is putting out a 108-card set of Negro League greats, based on their best five seasons.  And it’s our friend Scott Simkus who’s acting as the principal consultant (see his work on the 1909 Cuban Stars here).  Getting Negro League and Latin American baseball into tabletop games and text sims based on actual statistics is a great development, as far as I am concerned.

The leader in this so far has been Replay Games, which put together a yearbook and card set for the 1923 Negro National League based on Patrick Rock’s research (unfortunately, it seems, out of stock at the moment).  I believe Patrick is also working on the 1923 ECL, which I’m looking forward to.

And I don’t remember if I’ve linked to this before, but Mischa Gelman has done the 1906/07 Cuban League (based on my compilation) for the free, open-source Strategic Baseball Simulator.  Check around the discussion board; they have a huge variety of interesting leagues and seasons available.

Comments

[Mischa Gelman]

Thanks for the mention of my 1907 Cuban season for SBS. I've also covered the 1923 Negro National League, thanks to Patrick Rock's work and assistance.

I did a couple Mexican League seasons with Negro Leaguers - 1940 (Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Martin Dihigo, Willie Wells, Wild Bill Wright, Ray Dandridge and more) and 1946 (Dihigo, Dandridge).

Additionally, I have done a few minor league seasons with Negro League greats like the 1951 American Association (Dandridge), 1952 Southwest International League (Chet Brewer, Pullman Porter), 1956 Texas League (Marvin Williams), 1956 Western League (Bus Clarkson - also appears in some of the AA and Mexican seasons) and numerous guys (Archie Wilson, Art Pennington, Ford Smith, etc.) show up in the 1950s PCL seasons we have.

Thanks for the mention, Gary. I'd love to cover more Negro League seasons for SBS if I could get complete stats.

[Scott Simkus]

Thanks for the pub, Gary. You've been a long-distance, "electronic" mentor the past couple years. After the product release later this year, I hope to share some of the residual findings with the agatetype community. Thanks again.