"Unrecognized" 1930 Negro National League for SOM Baseball

Many thanks to the team:  Matt Langer, Charles Tripp, Bruce Bundy, Len Durrant, Ken Wenger, and Gary Simonds. Other data courtesy of Daniel Levine, Eric Enders, The Society for Baseball Research, John B. Holway, Dick Clark, Larry Lester, James A. Riley, and Ray Doswell, curator of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Kansas City, Missouri. Original Publication Date: December 11, 2003.

Use of Roster files is copyrighted by user agreement through The Strat-O-Matic Game Company.  

The data copyright is owned by the Society for Baseball Research. Any attempt to reproduce or license this work commercially without the written consent of the Strat-O-Matic Game Company, SABR, and the Negro Leagues Player's Association is prohibited. Special Thank You to Steve Barkan and Hal Richman of the Strat-O-Matic Game Company.  For Charles Tripp, and the good people of St. Louis.    

The 1930 Negro National League

"We were not disorganized- just unrecognized."  
-Buck Leonard

Here is the Dropbox link to the 1930 NeNL file set authorized as the 2008 season:

Dropbox link to 1930 Negro National League as a 2008 season fileset

Link to all Strat-O-Matic Baseball Content

"You Gotta Have Wah" 1976 Japan Central League for SOM Baseball

“The Typhoon Blew in from the South"
1976 Japanese Central League, a classic nihon pennant race that came down to the final weekend, with the Hanshin Tigers rapping homeruns at a record pace. This season was immortalized in Robert Whiting's "You Gotta Have Wa".

Here is the Dropbox link, set up for authorization from the 1950 Season:

Dropbox Link to 1976 Japan Central League as 1950 season
Dropbox link to 1976 Japan Central League as 2008 season

Link to all Strat-O-Matic Baseball Content

Season Notes:

Dropbox Link to Season Notes

Original Publication Date: June 1, 2003.

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Thank you for your time, and enjoy the content.  Fred Bobberts 4/21/2016

"Breaking the Game Wide Open" 1974 World Football League for SOM Football

"Breaking the Game Wide Open"

The SOM Football team card postings for the 1974 season are complete, along with replay aids, rules, rosters, stats, and additional players. After the jump...

Dropbox Link to the 1974 World Football League for SOM Football

Dropbox Link to pdf-1974 WFL Season in Review, Complete
Dropbox Link to 1974 WFL rosters and stats
Dropbox Link to 1974 WFL rule changes and playing tips, including the Action Point
Dropbox Link to 1974 WFL cards - PDFs

Dropbox Link to 1974 WFL rosters and stats - PDF

PFRA Article on '74 Florida Blazers

PFRA Article on WFL Alumni

OTHER SOM PRO FOOTBALL POSTS:

SOM PRO FOOTBALL LINKS

The League In Review

The WFL was born of a form of 'irrational exuberance' – not in stocks or commodities, but an overestimation of the value of sports franchises in the early seventies. The hand to mouth existence of professional franchises in the forties and fifties changed in the sixties, when mass advertisers caught on to the fact that sports marketing could produce immense profits. But the connection between advertising and sports had always existed in some fashion, more money and television exposure just made this relationship easier for teams to exploit.  

But the early seventies added another dimension. This was the era of the “Economic Impact Study”, and municipal planners of the period sincerely believed a sports franchise was essential to anchor urban development. (This belief is still alive in some places now, although it is less in vogue after Al Davis’ excesses with Oakland and Los Angeles in the early eighties.) Suddenly every major population center in America was building multi-purpose stadiums to house sports franchises, and suburban areas battled the cities with their proposals. Partly underwritten now by the unsuspecting taxpayer, the value of a sports franchise increased immeasurably, and this combination of high-level hucksterism and corporate subsidy brought hopeful new entrants, maverick investors who wanted to crash the Monopoly board.  

Of all the movers and shakers, none had the charisma or success of Gary Davidson, founder of the WHA, ABA, and the World Football League. Davidson’s formula was simple- he would target the leagues where salaries were miserly enough to provide low barriers to entry, seek committed investors in the communities where the new league would form, develop a market presence, and then eventually force a merger with the existing league. The AFL had just merged with the NFL in 1970, and the WHL and WHA would also turn the trick, in the process breaking the existing ownership’s hold on their sports while making some people a lot of money.  

Davidson wanted to do it again. While he had made money on the other ventures, in the WFL he and the league partners would sell the franchises and broker the arrangements themselves, potentially netting themselves a huge chunk of the pie. And Davidson’s vision was compelling to the investors of the time because of his track record. He had done this before, and he already had business models and estimates that could theoretically predict the cost of the break-even process. Events would show he had badly underestimated how much it cost to run a solid professional football franchise.  

The Oil Shock recession may have led in part to his undoing – there were not as many attractive investors left after the gyrations of the first oil crisis and the subsequent waves of inflation, and Davidson had to cut corners in some markets to find people who could raise a stake. One of his biggest failures was in the Detroit area, where its team was underwritten by no less than thirty one limited partners, none of whom could agree upon where to spend money. This instability spread to the team’s on-field performances, as the long season wore on, and as the owners ran out of money, they missed paydays and some players started to grumble. 

It goes without saying that the best and most stable franchises were able to play through these distractions, and in Birmingham, Hawaii, and Memphis the teams were well supported and they had great success. Florida actually used the adversity to build enough esprit de corps to earn a spot in the championship game. But elsewhere, the product was spotty. The WFL was portrayed as a glorified minor league by the sportswriters writers of the time and the stadiums were old and decrepit, limiting attendance. And the pressure to portray the league as a successful startup was very high, and in Philadelphia the owners overstated the early season’s paid attendance and the word eventually got out.

After this revelation everything the WFL did was in question and finding new investors to bail out the old bankrupt ownership teams became increasingly difficult. In Detroit and Jacksonville, the franchises folded, and games were cancelled in Chicago and Philadelphia. The playoff schedule became a political battle within the league hierarchy, with the result that Charlotte, at 10-10 did not make the playoffs while the Bell, at 9-11 did. 

The League forced Davidson’s resignation and reorganized under a plan authored by Hawaiians owner Chris Hemmeter, but after the ’74 fiasco of unpaid players, holdouts, and folded franchises in the recessionary seventies the enthusiasm over the WFL idea began to wane. It became obvious that it would take more financial losses than most owners could sustain in order to eventually break even, and the league folded midway through 1975.  

Data Courtesy of The World Football League Encyclopedia, Tod Maher and Mark Speck, St. Johann Press, Haworth NJ, 2006.  

Another recommended source for information about the World Football League is the site at http://www.worldfootballleague.org/ run by Richie Franklin, Jim Cusano, and Greg Allred.  

I compiled the League Stats from the sources above, with the proviso that some items in error needed to be cleaned up (i.e., Chicago is often listed as allowing 620 points, but that is a typo, it should be 602, for SOM purposes it would be 600 points in 19 games, since I would not use their forfeit in my calculations.) Since a third of the teams played 14 or 19 games instead of 20, in the below all pertinent sortings of records use the per game figures, handy for quick comparisons. 

Original Publication Date: December 12, 2009, et. seq.

Download FAQ

How to download...

Just click the link...the links are set to download the files from my Dropbox.  I can say old versions of Internet Explorer may not work, but Firefox does.  You might have to play with the browser settings, but this will download files to your My Downloads folder on your computer.  Pad users with Dropbox will get the files delivered to their viewer.

I use the free viewer iZip to view archives on my iPads.

Fred

1950 NFL Championship Game For SOM Football

"No Mistake by the Lake"

Links to two of the last teams I made for SOM football, numbers 211 and 212:

1950 Cleveland Browns in PDF format SOM Football

1950 Los Angeles Rams in PDF format SOM Football

OTHER SOM PRO FOOTBALL POSTS:

SOM PRO FOOTBALL LINKS

"Bridesmaids" 1967 Hankyu Braves for PC SOM Baseball

"Always the Bridesmaid..."

This is the link to the SOM Baseball version of the 1967 Japan League Pacific Champs, the Hankyu Braves.  Hankyu of course lost the Japan Series to the great V9 Giants, and they had five such losses to the Kyojin until finally obtaining redemption in the mode-Seventies. The franchise is now represented by the modern day Orix Buffaloes.

This version operates IIRC with the 1950 season.  I also have a version authorized to a modern season; I will look to make this available.

Dropbox Link to 1967 Hankyu Braves, SOM Baseball

Link to all Strat-O-Matic Baseball Content