An immediate follow-up post about the Cuban and Dominican Leagues in Alt-1915

 

In the last post I discussed various things related to how I think baseball around the world looks, or should look, in Alt-1915. Since I've been thinking about it, I also figure I should write down some specifics about the Cuban and Dominican Leagues. 

There are something like 5 countries with national leagues coming into 1925: Mexico, Nicaragua, Japan, the Philippines (if only in Manila), the Netherlands. The number of MLB or minor league players in the sim from those countries is, I think, zero. When the World Cup comes around the players for those countries can be drawn from the stars of those leagues, and if I decide to do an Asian Championship, I can take the Philippine and Japanese champions to represent their countries. As far as Caribbean Series, though, certainly have Cubans in both MLB and the minors. Cuba has teams in the developmental league, and the players are mostly not Cubans, and the plans I have for an affiliated Antilles League will similarly have teams in Cuba and the DR with mostly North American rosters because that's what the minor leagues are. But I would like to give the chance for Cubans to play on Cuban teams and Dominicans to play on DR teams without divorcing those cities from the affiliated MLB system.

So, I think the way to handle it is to have winter Cuban and DR leagues, which I think would have to be run as tournaments (at least the Cuban one) so that the Cuban MLB/MiLB players could stay on whatever teams they were on and just be loaned out. I think I can do that?  So, the Cuban League would have four teams--Havana, Almendares, Santa Clara, and Cienfuegos? And the Dominican League would be the Tigres del Licey, Estrellas Orientales, Leones del Escogido, and Águilas Cibaeñas?  And so then there could be a Caribbean Series with not just the winners of the Mexican and Nicaraguan Leagues, but also the winners of these Cuban and Dominican Leagues, though it might be that I'd have to create those teams by hand for a Caribbean Series?

Some Alt-1915 Worldbuilding Thoughts

While I'd been thinking I'd start the Alt-1925 season right after that blog post, I instead decided to get a laptop repair before starting the season. So it'll probably be another week before that gets underway. That gives me a chance to write a bit about the various worldbuilding things that I've been mulling in spare moments here and there. Unless I wanted to treat this as a strictly mathematical exercise in simulation, in which specific parameter choices were going to be critical, the worldbuilding would flesh out the storytelling.

There's been a positive feedback loop for me in the game for quite some time, where making new ballparks makes me want to actually use them in-game, which then (at least sometimes) drives a need for more ballparks. And then some of the rationales for using these parks drive their own logic as far as worldbuilding. For instance, deciding to use a few ballparks for Spring Training led to also setting up the Caribbean developmental league, which in turn led to my needing a few more parks so that I could have a reasonable number of teams in it. Realizing I'd made parks for many (but not all) of the biggest North American cities and U. S. states made me want to finish the sets, which then led me to have barnstorming tours, which then led me to consider a Far Eastern barnstorming tour, which then led to needing period-appropriate parks in Japan, Manila, etc. That in turn led to setting up the non-US independent leagues, etc. 

The other worldbuilding driver, as I've mentioned in other posts, is the integrated nature of baseball. So, something had to happen to change one of the most openly racist periods in modern American history into  one that's accepting of Black ballplayers as some of the biggest (inter)national stars.  At a minimum, that seems like it would require a more complete and successful Reconstruction Era, and presumably Lincoln surviving it. The game plowed right on through the 1917 and 1918 seasons with unchanged rosters and schedules (as I expected), which means that canonically the US involvement in World War 1 was very different, if it happened at all. So, if I'm willing to accept changes to two gigantic influences on 1920s America, what else is in bounds? Is anything out of bounds?

And of course, the answer is yes--there are things I'm grounding the worldbuilding in. I only want actual historically documented baseball players to end up in MLB, though I grudgingly accept that some players who are poorly documented will be among them. This is true even though a timeline where Black Americans were uncontroversially accepted as equals in the 1920s is one where Oscar Charleston and Bullet Rogen (or Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth for that matter) might have chosen to go into business or do something other than be baseball players. I've also decided (as I'm pretty sure I wrote in some 2020-era blogpost) that technology is basically what we had in our timeline, which means no continent-spanning leagues until the 40s at the earliest, and no night games until the 30s. Some other related things I really don't care about, or am not checking in any case--schedules that have a team in Kansas City one day and Boston the next, or Mobile one day and Santo Domingo the next for that matter, aren't things I'm sweating.

I'm trying to keep team names correct for the period, save for those in Cleveland, Boston, and some minor leagues that are considered racist. I'm trying to keep period uniforms as well, again with the same caveat. I'm trying to have the right cities in the right leagues, more or less, but also not sweating that (especially since I've decided to try to have teams in all 48 states plus whichever provinces and other countries). I've also decided that I'm going to keep the cities at their historical populations, and so keep the relative sizes and rankings of cities the same. Despite all of that slack I'm giving myself, I am trying to keep the ballparks pretty close to what really were present in those cities at those times, even though there's no particular reason to be a stickler for that. In this case, I think it comes down to a combination of my wanting/needing something to work from rather than having no constraints at all, plus wanting to post things to the forum that really are historical. 

Bringing it back to the worldbuilding, all of this seems to point in some very rough, broad directions. The US is less racist, and so perhaps it's also less interventionist?  I do want baseball to still be popular in Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, etc., and perhaps in a universe where the US is less interventionist but baseball is still popular in all of those places, it'd also be popular in Haiti? That's definitely a retrofit from wanting a Caribbean League team in Port-au-Prince, though. But the logic seems to hold. Would the US still have the Philippines as a colony? I'm saying no, so having the Philippines as an independent republic that's close allies to the US. But what about Hawaii? Or Puerto Rico? Or other territories that were US possessions c. 1925 in OTL?  Would the Spanish-American War have happened? I suppose at the moment I'm letting some of those wave functions stay uncollapsed, but I've certainly been thinking of all of the OTL possessions (other than the Philippines) as being under US control. Maybe Puerto Rico becomes a state when Alaska and Hawaii do? Or becomes independent?  I think Canada still exists, though in some scenarios the lack of a US Civil War would remove the proximate cause of its existence (and potentially remove the example for uniting the Australian colonies later on?). However, I think the logic of a single Dominion of Canada still carries the day.

In Asia, I suppose I'm imagining China as a stable republic, with Korea and Taiwan independent of them and Japan. Hong Kong is still British, though, and I suppose I'm imagining the British Empire as more or less intact (other than Africa which I'll hit on below). I suppose I'm also imagining some of the foreign concessions in China still existing, which gives spots for teams in a Chinese baseball league. Australia and New Zealand are as OTL, with Australia providing another baseball spot.  I don't see any real changes to Latin America or the Lesser Antilles, I suppose.

As far as Africa, in keeping with the spirit mentioned above I'm imagining less colonial influences and no real Scramble for Africa. So, rather than the continent split up among European colonies, I'm imagining trading posts with European sovereignty in limited areas.  Maybe something like the Antarctic Treaty, though obviously the existence of tens or hundreds of millions of human beings would make that a very limited basis of comparison. I think South Africa is going to be more or less as it was OTL, and I think having one UK-associated country (with no apartheid) would probably be a happier outcome for the indigenous population than having the Boer Republics still in place. With a more liberal/progressive Germany, which wasn't defeated in WWI, they would still presumably have trading posts in Kenya and Namibia among other areas. So I think, and admittedly this involves some working backward, Liberia would be more important here--it would have US influence, and a less-racist US would be more willing to work constructively with them. While in OTL baseball isn't a thing in Liberia, I think in TTL it would be. Or, at least, I'm deciding it is. :)

That finally brings us to Europe. I think the way to get where I want to be, again with the proviso that I may retcon all sorts of things, is to have a short war confined to Russia, Austria-Hungary, and (I guess) the Balkan countries, with an aftermath of a dissolution of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and soft landings for all the constituent countries. Maybe Germany, France, and the UK not only stay out of the war but also broker the post-war...situation. Ideally the Ottoman Empire also breaks up at this point, again with minimal European colonization, though that may be too much to reasonably expect. 

All of this only would matter at the margins in terms of random extra leagues that are running, plus things like World Cups. So, I'm going to try not to think about it any more than it's fun to think about. But I guess those nations that are playing some form of baseball worth noticing in this scenario, based on reality and how this worldbuilding is looking c. 1925 are:

Top level: USA, Cuba

Second level: Japan, Canada, Dominican Republic, Philippines?, Mexico?

Third level: Netherlands (and Netherlands Antilles), Korea, Taiwan, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, UK?

Working on it: Haiti,  Colombia, Australia, China, South Africa, Ireland?, Belgium?, Finland?, other Central America, Bahamas?, West Indies?

Dabbling: Liberia, France, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, India?, Dutch East Indies? Morocco? Malaysia? French West Indies?

And so presumably the Baseball World Cup, when it happens, would have a 12-team field (the first soccer World Cup had 13) of something like: USA, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Netherlands, Venezuela? 

OK, this has been long, so I should just post it!

Alt-1925: Preview!

I'm just intending this to be a short post since I'm on the verge of Opening Day.  The big off-season news is that the Yankees, coming off of a 125-win regular season and easy World Series victory, worked a straight-up swap of young up-and-coming stud Goose Goslin for Babe Ruth. In-universe, there's probably some amount of dismay, but not as much as there should be. Goslin is a Hall-of-Famer, and had excellent production through to the mid/late 1930s. Babe Ruth outproduced him until 1933 and in the process had some of the most historic offensive seasons of all time. 1925 was an off year for him, which in combination with his being on the cusp of 30 years old probably made the Red Sox ready to move him. 

The algorithm picks us to have a 111-win regular season and win the pennant by 11 games over the Packers. It has the Cardinals winning 100 games and winning the NL by 12 games over Baltimore and the Giants. It predicts a .418 season for Cobb and 43 home runs for Ruth, but only 220-inning seasons for the Yankees' main pitchers. 

Even with Ruth's real-life off year in 1925, the Alt-Yankees have many of the WAR and other leaders from our universe: Heilmann, Rogan, Luque, and Winters all make the top 10 in WAR, though the game version I ended up with discounts Negro Leaguers, and Winters is actually cooling his heels in AA. Looking at the top-10 WAR for position players removes Winters and Rogan and adds the now-absent Goslin, but also adds Cobb.

So, I'm looking for a big year again and our 6th straight pennant. Hopefully we'll get back-to-back World Series championships for the first time while we're at it. Besides the Ruth pickup, we dropped Mogridge, who wasn't going to get many innings anyhow. 

OK, let's do this thing. 

A (Watsonian) New Year's Message from the Commissioner

Happy 1925!

I wanted to send this message out to all of our fans, more than 18.5 million of whom came to see a game this year, nearly two-thirds coming to an American League or National League game. We were proud to bring Organized Baseball to thirty-eight states and Washington DC, as well as three Canadian provinces. Through our developmental league, fans in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic also were able to see high-level baseball, and though a post-season tour we were able to bring baseball to Japan, Korea, the Republics of China and the Philippines, and Taiwan. Below, I'd like to share our plans for sharing baseball with even larger audiences in coming years.

I want us to commemorate the coming sesquicentennial year in 1926 by reaching out and bringing baseball to every part of the United States.  Initial work has been done to establish several new affiliated leagues in parts of the continent that currently don't have Organized Baseball. It is my hope that in the 1926 season, every state in the Union will enjoy Organized Baseball, as well as most of the Canadian provinces, Mexico, Cuba, and Hispaniola, and as many of the American territories as possible. 

We have just finished our tenth season since the American, National, and Federal Leagues made peace and the the major leagues expanded to twenty teams. In that time, the population of the United States has increased by many millions, and the largest cities of Canada are similar in size as some of the largest ones in the USA. We're thus making plans to again add teams to the American and National Leagues, not to put an end to a baseball war but as a consequence of the benefits of baseball peace. We will be undertaking the process of identifying the right cities for expansion and preparing for four new teams to join Major League baseball in time for the 1928 season. 

Finally, we congratulate the independent baseball leagues in the Philippines and Japan on very successful seasons, and look forward to the upcoming seasons in those nations and in the leagues in the Netherlands, Nicaragua, and Mexico. In order to reinforce and encourage the international nature of baseball, we are beginning to explore a World Cup of Baseball. Because we are in the initial stages, we cannot yet say when this tournament would be held--it could be as early as the Fall of 1926, associated with the Olympic year of 1928, or in 1930. We will of course keep our fans around the world informed!

We wish a harmonious and peaceful 1925 for all, even football fans.

Yours,

-The Commissioner

Worlds Left to Conquer

 It is 22 November in alt-1924. Thanksgiving will be coming up this coming Thursday, when the first Macy's Thanksgiving Parade will be held in New York City. The players on the Barnstorming Tour will enjoy a day off, sailing from Hong Kong to Taipei. The Caribbean Developmental League will have nearly a full slate of games, though all the US-based teams will be in the USA on the holiday. 

Out of game, I've been mulling the next goals the Yankees would have, and also what goals I might have for the game. The Yankees are on top of the mountain--reigning World Series champions, winners of five straight pennants and record holders for most wins in a season as well as highest winning percentage in a season. As I've said in a few recent posts, the team seems pretty well set for the better part of the next decade. Is that challenge enough?

I think the answer is yes, actually. Even in the near-term, I think members of this Yankees team and the management would find some unfinished business.  The Yankees have never won even back-to-back World Series, let alone the three in a row that the Rustlers have done. Five pennants in a row was accomplished in real life by the Yankees of the 50s, but six in a row has never been done. 

I've also got some thoughts about setting up additional affiliated and non-affiliated leagues, which aren't in-game challenges but still things to actually do. Plus I'd like to commemorate the in-game sesquicentennial somehow, which I plan to talk about more in a later post. Plus, expansion to 12 teams per league (and two divisions per league) is coming up soon enough. It should be imminent by this time next (real) year...

Your Alt-1924 Champions

 

In the end, the Alt-1924 Yankees could not be denied. In the 1923 World Series they came in heavily favored but also heavily injured, and while their replacements did well, the Yankees missed Santop, Collins, and Charleston more than the stats might show (or maybe I'm being Watsonian here). This time, they came in with a fully-healthy roster, and handily defeated the Cardinals 4 games to 1.  

Harry Heilmann was the MVP, hitting .455 with an OPS of 1.069 -- not as high as Goose Goslin's, but in 21 rather than 16 at-bats. Hotter still was Joe Harris, who went 12 for 21 and slashed .571/.591/.619 in a losing cause. Sam Rice also had a big series for St. Louis.  As a team, the Cardinals had almost as high a batting average as the Yankees (three fewer hits in two more at-bats, and about the same number of walks), but the Yankees hit for more power (slugging at .438 vs. .356 for the Cardinals) and were able to turn those advantages into more runs (6 vs. 3.8 per game). While it wasn't necessarily a deciding factor, the Yankees defense also held, with the team giving up zero unearned runs vs. four for St. Louis. It felt like there were a few errors in big situations for the Cardinals, too.

As noted, Harris and Rice were on fire for the Cards, but few of their teammates pitched in. Cardinals pinch-hitters were 5 for 11 with a couple of walks and a couple of RBI, and helped St. Louis win Game 2. However, Hornsby hit .235, Wright hit .250, Witt hit .222, and Meusel hit .158, so Harris and Rice's efforts were rarely rewarded.  

The Yankees' lineup, on the other hand, performed well up and down. Traynor hit .375 with a home run and a triple, Collins hit .368 out of the leadoff spot, Santop rebounded from a terrible start to go 4 for 7 with two doubles and 5 RBI in the last two games, Cobb hit .333, Terry was hitting .385 when he was sidelined with an injury in Game 4, and Pipp went 3 for 5 as his replacement.  On the pitching end, Pennock pitched brilliantly to notch two wins, Vance pitched well to grab another one, and Fitzsimmons was in the right place at the right time to grab the Game 5 win. He and Luque threw the only real clunker for New York in Game 2.  For St. Louis, Padron pitched OK but was tagged with two losses. Hoyt pitched a little bit better and got St. Louis' one win. Coveleski was a disaster in his start, and Toney was also a disaster in his start. 

Are the Alt-1924 Yankees the best team in baseball history (in this timeline)?  I think it would be hard to argue otherwise. The Spiders managed to win 7 of 18 against the Yankees, more than any other team.  The Yankees swept the season series against Newark. Winning 125 games in a 162-game regular season feels like it won't be easy to repeat, though I didn't think that beating the 1923 team's 121 wins would be doable. This team has now won five consecutive AL pennants and six out of the last seven years, and done so with a very stable lineup--Charleston, Collins, Heilmann, Pipp, Santop, Cobb, and Peckinpaugh all played in the Series-clinching games in both 1920 and 1924, and Williams, Faber, and Pennock also played in both 1920 and 1924 for the Yankees. Several other players were on the World Series roster both years but only played one of them. 

As I've mentioned in other posts, what would be particularly terrifying for the fans (and owners?) of other AL teams is that the Yankees do not seem to be nearing the end of any sort of window of contention. Collins is aging, but his real-life 1925 and 1926 were just as good as his excellent real-life 1924, though his playing time decreased. The same could be said for Cobb, though he rebounded from only playing half of 1926 to going back to full-time duty in 1927. The same can also be said for Cy Williams. Heilmann can be expected to play at a high level through 1930. Terry has yet to hit his real stride, and should be productive until 1935. Traynor should be above-average until 19 32 or so. And for those who do start to drop off due to age or injury or whatever else, there are replacements ready--Cronin should only be a few years away from being our starting shortstop, Lazzeri is sitting at AAA, as are Pepper Martin and Lefty O'Doul. It may be that an expansion draft in 1928 will take some wind out of the Yankees' sails, but it's as likely as not just going to free up some logjams and let new blood come in.

On the pitching side, the story is much the same--Pennock, Rixey, Luque, and Faber probably have a few more years of effectiveness, Vance is probably good into the early 30s if he follows his historical path, Fitzsimmons is already in the rotation and is likely to be productive into the mid 30s (if not necessarily _every_ year in that span), and the Yankees notably have Lefty Grove stashed at AAA (along with Flint Rehm, who also had a decent MLB career if not one like Grove's).

As for how Alt-1924 will end, the Barnstorming Tour will be starting soon and will be heading to East Asia, with games in Hawaii, Japan, Korea, China, and Hong Kong before finishing in the Philippines. Relevant to the worldbuilding discussion I've had elsewhere, I'm imagining the Philippines as a US ally that got their independence following the Spanish-American War (or its equivalent) rather than becoming a US colony, and I'm also imagining Korea maintaining their independence. I guess I still imagine Hong Kong as British?  Anyhow, that will play out, and the Caribbean League will have its usual season. I'll probably upgrade to the new version of OOTP after that... 

Alt-1924 World Series Preview!

 

The second half of the Alt-1924 season was a continuation of the first, and a coronation of the Yankees and Cardinals. The Yankees played at a torrid pace, winning their fifth consecutive AL pennant and shattering the single-season wins record in the process. The Cardinals cooled slightly in the second half but cruised to their own pennant, setting up the third Yankees-Cardinals championship series in the last seven seasons. 

Heilmann could not quite keep up with Cobb's 1921 record-setting pace, finishing at .419 and settling for the 4th-best single-season batting average of the 20th century and the third-most hits in a single season. I expect him to win the AL MVP award, but his performance might not have been the best in the MLB--Al Simmons in his first full season erupted for 262 hits (a record) and 433 total bases (another record) while hitting .400 on the dot. He became the first NL .400 hitter of the 20th century, with 11.6 WAR. He's a shoo-in for the NL MVP, which was cinched when Hornsby fell to an oblique strain in early August that cost him 8 weeks of time. This is the third year of the last four where Hornsby lost significant time due to injury, though he's at least back for the series.  

On the pitching side, Pennock led all qualifiers in ERA by over a half-run, though Streeter led MLB in strikeouts and wins. I suspect Pennock will win the Cy Young Award, but would not begrudge a win for Streeter. In the NL, there was no single pitcher with a dominant year--the Cardinals' success led them to clog the leaderboard for wins, but they only had one pitcher with a sub-3.00 ERA (Byron Harle at 2.99, and he got demoted to Indianapolis at the end of the season for some reason). 

This seems as good a segue into the World Series Preview as any!

Naively, it seems like it should be as simple as pointing to the 125 wins the Yankees had in the regular season vs. the 108 (still excellent!) the Cardinals had. The Yankees scored more runs than St. Louis and allowed fewer. The Yankees led the AL in both categories while the Cardinals were 3rd in runs against. However, I've consistently underestimated the Yanks' opponents in these previews and/or misestimated how things can go in a short series. So, let's go a bit deeper and see if I can do better (I usually can't).

The Yankees "only" won 121 games according to their Pythagorean record, but the Cardinals overachieved by 5 games, so the Yankees are still much better by that metric. New York's ERA is a full run better than the AL average, while the Cardinals are 0.2 runs better.  The Yankees scored 1.7 more runs per game than the AL average, while the Cards scored 1 run per game more than the NL average. If I did the math right (always a question) to only look at non-Yankees/Cardinals games, all those gaps get bigger by a bit, but not a lot. The Yankees actually scored more runs per game on the road than at home, and had identical stats for home/road ERA. St. Louis were league average as far as road ERA but much better at home. They also scored a bit more at home than on the road. Looking at all of this, the Yankees still look like they should be the dominant team here.  What if the NL is just a better league than the AL, so the Yankees dominated weaker competition but aren't actually better than the Cards? I'm not sure there's a way to really figure that out without interleague play. Sam Rice tore up the AL the first half of the year with the Senators, and was traded to St. Louis and did fine in the NL (but didn't tear it up). 

Moving on from there, we can look at the individuals on the teams. Heilmann had the best season by WAR (9.8), but it's hard to imagine a healthy Rogers Hornsby isn't the best player in the series. Even missing 1/3 of the season he was in 2nd place by WAR (8.5) among all the Yankees and Cardinals, and closer to 1st than to 3rd. In third by WAR is old pal Casey Stengel (7.1), with Glenn Wright about a half-win behind. After Wright is a string of Yankees, with a resurgent Peckinpaugh in 5th followed by Santop, Collins, and Cobb before reaching Sam Rice (who did most of his damage while in Washington) followed by another Yank in Pie Traynor.  

Pitching-wise, it seems like it's all Yankees. Nine pitchers for the Yankees or Cardinals had ERA+ better than 110, with three of them on the Cardinals and healthy, and five of them on the Yankees and healthy. Pennock and Mendez lead the way, with ERA+ over 200. Pennock, Fitzsimmons, and Luque top the leaderboards for Win Probability Added, though the list by pitching WAR is much more mixed. I plan to have Fitzsimmons in the pen during the World Series as the stopper/closer.

Only three players from the 1918 champions remain on the Cardinals: Hornsby, Witt, and Hoyt.  The Yankees still have 11 players from that first meeting on their roster. The 1920 Cardinals had five players in common with the 1924 version. 

OK, so. Prediction time, I guess?  I'm definitely gunshy from previous predictions, especially last year. This year's Yankees are healthy, though, and have seemed practically unstoppable. This is no pushover St. Louis team, but it's just hard for me to think that they can win it all. Yankees in 5. 

All-Star Break, Alt-1924

 

I just played out the All-Star Game, which was a fun, see-saw affair. The AL and NL traded off getting 2- and 3-run innings a few times, with the AL taking leads and the NL coming back to tie. In the end, Faber threw a clean 8th, Bob Pepper coughed up a run in the top of the 9th, and Pennock struck out the side in the bottom of the 9th (after a leadoff double) for the save. Santop was the MVP after an early home run, but it could have gone to Fournier or Rice (or Streeter, who pitched 3 good innings to start off the game for the AL).

Before getting into the main point of the post, I'll note that I've been thinking about the Newark Peppers situation that I went on about at length in the last couple of posts. I think where I'm at is that Newark c. 1925 was one of the largest cities in the USA, vibrant and growing, and affluent. Louisville was growing, sort of, but mostly by annexations. It was smaller than Newark and wasn't part of a gigantic metro area. A few decades hence the decision might be different, but I don't see a new owner, even if there were to be one, abandoning Newark for Louisville or Indianapolis. Toronto or MSP?  Maybe. But I feel like I've already talked myself out of that.

As far as the current state of affairs, the Yankees and Cardinals look like they are locks for another World Series matchup. The Yanks got off to an impossibly hot 40-10 start, and while they've cooled off very slightly they're still on a 123-win pace and have a 13-game lead over the Spiders. The Cardinals are not _quite_ that hot ("only" a 115-win pace) but have a slightly bigger lead--14 games over Philadelphia. The Yankees lead the AL in basically everything other than extra-base hits (6th), pitching strikeouts (3rd), and home runs allowed (a terrible, terrible 9th). They even lead in the defensive categories. The Cardinals aren't quite so dominant, sitting in 1st in the hitting categories but 3rd or 4th in more pitching categories than they are in 1st. Still, it's shaping up to be a battle of juggernauts. 

On an individual basis, Heilmann is gunning for Cobb's single-season batting average record. He sits at .426 right now, and is projected to fall just short of 250 hits. Heilmann is easily the AL leader in WAR. Even with Ruth's return, Heilmann might find himself winning a second straight MVP if he keeps up the pace.  Hornsby is having an even better season. While he's "only" (there's that "only" again) hitting .386, he's projected to hit 36 home runs and have jaw-dropping 13.6 WAR. That would be the single-season record if he can do it. Al Simmons is also having an amazing year for Baltimore, flirting with .400 and projected to get even more hits than Heilmann--262, which would also be an all-time record.

As for the Yankees, obviously it's hard to find any fault. Vance isn't having nearly as good a season as 1923, but it doing fine. Luque and Pennock have stepped up and Faber's been great. Charleston has mostly been struggling, but his defense keeps him playing nearly every day. Cobb and Heilmann have improved their defense to the point that I don't replace them in late innings, and they're hitting like crazy. So the third outfield spot has kind of been rotating between Charleston (mostly), Williams, and Goslin. Traynor was hurt for a while and I brought up Lazzeri, but sent him back down when Traynor came back. Toronto has a nice cushion in the IL, even though there's no standout performer in the roles that Terry, Goslin, and Arlett have filled there. The pitching has been great.  New Orleans is in 2nd place in the Southern League, and it's not crazy to think they could win the pennant. Joe Strong has been the two-way star there, with additional some strong pitching. 

So the story lines at this point for the second half look like individual milestones (Eddie Collins is only 12 hits from 3000, and whether Heilmann and Simmons (or others?) can hit .400, and whether anybody can get to 30 wins), and the Yankees and Cardinals trying to stay healthy. 

The Newark Peppers at a Crossroads, Part II

In the last post I mused about Harry Sinclair, the Newark Peppers, and the in-game choice that's looming. I thought through, and I think I established to my own satisfaction anyhow, that the most consistent headcanon has Harry Sinclair as the owner of the Alt-1924 Peppers, and that those Peppers are one of the 2-3 least successful teams in all of MLB over the past decade. Whether there's a scandal like Teapot Dome that's embroiling Sinclair in Alt-1924 is TBD, but if there were one, he'd have to sell. Whether new team owners would move the Peppers is TBD, but it doesn't seem outlandish at this point. The rest of this post will touch on where they might land, and maybe start to work on some of those TBDs.

I think there are basically six realistic cities for an Alt-1924 team to move to: Toronto, Montreal, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Louisville. An Omaha paper musing about a third major league included Columbus and Providence as possibilities, but I don't think either one is realistic here. I plan a whole post on this from the standpoint of the upcoming expansion (which maybe will be for 1928?) so I won't go into detail here, but I'll note that the expansion looms over this choice. At the moment I'm thinking the first four cities will get the expansion teams (and given the choice, would prefer expantion teams to the Peppers), leaving Indianapolis and Louisville open. 

These two cities seem pretty closely matched. Indianapolis is a little bigger and will stay bigger over the coming decades. On the other hand, they only had major league baseball sporadically in this timeline: 1878, 1884, 1887-1889, and the 1914 FL campaign. Louisville, on the other hand, had a team in the AA that jumped to the NL and was in continuous operation 1882-1899 before getting nefariously contracted, as well as an NL team 1876-1877. So the history of major league baseball in Louisville is much deeper, if also somewhat further in the past. Louisville also has a new stadium, Parkway Field, that's ready for a major league park. Indianapolis didn't build Bush Stadium (which had various other names in the interim) until 1931. Using the same sort of logic as the last post, there's no particular reason to think that Parkway field didn't go into use in 1923 (or whatever it was), and indeed it's being used by the Alt-1924 minor league Louisville Colonels.   Nor is there any reason to think that Bush Stadium was already built, though I suppose a snap decision to build it to host a major league team in 1925 certainly could be made. The AAA ABCs are drawing better than the AAA Colonels, though that's mostly going to be a function of team quality.

In terms of whether these were "major league cities" in the 20s, Louisville had an early NFL team before that league settled down, Indianapolis did not. On the other hand, Indianapolis was almost always represented in the Negro Leagues while Louisville was much more on and off. On the other other hand, that's occurring in the future (and in Alt-1924's case, a future that's different from theirs). 

I think all in all, a move to Louisville makes more sense in-game than Indianapolis. But does it make more sense than remaining in Newark? And even if it does, would the scandal that affected Sinclair have happened?  I need to think about those some more. For now, I'm going to finish this and post. There's a mid-season update to write!

The Newark Peppers at a Crossroads

 

It's July 6th in Alt-1924. About a week ago in our timeline, Harry Sinclair was indicted for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal, which had been brewing for two years. After a long and sordid process, Sinclair served a 6-month prison sentence in 1929. He was an avid sports investor, owning horse farms and an interest in the Indianapolis Hoosiers. In 1915 he purchased the Hoosiers outright and moved them to Newark, ending that investment when the Federal League folded in 1915. 

In Alt-1924, the relocation of the Hoosiers to become the Newark Peppers is one of the main points of departure (though see below) and in the world building (such as it is) was one of the things that led the AL and NL to settle with the FL and absorb 4 teams. Sinclair, who responded to the real-life end of the Peppers by trying to buy the Cardinals, would presumably enjoy his new status as a major-league team owner and would still be owner on July 6th, Alt-1924. By all accounts he enjoyed owning the real-life Peppers even as they lost money. 

So, I think the (sort-of philosophical) questions that I'm Doylistically facing are:

1. Is there a Teapot Dome scandal in Alt-1924? Is Harry Sinclair involved? Did he just get indicted? 
2. Is Harry Sinclair even the owner of the Peppers?
3. Regardless any of that, does it matter if Sinclair did get indicted and he owns the Peppers?
4. Regardless of any of that, does it make sense that the Peppers would move, which is kind of the only consequence I should be caring about or can keep track of?

To tackle #2 first--the rationale for saying no to any/all of these is that there have clearly been a lot of really important changes to make Alt-1924 different from our 1924 in one blazingly-bright important way: Black ballplayers take the field along white teammates in American League and National League games (as well as minor league ones). So, whatever happened to enable that (and I have some vague ideas but no concrete canon), and also whatever happened to enable me to pretend WWI didn't happen (or didn't involve the USA), and to wave away the Mexican Revolution and Prohibition and make Haiti more prosperous and...  Well, with whatever happened to do those things, why would we expect Harry Sinclair to even exist let alone own the Peppers let alone be indicted in the Teapot Dome Scandal let alone think that scandal existed?

And I think the answer to that, in part, is that however my canon has been evolving based on various implications I've realized, Harry Sinclair has always been part of canon. As noted in the first sentence of the second paragraph, I considered Sinclair's move of the Hoosiers to Newark to be an important (baseball) event in this timeline. I put Sinclair Oil ads on the walls in Newark's home stadium and in other stadia through the Northeast.  If I'm going to write Harry Sinclair out of the story, there's no particular reason to have real-life players in this simulation like Ty Cobb or Oscar Charleston.

Backing up to #1, it's less clear. The Teapot Dome Scandal was presumably a confluence of a bunch of things, and while Sinclair is clearly a part of canon, Warren G. Harding and his administration needn't be. This is especially true given that at least in my unwritten headcanon Lincoln served out his full second term, the Philippines are independent, etc. So, Sinclair could still be a well-regarded businessman enjoying his middle-age years by owning a (terrible) major-league baseball team. So maybe that makes sense. I'm trying to keep in mind that I want to do what's most fun for me and I'm also hoping to make things as happy for the people in this timeline as I can. :)

For #3, does it matter?  Yeah, I think given the norms and expectations of the era, he's going to have to sell the team. 

So, with the recognition that #1 is still unsettled let's tackle #4. The Peppers and their former-Fed cohort are halfway through their tenth season in the majors. Let's see how they've done so far:

• Baltimore: 669-871 .434 total, best record 81-81, best finish 6th, 3.22 million total attendance, $1.8M total balance, 6th-best current minor league system
• Buffalo: 694-844 .451 total, best record 83-79, best finish 4th, 3.99 million total attendance, $2.8M total balance, 14th-best current minor league system
• Kansas City: 687-854 .446 total, best record 91-71, best finish 3rd, 3.77 million total attendance, $2.5M total balance, 17th-best current minor league system
• Newark: 665-873 .432 total, best record 80-82, best finish 6th, 3.69 million total attendance, $2.2M total balance, 16th-best current minor league system

By these measures Buffalo looks like the most successful of the teams, though I'd actually give it to KC for their multiple finishes above .500 and 3rd place finishes--they're dragged down by some atrocious years c. 1916-1918.  Whether Newark or Baltimore is worse isn't clear. Their overall records and best records are basically a tie, and Newark has out-drawn and out-earned Baltimore. Baltimore is in much, much better shape in terms of its minor league system and looking forward, though. Having said that, their pitching situation looks dire. Going one level (or two) deeper, Baltimore's AAA team has won a PCL pennant and finished 2nd in the PCL last year, and their AA team won last year's Southern League and AA championships, and both teams lead their leagues this year. Newark's minor league teams have never finished higher than 3rd. 

Baltimore isn't going to move. Ned Hanlon is the owner (using similar logic as Sinclair, he's in canon), he lived until 1937, he had done multiple things since 1909 to keep professional baseball in Baltimore. It's tempting to compare some of the less-successful non-FL teams in this period as well and speculate about their futures (the Browns fare worse in all of the categories above than any of the ex-FL teams), but that's another post.  This is a post about the Peppers and what they might do.

"Relocate the team" is certainly a reasonable idea for what they might do.  As for where, I think that should be a second post since I think this one has gone on plenty long by now...