In the November ‘94 issue of the Journal I first told you about the birth of TCBA YESTERDAY, our sixteen team retro league that goes backward in time. The original article brought about a dozen letters to my door asking for details and suggesting a follow up piece might be welcomed. Since we are about to begin our "sophomore year" in the TCBA’s retro division I thought I would avail myself of the lull to comply with a clamoring for an update <G!>.

We started the first season with fifteen managers for the 16 teams and filled the open franchise when veteran TCBA TODAY skipper Al Keefer signed on at the league’s annual meeting in February. But the full house feeling quickly left us as another manager resigned leaving us with a new orphan to be stewarded by the league. The season ended in June with us still short a manager when I noticed the name of an old APBA friend, Joe Elinich, surface in one of Phil Medon’s columns. Joe liked what he saw of the organization and quickly signed on to begin the 1973 season at the helm of his Pittsburgh Alleghenies.

1974 Division winners were Jesse Elicker’s Gettysburg team who beat Stu McCorkindale’s Bergen Barflies in the semi finals while Dan Warren’s Norfolk Pilots were outlasting Jim Lafargue’s Norwood Naturals. The Pilots went on to sweep the Lightning in the finals to be crowned (in retrospect) the TCBA’s first ever of 22 champions. We award bonus money to the teams that sport league leaders in selected statistical categories and this season Carew - .363; Stargell - 50 HRs; Darrell Evans - 122 RBIs; Seaver - 275 Ks; and Blyleven - with 29 wins and a 1.52 ERA earning extra cash for their teams.

1974 champion Dan Warren is scheduled to throw out the first data disk at his Norfolk Pilots’ 1973 season home opener on August 1 and we will be off on another six month tear through the 162 game schedule. The plan is to have the 1973 season completed by February 1, 1996 just prior to our annual meeting in Lancaster. At that time we will hold an auction of rookies for the 1972 season and start positioning ourselves for the next campaign.

The speed with which we put TCBA YESTERDAY (TCBA-Y) together, coupled with a plan to complete two full seasons in a little more than 13 months was probably the biggest challenge we have had to face. We made more than a few errors in rushing to put together an organization and we continue to feel our way in certain areas. But on the plus side, we have met our three primary goals of; 1- having a fall back activity if the strike wasn’t (isn’t?) settled, 2- adding at least two years of history per year to our existing 21 year legacy and 3- creating a less competitive venue where rules experimentation can flourish without threatening someone’s carefully laid "five year plan."

Not surprisingly most of the interest the original article spawned was centered on the rules we were using to manage player use and to limit individual team strength in the interests of competitive balance. The minimum usage rules which were borrowed from the Southern Baseball Confederacy (SBC) of Phil Crowther and Dick Lawrence were handled flawlessly by most of the managers and created a whole new school of roster management.

The implementation of a team salary cap based on Total Baseball’s player indexes (Total Player Rating - TPR for players and Total Pitching Index - TPI for pitchers) was a bit more difficult to absorb, but quickly became a side bar discussion in any trade talks and was the cause of at least two trades having to be reworked when the salaries were factored in. To recap the rule: No team may carry a team salary in excess of $35 million. Each player’s annual salary is equal to his TPR or TPI rating for the season in question. Regardless of how "bad" a player’s TPR/TPI rating may be, his minimum salary is $500 thousand.

The salary cap does a good job of preventing a super team being assembled for any given season but we also wanted to look at balance as an extended issue. TCBA -Y commissioner Bob Braun came up with a gem of an idea he called Historical Reference Value or HRV. To approximate a team’s long term potential Bob took each player’s career TPR or TPI, subtracted the seasons that are not part of the TCBA-Y calendar (ie - nothing that post-dates 1973), and totaled them on a per team value. The teams with the highest HRV are those with the best players for the longest lengths of time. For instance my Bergen Barflies are blessed to have HOFers Hank Aaron and Harmon Killebrew on the roster. Each of these guys has stellar seasons dating back to the mid-50’s and form the basis for the league’s highest current HRV team total. Each season the HRV’s are recalculated based on current rosters and dropping values from the recently completed TCBA-Y season.

What that gives us is a method of ranking teams for the long haul and it comes into play each season when it is time to feast on the new rookies. (As an aside, our "rookies" are actually retirees who get their first "card" as we move back in time to their last season. In 1974 Willie Mays was our premier newcomer while Roberto Clemente had that distinction in the 1973 rookie draft.) Our rookie process combines a "mini-draft" with a full blown live auction. Borrowing from the NBA, we allow the four teams with the lowest HRV’s to enter a lottery to choose the first four rookies they deem worthy of their attention. After those four picks are made the rest of the rookie pool is made available to a free market auction attended by all 16 teams. The theory is that each of the weaker teams gets first crack at a Clemente type stud whom they can build around. If their selection is chosen for his long term impact, then the weight of his HRV pretty much guarantees that his new team will move up in future HRV rankings and not get another crack at the "feeble four" for a while. Anyway, that’s the theory and only time will tell if it does a good job of distributing the talent.

One innovation mentioned in my earlier article that did not work was adopting the SBC’s method for regrading APBA fielding ratings. The SBC uses a sliding scale that is linked to Total Baseball’s Fielding Runs stat. Our attempts to employ it in TCBA-Y produced results so ludicrous that I plan to ask Dick and Phil to take a harder look at its use in SBC - or show me what I’m missing <G>!

Another "wish I thought of a better way" lesson was the creation of the database that produced player reports which included the TPR/TPI values for each season. I used a CD ROM version of Total Baseball that allowed me to cut and paste one page of player data at a time into a text file. After some trial and error, I elected to copy the entire player and pitcher registers one page at a time rather than try and select only certain players. Next, I had to be nice to my brother in-law long enough for him to write a program that converted my several hundred text files into a MS Excel file. After that the ball was back in my court and I pared the files down to players who appeared between 1950 and 1973 and I had my database for the foreseeable future. It is still a monster file and I keep hoping Total Baseball will upgrade their CD ROM and allow me to select individual or groups of players for "off-line" analysis.

I thought my prayers were answered when the Bill James Encyclopedia was released on CD ROM, but that proved to be a false alarm when I discovered the BJE’s limitations as a reference tool. It seems to be a great niche product but I’m frustrated by its inability to paste data to the Windows clipboard or export to a spreadsheet or database file. For the longest time I thought I was overlooking something but a spate of complaints from on-line contacts confirmed the omission that mars this otherwise fine product.

The final development of note from TCBA-Y’s maiden voyage was the move away from conventional mail league communication to its electronic equivalent. Several of the league’s members were active on CompuServe (CIS) and we were already using CIS’ e-mail facilities for sending p-file results to league stat man Dan Warren and for exchanging instructions, results and general chatter about everything under the sun. It was no secret that CIS had been the pre-eminent on-line service for many years but not all of our members had sufficient interest to sign on until we started looking at cost versus benefit.

Most of the TCBA-Y members are also members of TCBA TODAY and as such play an average of four home and away series each month. Each away series is preceded by the mailing of a set of instructions to and culminates in getting a set of results and a disk with a p-file back from each opponent. Your opponents are also responsible for sending a disk with a p-file to Dan Warren, who maintains the league database on StatMaster. As the home team you have a similar work load - receiving four sets of instructions, playing four series, reporting results to your opponent and sending both your opponents and Dan a disk with a p-file for StatMaster updating. That means the average TCBAer sends 8 sets of instructions or results a month along with anywhere from 5-8 diskettes. (Some of the more prudent sorts send Dan one disk with multiple p-files for their various series.)

Postage is currently 32 cents for a set of instructions/results or a minimum of $2.56 per month. A diskette is rarely used just once but averages about 50 cents each after factoring its to and fro movements in the league. The cost on disks runs anywhere from $2.50 to $4.00 depending on how often one updates Dan. Add to that the actual cost of paper, envelopes, disk mailers, etc. and we determined the average minimal cost for a TCBAer to be about $6.00 per month. That is the minimal cost and doesn’t take into account all the extra communication that goes on concerning trade feelers, current standings and results for rivals, etc. When all that is weighed in the average cost to our members is closer to ten dollars per month.

Since the basic cost of doing all of the above via CIS is $9.95 a month we determined it was a wash. We didn’t even take into account all the other things CIS has to offer (Alan Berger’s excellent column in a previous AJ covers that far better than anything I’ve seen in some time) and it was still a no-brainer. The method of choice for TCBA managers to communicate has now become CIS and we continue to find new benefits every day. The only drawback we see is the vast number of solo re-players who can’t appreciate the joys of mail (e-mail?) league play <G!>. Maybe more league guys will join us on CIS so we can start our own dialogues about what works and doesn’t work in your league. I’ll be waiting with Bad Henry and the Killer at my side!

<< Previous • Next >>