No Dice-K in this Dice Game!

EDITOR’S NOTE: CodBall continues its partnership with WCAI/WGBH NPR for the Cape and Islands. Broadcasted on Monday morning June 8th, Dan Tritle and I previewed the 2009 Cape season, and we interviewed Tom Simon for the latest CodBall Conversation.

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Its history reaches back as far as baseball itself, and this Thursday the Cape Cod Baseball League begins its 124th season.

Over the past several years WCAI has teamed up with CodBall to bring forward voices and stories from the league. This week our CodBall Conversation is with Tom Simon, who has created a novel game based on statistics emanating from top players in the Cape League over the past decade.

For many baseball enthusiasts, the dice game known as Strat-o-matic is an enduring memory from their childhood, one that precedes today’s fantasy baseball and video games.  In Strat-o-matic your team’s players are printed on cards with batting and fielding probabilities which are then played out in a game with the role of a dice. NPR four years ago ran a memorable story on the influence of Strat-o-matic.

Mr. Simon, an award-winning baseball writer, has created his own Cape Cod version of Strat-o-matic and was interviewed last week from his law offices in Vermont.

CB: Tell us how you play the game.

Simon: You’ve got one four-sided die, which looks like a little pyramid, and two ten-sided dice that generate numbers from double-zero to ninety-nine. If you roll one or two on the four-sided die, you look at the batter’s card for the result; if you roll three or four, you look at the pitcher’s card. If you roll a low number like double-zero, especially on the batter’s card, you’ve got a pretty good chance of an extra-base hit; if you roll in the 90s, it’s probably a strikeout. There are some nuances — if you roll doubles, for example, there could be an error — but that’s the game in a nutshell. It’s pretty simple.

CB: So who are some of the players contained in the game?

Simon: The Cape League’s website has statistics for the past ten seasons, so I made what amount to all-decade teams for each of the League’s ten franchises. Some of the players are established Major League stars, like Mark Teixeira, Chase Utley, Evan Longoria, Kevin Youkilis, and Tim Lincecum; a lot are guys you’ve never heard of unless you’re a scout or a serious Cape League follower; and some, like Matt Wieters Aaron Crow, and Grant Green, are guys you may not have heard of yet, but soon will be stars. All told, I made cards for over 270 players.
CB: This winter you played a complete 44-game Cape Cod League season; who won and what surprised you about the game?

Simon: Chatham came on strong at the end to beat out Orleans in the East, and Falmouth and Wareham were first and second in the West. In the finals, Falmouth took two out of three from Chatham for the dice Arnold Mycock Championship Trophy, with pitcher Dallas Buck of Oregon State taking home the PA Sports Ticker Playoff MVP Award by pitching a complete game four-hitter in the rubber match.

As for what surprised me, this might sound a little self-serving but I was amazed by how realistic the results were. The cumulative batting average for the Cape League over the past ten seasons is around .247; my dice league batting average came to .246, and the percentages of doubles, triples, strikeouts and walks were almost dead-on. The only significant difference was that my league hit a lot more homers.

CB: How did you get interested in the Cape League?

Simon:  Every serious baseball fan knows about the Cape League, and I’d read The Last Best League by Jim Collins, which is a fantastic book that follows several members of the Chatham A’s through a Cape League summer, but what really hooked me was when we went to Wellfleet for vacation last year and I got to see a couple games in person. When my kids get a little older I’d like to do a trip where we see a game in each of the league’s ten ballparks, and I’m really looking forward to this year’s Cape League All-Star Game at Fenway.

CB: You are a baseball historian and statistician; why is the Cape League important to the game of baseball?

Simon: It brings together many of the most talented collegiate players in the country and pits them against each other, using wooden bats, in a condensed schedule that is similar to what they’ll encounter in the minor leagues. If you were a Major League team on an incredibly tight budget, you could do respectably well in the draft, I think, by scouting nothing more than the Cape League. I don’t think it’s coincidence that the major and minor league rosters of smart organizations like Oakland and the Red Sox are littered with Cape League alumni.

CB: How can listeners get a copy of the game?

Simon: I haven’t made very many of them, but I do have a few, so if your listeners really want a copy, they can contact me by commenting here on CodBall (either comment on this post or send us an email). By the way, I will donate 100% of the purchase price — not just the profits but the entire purchase price — to the CCBL.

CB: What research was needed for you to make the game perform realistically?

Simon: This may get a little “sabermetric” for many of your listeners, but first you have to total all of the league’s statistics to determine what percentage of plate appearances result in home runs, triples, doubles, singles, walks, and strikeouts. Then you do the same thing for each individual player, and the numbers that go on his card depend on how much he deviates from the league average. You could do the exact same thing for any baseball league that keeps detailed statistics — I did it for the New York-Penn League back in 1996, when the Vermont Expos won the championship, but you could do it for your son’s Little League if you wanted to.

I had the great privilege recently of spending a little time with one of the great scouts, Mel Didier. Mel is currently with the Texas Rangers but also played important roles with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Montreal Expos, Seattle Mariners, Baltimore Orioles and Arizona Diamondbacks.

“I don’t know of anyone who has been in more baseball parks throughout the world,” Fred Claire, one-time GM of the Dodgers, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

I ran into Mr. Didier recently in Yakima, Washington, where his son, former major leaguer Bob Didier, was managing the Single-A Yakima Bears of the Arizona Diamondbacks organization. Over dinner late one night after a Bears game and then the next day at lunch, I listened to Didier tell captivating story after story about players and games I remembered from television or from books.

One story is how he stood in the Dodgers locker room prior to the 1988 World Series game with the Oakland A’s. He looked over at the left-handed hitters who happened to be sitting together, and told them that if they are facing Dennis Eckersley with a 3-2 count they were guaranteed to see a back-door slider. We all know the legend that follows. The injured Kirk Gibson stepped in to pinch-hit. Sure enough, he faced Eckersley with a 3-2 count. Suddenly he backed out of the batters box and told Didier later that he could hear the old southerner’s twang in his head, “look for the back-door slider.”

In a new memoire, “Podnuh, Let Me Tell You a Story,” Didiere tells the story of his rise to prominence in baseball, which began as part-time scout. Didier signed and developed some of the top talent in the game: Andre Dawson, Larry Parish, Steve Rogers, Dave Henderson, Ralph Garr and others.

I especially enjoyed Didier’s account of his unlawful scouting mission to Cuba, where he was only able to escape with the assistance of none other than Fidel Castro.

We have some audio of Didier’s story:

Dan Tritle, WCAI Morning Host

CodBall’s Greg Shaw sat down with Dan Tritle (WCAI-FM) to discuss the end of the Cape League season on August 15th. Greg talked about how the season ended and the always-hot issue of players leaving early.

Since we announced our partnership with WCAI on December 10, 2007, we have provided a number of exclusive interviews including: John Garner (CCBL PR and Broadcast Director); John Wylde (Wareham Gatemen President), Part 2; Judy Scarafile (CCBL President), Part 2; Paul Galop (CCBL Commissioner); and Neal Conan (NPR’s Talk of the Nation).

Our latest CodBall Conversation is our 8th since announcing the partnership, and the 9th we have done with WCAI:

Ivan "Have a Hit" Partridge

The voice that projects regularly and vociferously the words known to all Cotuit Kettleer fans — “HAVE A HIT” — surely cannot belong to this sweet 80-something year-old man with a walker and a hearing aid. He is Ivan Partridge.

HAVE…A…HIT!

But, alas, here he is in front of me at the conclusion of an important late summer matchup between his beloved Ketleers and the cross-town rivals, the Hyannis Mets.  Cotuit’s defeat of Hyannis guarantees Cotuit the western division championship.  And so Mr. Have a Hit, Ivan Partidge, is happy, practically giddy.

I have waited several years to get this interview.  I’ve talked with league officials, players, authors, media stars and others, but it is Ivan that I’ve wished to interview for so long because I believe he so embodies the spirit of the Cape Cod Baseball League.

This former Episcopal clergyman and now super-fan of the Cotuit Ketleers is an energetic and knowledgeable baseball fan who enjoys his renown in ballparks both home and away.

In celebration of the Cotuit Ketleers’ bid for the CCBL championship, we offer you this CodBall Conversation with Ivan Partridge.

Benjamin Harry holds a Cape League baseball. Harry is the media archivist for the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Have you ever wondered if a copy of the 1935 World Series broadcast is available?  Long forgotten, 1935 was the year the Detroit Tigers won their first World Championship over the Chicago Cubs.

Or maybe you remember seeing vintage film footage in which a Major League pitcher was using his own little movie camera to capture the action at an old All-Star game.  Does that player’s film footage still exist?

There is no better source in the country than Benjamin Harry, media archivist for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

We met Mr. Harry during the spring when my son wrote a letter to the Hall of Fame inquiring about an obscure major league game that was played in the early 1960s.  We didn’t expect to hear back, but one day my wife received a call from Cooperstown asking about my son’s letter. A relationship developed over email and phone, and then last week we took a break from the action on the Cape to drive to Cooperstown.  We toured the museum on a Sunday and then spent Monday morning in the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, located just beyond the broadcast wing of the Hall of Fame.

Harry took us deep into the corridors of the Hall of Fame collection.  We visited the media vault and the photo vault.  And at the end, we sat down for a CodBall Conversation.

A footnote…

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is primarily interested in the Major Leagues.  We did see a display case dedicated to collegiate baseball (Oregon State was honored there).  And in the research center, we found the books you would expect — the Last Best League, Beach Chairs and Baseball Bats, Baseball on Cape Cod and a few novels that apparently mention the league (Slider and Storm Tide).  But the ABNER Library Catalog also revealed a few Cape Cod Baseball League artifacts.  We found Inside Pitch: Official Newsletter of the CCBL and two artifacts from Cotuit (Baselines and The Kettleer).  Way to go, Cotuit!  The Kettleers were the only organization we found in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I know the Cape Cod League’s new Hall of Fame opened this year, and I look forward to reviewing it as well.  Perhaps we can do a future CodBall Conversation with the head of the CCBL Hall.

Neal Conan

Conan was interviewed recently by Dan Tritle of WCAI, CodBall’s radio partner.  I was also interviewed on the broadcast, but let’s face it, an NPR broadcaster is a whole lot more interesting than me!

WCAI broadcasted the interview this morning (June 13th).  And CodBall has an extended version of the interview.

One piece of news from today’s conversation was the Commissioner’s indication that a settlement appears to be imminent with Major League Baseball.  MLB and the CCBL have been in talks over a license and revenue deal.  See my letter to Commissioner Bud Selig.

Paul was very candid and engaging regarding former players who have made it to the Big Leagues and the teams he has an eye on this season.  Tune in and subscribe to our conversations in iTunes.  The conversation with Paul Galop is one of our best.

WCAI/WGBH and CodBall jointly interviewed John Wylde on Feb. 28th from the NPR studios in Woods Hole. Eight months earlier, Wareham Gatemen President and Cape league statistician John Wylde provided one of the most captivating CodBall Conversations yet.

In our recent interview, Mr. Wylde reflected on his illness, the growth of baseball on the Cape, the season ahead and even a new strike-out statistic he is inventing. Here is a brief summary of our interview:

To fans of the Cape Cod Baseball League, the name John Wylde is not as well known as some of the players who have come through the league – names like Carlton Fisk and Nomar Garciaparra. But make no mistake about it, these players – and the league itself – have John Wylde to thank.

Wylde is the President and Treasurer of the league’s Wareham Gatemen, a position he has held since 1983. He also has served as the Cape league statistician. None of those titles do justice to describing the contributions he has made to Cape league baseball over two and half decades.

News this past fall that Wylde has inoperable cancer shook the league and its fans. Cards and flowers flooded into Beth Israel Hospital in Boston where Wylde was undergoing treatment. In an unprecedented move, the Cape League moved immediately to induct Wylde into its Hall of Fame. And the league has declared its season opener this year – June 13th – as John Wylde Day.

Listen to our interview with Mr. Wylde on these topics:

What did it mean to you that the league moved so swiftly to induct you into the Cape league’s Hall of Fame?

While you were in the hospital you heard from some of the players who came through the Cape League? Who did you hear from and what words of encouragement did they offer?

How has the league changed over the past 25 years?

What is your favorite memory – from a game or season?

Look ahead, what is your hope for the Cape league?

CodBall interviewed you last year only days before the start of the 2007 season. You and I both had high hopes for the Wareham Gatemen. In fact I believe I picked them to go all the way. What happened?

We know your favorite ballpark. What is your second favorite?

The interview was conducted by Dan Tritle of WCAI, as part of a continued partnership with CodBall to provide Cape League coverage throughout the year. It is the 2nd of our two interviews with Judy. Enjoy!