The Replay e-Review Fall – Winter 2002 News & Notes from Replay Dear Replay Baseball fan, With the end of the 2002 baseball season, a fascinating season on many fronts, comes our second-favorite time of the year: the baseball hot stove off-season! This issue of our Replay Review newsletter is our first digital edition, and along with exciting news on upcoming Replay products, including the new 2002 Season Replay Yearbook, we’ve compiled a few new optional innovations and playing tips inside. You’ll also find info on Replay-pertinent sites on the web (if you haven’t found them already). We’re also planning a Replay gathering here in southwestern PA next summer, so we’ve enclosed some info on that event as well. Read on… Largest-ever Replay season! 2002 Replay Season Yearbook On the Way We’re now taking orders for the upcoming 2002 Season Replay Yearbook. This year, the yearbook will contain ratings for every hitter with at least 25 AB and every pitcher with 20 IP– that’s nearly 990 player ratings, making this easily the largest Replay set ever. It will also be the first current-season Replay yearbook with our new optional ballpark cards system, so it’ll be the first look at some of the current ballparks around the big leagues. Best of all, the pre-order price is just $35 plus postage, the same as the 2001 yearbook! Like the 2001 version, this edition will have ratings printed on coated card stock, with front-of-book pages of standings and league leaders, plus lists of multi-team players and our popular Team Stats/Lineup cards. This book will be huge! The 2002 season was a year of changes in baseball, with the historic player-owner agreement that didn’t require a work-stoppage, the pitcher/hitter pendulum swinging toward pitching (with a number of good young pitchers making their mark), and the appearance in the postseason of several new faces, including those World Champion cherubs from Anaheim. Overall, a great year for baseball fans, and well worth Replaying! We expect to begin shipping the 2002 season around January 6, 2003, marking the earliest-ever date for a contemporary Replay season. Orders may be placed by phone, by mail, or online from our website using Paypal. The yearbook will be priced at only $35 plus shipping for all orders placed or postmarked by December 15, 2002. For all orders placed or postmarked after this date, the price will be $39 plus shipping. Note: For orders placed by phone or mail using a credit card, we will not charge your order until about one week before shipping. When paying by check/money order, or using Paypal, the funds will be deposited upon receipt of your order. Orders will be shipped in the order we received them, beginning around January 6, 2003, our expected date of first shipment. Our print run will be based on the amount of pre-orders received, so we suggest pre-ordering to be assured of receiving your copy. Order your 2002 yearbook today! Unique baseball set coming! Special Edition: 16 Minor League All-Time Great Teams One of our aims at Replay is to explore regions of baseball history that have been relatively uncharted in the tabletop baseball universe, as evidenced by our 1894 season yearbook and our planned Negro league season yearbook. Now, thanks to the work of minor league baseball researcher David Urban and Replay rater Brian Davis, we have another unique edition in store: a compilation of sixteen of the finest baseball teams in history that didn’t play in the AL or NL! In the first half of the twentieth-century, the baseball landscape was dramatically different than today. Many teams existed independently from the organized major leagues of the day, and some thrived as they controlled their own destiny outside the hierarchy and rules of the ML teams. Several of the stronger independent clubs fielded rosters that many considered comparable to the clubs in the NL and AL, and in fact, many players from these teams went on to enjoy long and outstanding major league careers. Here’s a list of the teams included: Contents: 1920 St. Paul Saints 1931 Houston Buffaloes 1940 Nashville Volunteers 1921 Baltimore Orioles 1933 Minneapolis Millers 1954 Indianapolis Indians Pg 2-4: Playing tips 1923 Kansas City Blues 1934 Los Angeles Angels 1970 Spokane Indians 1924 Forth Worth Panthers 1937 Columbus Redbirds 1980 Denver Bears Page 5: Hoops preview 1928 San Francisco Seals 1937 Newark Bears 1981 Albuquerque Dukes 1930 Rochester Red Wings Page 6: Replay on the Net This wonderful set is sure to provide great fun, along with a rare glimpse into a group of largely- Page 7: Odds ‘n Ends overlooked but largely-talented ballplayers and teams. Page 8: Replay Retreat ‘03 The yearbook is priced at $22 plus shipping, and includes ratings for all 16 teams on coated stock, along with team stats cards and other info in the yearbook. We expect to begin shipping around Page 9: Ordering Replay December 10, 2002– place your order today! P L A Y I N G T I P S On the following pages, you’ll find some ideas for new options to incorporate in your Replay Baseball gaming. Some of them are from fellow Replay gamers, recently contributed to the Replay Online Forum, or sent to us here at Replay headquarters. We thought it would be a good idea to compile some recent ideas and document them here in the e-Review. Feel free to use any of these in your Replay gaming, perhaps even expanding on some of them, or customizing them to suit your game-playing. Injury System Option More Realism with Column Two Injuries? Bank On It! Mike Webb, of Willingboro, NJ, suggested this alternative method of handling Column 2 injuries on the Replay Forum. In case you missed it, here’s how it works: Suppose you’re doing a full season replay. When a player is assessed ‘x’-number of games to miss from a column 2 result, record the # of games he must miss on a piece of scratch paper...but DO NOT ASSESS THEM FOR THE NEXT GAME as the rules state. Instead, keep a running tab for each player’s Games Missed, and when a player’s total reaches 7, he misses the next 7 games. Here’s an example of how to track games missed for a team replay, from Mike’s 1978 Red Sox replay: Game 1– no injuries Game 2– Fisk 2, Rice 1 Game 3– Hobson 3 Game 4– Fisk 2 Mike’s system is an alternative to having players miss games in increments Game 5– Rice 3 of one to five games, as in the standard rules. This can help recreate the Game 6– Hobson 2 real-life aspect of players being out for longer stretches with pulled Game 7– Lynn 4 hamstrings, tender ankles, and other injuries during a season. (remember, no one has missed time yet!) Game 8– Fisk 3 (Fisk’s total to date is now 7, This preserves the basic integrity of the game’s original Games Missed so he’ll miss the next 7 games) setup (although there is some chance of having several players with ‘games Game 9– Hobson 1 missed’ left in the bank at the end of the season). This method provides a Game 10– no injuries Replay manager with a little more flexibility, and even adds some strategy Game 11– Hobson 3 (Hobson’s total is now 9, as a manager tries to balance his injury bank account! so he’ll miss the next 7 games, plus have 2 games Simple Pitchers’ Rest System How to Manage a Pitching Staff...Without Really Trying! Tom Jordan, of Royal Oak, MI, has implemented a streamlined version of our optional Pitcher’s Rest chart for his 1966 replay. In Tom’s method, the rest requirements between appearances couldn’t be simpler: -Pitchers who pitch 1 2/3 to 2 1/3 innings must rest one game -Pitchers who pitch 2 2/3 to 3 1/3 innings must rest two games. -Pitchers who pitch 3 2/3 or more innings must rest three games. -Relievers may not appear in more than three consecutive games. That’s it! In Tom’s setup, the pitcher’s endurance ratings still play a role, as they’ll help dictate the length of each outing. While this setup seems well-suited to 50’s, 60’s and 70’s 4-man rotations, you may want to limit how many starters can pitch on three days rest. New Color–Coded Bunt Charts... On the next page, you’ll find a brand new set of optional Bunt Charts to try, designed to be used instead of the game’s existing charts. These Bunt Charts streamline the process of bunting in the game. This version eliminates the separate roll to determine a ‘Good Bunt’ or ‘Poor Bunt’. The new charts need just one three-dice roll, with an occasional second roll of one die, to resolve most plays. When bunting, simply roll all three dice. The blue die will determine the fielder making the play on the bunt. The red and white dice are added together, and the result is found in the column on the bunt chart corresponding to the batter’s Bunt rating. Each chart has a legend with a description of each result found on the chart. As with the original existing bunt charts, some plays will require a single- die roll to complete the action, and we’ve retained the Replay Ump to keep the fielder, the runner and the batter a factor on bunt plays.