On summer nights during high school and college in the 1990s I would sit and pore over baseball box scores and my encyclopedia-sized copy of “Total Baseball.” I would soak in all the history of a game born in the late 19th century. And I would often wonder, “Which team was the best?”
All answers would prove to be speculative, until 1993 when USA Today’s fondly remembered sports publication Baseball Weekly ran a season-long computer-simulated tournament to help answer the question. The tournament was a 4 round bracket of 32 teams. If memory serves correctly there was one pairing completed per week. The teams in each pairing played 162 games against each other.
The concept interested me and has stuck with me to this day over 17 years later, in much the same way Francisco Cabrera’s pinch hit single in the 1992 NLCS has embedded itself in my memory. The results would settle some arguments and raise others as the tournament progressed.
But there was always one question in my mind that in my mind tainted the simulation: why those 32 teams? USA Today had their reasoning, and it was spelled out in the first installment, but the subjectivity of the process always cast doubt to this fan as to whether there were other teams more suited to be in the tournament.
Which brings us to 2010, and my attempt to postulate a more realistic answer to the question of which team is the best. I am using Out of the Park Baseball 11 to simulate a Baseball Weekly-inspired bracketed tournament. Two teams will face off against each other in a 162 game series to allow for a more realistic sense of superiority than a 5- or 7-game series may allow. The series will be split into two segments of 81 home games, each segment using the traits of the home team’s era (for example, teams in the 1900s will have fewer home runs, in keeping with the results of that era).
I will seed all 2,634 baseball teams that played through the end of 2009.
A friend has referred to this as “epic, on a Howard Hughes scale.” The same friend also referred to it as an obsession, but I think any baseball fan would view it as a quest for truth. It will also be a wonderful opportunity to learn about the unknowns, the third string utility infielders or dedicated pinch runners that make baseball’s history so rich, deep and unique.
I’ve discussed the bracket with a few friends, and some of them have wanted to see it. Unfortunately the bracket challenges the Titanic in terms of size, so I can only show portions of it at one time. Once the tournament reaches the point at which there are only 64 or 128 teams a visual representation will become more feasible.
Next time I’ll discuss the bracket and the seeding process in more detail.