Tuesday, January 29, 2013

A's Topple O's in Season Opener

Apr. 10th, 1968:
"Catfish" Hunter strikes out 7!
In a rare one game tilt to open the season, the visiting Oakland A's (recently displaced from Kansas City) out pitched and out hit the Baltimore Orioles to spoil the season opener for the home team at Memorial stadium. Catfish Hunter struck out 7 and gave up 1 earned run to earn his first win of the season. The 4-2 final score was capped off by a 3 run 9th inning by the Oakland franchise as Dick Green hit a solo homer to break a 1-1 tie and open up the floodgate to a 3 run explosion. Merv Rettenmund and Curt Blefary homered for Baltimore, while Green was the only player to go yard for Oakland. Baltimore returns to action with a 2 game series, at home, vs. Cal. Oakland travels to Washington for a double dip.

OPENING DAY

Week 1 disk due Monday Feb. 4th
Here is the week 1 disk for the 1968 season. Please begin play. Home team owners please contact your opponents to set up head to head play. You can check the MEMBERS link to see if your opponent plays HtoH. Don't forget that we are using ACTUAL game day lineups and pitching rotations. The PLAY GAMES PROTOCAL link will show you how to load your lineups for game play.

I sent the disk out early to give everyone some extended time to play their games for week 1. I know some owners are out of town until midweek, so, don't panic if you don't receive an immediate response to your game play (HtoH). Any other questions? Just ask. --The commish

Sunday, January 27, 2013

1968 SEASON RECAP! Play coming soon:
The 1968 Major League Baseball season. The Athletics played their first season in Oakland this year, following the team's relocation from Kansas City, where they played their home games the previous 13 seasons. It was also the last season of play before each of the two leagues were split into divisions for the following season.
The Year of the Pitcher In Major League Baseball, the trend throughout the 1960s was of increased pitching dominance, caused by enforcing a larger strike zone (top of armpit to bottom of knee) beginning in 1963. The delicate balance of power between offense and defense reached its greatest tilt in favor of the pitcher by 1968. During what later became known as "the year of the pitcher",[1] Bob Gibson set a modern earned run average record of 1.12 and a World Series record of 17 strikeouts in Game 1, while Series opponent Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers won 31 regular season games, the only player to reach the 30 win milestone since Dizzy Dean in 1934. Mickey Lolich won three complete games in the World Series, the last player as of 2010 to do so. Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians had the American League's lowest ERA at 1.60 and allowed a batting average of only .168, a major league record. In the American League and National League combined, 339 shutouts were recorded in 1,619 regular-season games.[2][3] The St. Louis Cardinals alone pitched 30 shutouts, the most in the Majors. The 472 runs allowed by the Cardinals led the MLB that year and remains the lowest total ever recorded by any Major League team in a 162-game season. Hitting was anemic. Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox had the lowest batting average of any league champion when his .301 was good enough for the American League batting title. The AL's collective slugging average of .340 remains the lowest since 1915 (when the game was still in the so-called dead-ball era), while the collective batting average of .231 is the all-time lowest.[4] The Chicago White Sox scored only 463 runs during the regular season and were shut out a league-high 23 times. Both those totals are still all-time records in the era of the 162-game season. After the season, the Rules Committee, seeking to restore balance, restored the pre-1963 strike zone and lowered the height of the pitching mound from 15 to 10 inches. Four expansion teams joined the majors. 1969 batting averages zoomed back to their historical averages and never again would pitching have as large a statistical average over batting in the major leagues.