I found a new (well, not so new, its been around since 2010) baseball site today. Absolutely fascinating. The great sites
http://www.retrosheet.org/
and
http://www.baseball-reference.com/
have text play by plays going back to 1945, with pitch by pitches going back to the late 1980's (except for Dodger games, which have pitch by pitch accounts going from 1949-1964, thanks to the genius of their great statistician Allan Roth
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Allan_Roth
who kept official track long before anyone else.) Unfortunately for baseball fans, Roth left the Dodgers in 1964 for NBC, so we only have pitch by pitches for Koufax and Drysdale for one of their great years (1963). Text allows you to imagine watching the game, and with baseball-reference, you can even keep track of the pitch by pitch (retrosheet keeps pitch by pitch data in a separate file, which is designed for export into statistical programs, so it's much more difficult to follow casually).
And all that is wonderful, it really is. You can read games that you went to, or follow particular players or pennant races. But it still isn't really "watching the game."
If you want to have some fun, try Back to Baseball:
http://www.backtobaseball.com
Here, you can pick a team, and follow every game it has played since 1945, both regular and post season, or search for a particular game, pennant race, or player. What you get is just like the old timey mechanical scoreboards that they used to have so people could follow old-timey ball games before the days of radio and TV. See:
http://www.schubincafe.com/2012/09/26/watching-remote-baseball-games-before-tv/
It's just like that, only electronic. And the cool thing is when a right handed batter is up, his name is in the right handers batters box, and a left-handed batter is in the left handed batters box.
You still need retrosheet and/or baseball-reference for the context of the game (pitchers records, standings, etc.). But backtobaseball specializes in taking retrosheet data and turning it into an actual animated ball game. Of course it ain't TV, but try finding a game from 1946 on TV.
I tried it with two games today. I also have some ancillary information that enhances the experience even more.
A. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (Fireside Press, 2004). The heart of this incredible book is a census of pitchers and what they threw. Every pitcher who threw 1,000 innings or in 400 games, along with a whole lot who didn't, are in the census. Neyer and James have researched and sourced the repertoire for each of these pitchers. So you get the name, handedness, career span, and record of each of these pitchers, along with their repertoire. Great pitchers have more information.
B. I have access to full text Newspaper accounts from the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the entire span of the modern era, as well as microform access to every major newspaper in the US for the same time period. So I can look up major accounts for NY Yankees, NY Giants, Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, LA/California/Anaheim/LA Angels, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Milwaukee Braves/Brewers games easily, and have access to newspaper accounts of every game played since 1901.
So I experimented today with two games.
1. Opening Day, April 10, 1959, Chicago White Sox at Detroit Tigers. Chicago--Billy Pierce (5'10" 160lb, Lefty, 211-169, 3.27 ERA, 1945-1964--threw fastball, curve, slider [added in 1951] and change. There is also a major article on Pierce in the Neyer/James book. He was a tremendous though now almost forgotten pitcher in his era.
v
Detroit--Jim Bunning (6'3" 190lb, righty, 224-184, 3.27 ERA 1955-1971--threw slider, fastball, curve, and change. He threw sidearm and Ted Williams remembered his slider as rising not dropping.
Unfortunately, as described in the Chicago Tribune article of April 11, by Richard Dozier, the game was played in blustery, 37 degree weather. It was an extra inning game, 14 innings, and lasted over 4 hours. I won't spoil it by giving you the winner, except to say that Nelson Fox had a career day for the White Sox. It was a high scoring game, with many pitchers, so not so much fun, except for the drama of the game, as an old fashioned pitchers duel would be.
Watch the game at:
http://www.backtobaseball.com/gamesiteregularseason.php?IDindex=DET195904100
Click on "View Game."
2. An old fashioned pitchers duel, in the heat of the 1967 American League pennant race, July 13, California Angels at Chicago White Sox.
California--George Brunet (6'1" 195lb., lefty, 69-93, 3.62 ERA, 1956-1971--threw fastball, experimented with a knuckle ball in 1964, developed changeup in 1966, added a slider in 1968. So basically a power pitcher who was a relief pitcher much of his career, and then became a part time starter near the end of his career.
v.
Chicago--Gary Peters (6'2" 200lb., lefty, 124-103, 3.25 ERA 1959-1972--threw sinking fastball, slider, changeup, curve.
This was a tremendous pitcher's duel in the age of pitcher's duels and if you watch the game, notice how the two pitchers got most of their outs, in light of the kinds of pitches they threw.
Edward Prell, in the Chicago Tribune of Jul. 14, emphasizes the pop gun nature of the Sox "offense" that year, and said that Peters knew whenever he pitched, he also had to hit if the Sox were to have any chance to score.
John Hall, in the Los Angeles Times, gives a bit more insight than Prell's basic account of the game. Buck Rodgers (later a manager at Milwaukee) caught the game with a broken right thumb. Woody held pinch hit with a fractured toe for California. Bill (Moose) Skowron pinch hit for California, batting for the first time since suffering a 20 stitch cut to his hand a month earlier.
Watch the game at:
http://www.backtobaseball.com/gamesiteregularseason.php?IDindex=CHA196707130
Click on "View Game".
Backtobaseball provides the most visceral way this side of old recordings or kinescopes to follow the baseball from 1945-2012. And with the Neyer/James volume, its almost like you are an advance scout. A different kind of experience. The anti-SABR approach, if you will.
Enjoy!
I'm kicking around some ideas to use the sources I have to follow some of the greatest pitchers seasons and report on them in the blog. Koufax--1963, Gibson--1968, and perhaps the greatest single season pitching performance in the history of baseball--Carlton--1972 are among the candidates.
