W E S T   D I V I S I O N

E A S T   D I V I S I O N

   St. Louis Maroons
    Tim Smith
    83-71, .539  --  1st

   Brooklyn Superbas
    Glen Reed
    100-54, .649  --  1st

Another Late Surge Wins the West
by Timothy J. Smith
The St. Louis Maroons used another September surge to overtake Louisville and win the first West Division title.  Louisville led by 5.5 games after the first half, as the Maroons stumbled to 36-38 start.  But the offense picked up in the second half, thanks to the addition of All-Star Gene Woodling and the emergence of 'Stan the Man' from a season-long slump.
   Musial was the object of major concern for most of the season.  The powerhouse of the St. Louis lineup had just 11 HR and 45 RBI through July 31, and a .258 average.  But he slowly returned to form in August and finished strong, batting .394-5-19 in September, leading the Maroons to a 17-10 finish.  The teams top two hitters were both new additions.  Woodling led the team with a .319 average and 93 RBIs (split roughly evenly between St. Louis and his former team Brooklyn), and 36-year old outfielder Willard Marshall, a Reentry pick, hit .307-16-81 with a career high .844 OPS.  Dick Kokos (.274-27-78) continued to develop into a heart-of-the-order hitter, and second baseman Hector Lopez (.275-20-66)won an All-Star nomination.
   The key figure in the pennant surge was rookie pitcher Jack Sanford (8-1, 3.09), who debuted on July 20 and won all eight games he started, including five in September and two shutouts in the final two weeks.  Ace Billy Pierce (19-9, 2.79) narrowly missed his fourth 20-win season, Spec Shea (16-13, 3.35) won a career high 16 games, and 36-year-old Larry Jansen won 16 games as the #3 starter.  The club lacked a regular closer, with Roy Face, Ray Moore, Jim Brosnan filling the role, in turn.  Brosnan had eight saves in September.
   The Maroons lost the inaugural UL World Series in five games to Brooklyn, perpetuating the club's reputation as the league's perennial bridesmaid.  The Maroons have finished second in five of the last six seasons.  "Given our slow start, we were happy to win the division and get a shot at the title," GM Timothy J. Smith said.  "This was not our best team, but we added some new players and we are looking forward to making another run at it in 1958."

Clearing Hurdles with New Stars
by Glen Reed
Anyone who's ever played a baseball simulation game with me
before (and that's about half the league) knows that my only goal is to
make it to the postseason; what happens after that is too hard to predict
or control for in a short series.  And anyone who's played with me in this
league knows that my goal every season is to finish ahead of the Mons, the
unquestioned UL dynasty team.  So by those standards, 1957 has been a great
success because we were able to clear those big hurdles despite breaking up
the core of the team that carried us to the flag just two years ago.  Poor
salary structure under the league's prevailing financial rules meant that
we had to ship out long-time Superba greats Gil Hodges (who had his 2nd best year ever after relocating to the Windy City) and Gene Woodling (our
prototype ballplayer -- great D, average, and OBP).  The totality of those moves lopped upwards of $20MM off the top line, and thrust guys like Frank Thomas and Sandy Amoros into starring roles.  And certainly the maturation of Granny Hamner and Gene Conley --  players for whom stardom had been long anticipated, but much delayed -- helped offset the loss of old-time, big-name 'Bas.
   Speaking of Gene Woodling, we'll get to see him again up close and personal in the World Series. that's a fate we'd hoped to avoid, but somehow knew to be inevitable.  While pundits look at our record for '57 and give us a big edge over Woodling's Maroons, our assessment is a little different.  St.
Louis was our nemesis all year, winning two-thirds of our head-to-head
matchups.  No team, not even Washington, gave us so hard a time.  And it's
not hard to see why -- befitting our cavernous stadium, our club is devoid of
power and built on the hit-and-run concept.  For that strategy to work, we
have to put together two and even three hits an inning to score a single
run; meanwhile, St. Louis is the hardest team in the league to hit against.  What's more, the Midwesterners come at you almost exclusively from the left
side of the plate; meanwhile, our staff leans heavily to the right.  Southpaw reliever Chet Nichols was brought in to address that very issue, but has so far been underwhelming.  Finally, our edge over the rest of the league rests heavily on the quantity and quality of our hurlers.  But St. Louis is right there with us; not even Washington has as many pitchers of quality.  Add it all up, and we'll be gald to simply stretch the series as long as possible, hoping to get a break here or there to turn the tide in our favor, while also boosting the bottom line by getting paying customers through the turnstiles.
  

  Louisville Colonels
    Mark Allen
    79-75, .513  4  2nd

   Washington Monuments
     Jay Kaplan
    95-59, .617  5  2nd

Kaplan's Swan Song
by Timothy J. Smith
Washington stormed out of the gate with the best first half in league history (52-20), and carried a 6.5 game lead over Brooklyn into the Midsummer Break.  But five straight losses to the Superbas in early July signaled a second half collapse.  The Mons were 43-39 after July 1, while Brooklyn surged to the first East Division title with a 52-25 finish.
   The Monuments' 95-59 record was second best in the league, and extended GM Jay Kaplan's streak of 90+ win seasons to six years.  However, the second half slump indicates that the dynasty may be in its dying days.
   The club's 3.88 ERA was the highest since 1951, as the rotation began to show the effects of age and wear-and-tear.  Carl Erskine, Cy Young runner-up last year, had another dominant season, anchoring the staff with a 27-6 record and 3.08 ERA.  Oisk led the league in wins and was third in earned run average.  The righthander has won 73 games in the last three seasons, a UL record.  
   Stu Miller (20-11, 3.53) bounced back from his back problems to pitch his first full season since 1954, though he wasn't nearly as dominant as he was before the ruptured disk.  Dave Koslo began to show his 37 years with a 3.91 ERA, his highest since 1953, but still managed an 18-10 record.  Warren Hacker (12-17, 4.90) struggled mightily, falling far short of his phenomenal 1956, in which he went 23-9.  Ted Abernathy posted 40 saves for the second year running.
   Offensively, the Mons posted their lowest run total in four years.  After his best season since returning from Korea last year, Duke Snider had the worst year of his career in 1957, batting an anemic .212 with a .389 slugging percentage and just 58 RBIs.  Hank Thompson's power numbers were down as well.  The 30-year-old second baseman hit just six home runs in 101 games, and was demoted to a platoon role in the second half.
   But there were some solid performances.  Center fielder Willie Mays posted his third straight season with at least 30 home runs, 90 RBI, and 100 runs, and joined Hank Aaron in the 30/30 club on Sept. 19.  The "Say Hey Kid', just 25, ranked third in slugging and OPS and won his fourth Gold Glove (1951, 1953, 1955, and 1957... that's odd).  "Big Klu" Ted Kluszewski took over first base full time, and responded by posting a .285 average with 17 HR and 84 RBI.  Catcher Joe Ginsberg (.354-10-57) figured in the batting chase momentarily, before finishing slightly below the eligibility threshold.  Outfielder Wally Westlake, 35, drove in 64 runs and hit .318, and shortstop Dick Groat won his second Gold Glove, while driving in 52 runs.
   Jay Kaplan, one of the League's founding owners, stepped down as Monuments GM after the season.  Kaplan built a dynasty in Washington on par with the greatest in baseball history, winning three straight championships in 1952-54 and a fourth in 1956, and leading his club to six straight seasons with at least 90 wins.  His four championships and .611 winning percentage (659-419) are unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon.
 

   Chicago Colts
    Lance Mueller
    71-83, .461  12  3rd(t)

   Detroit Sound
    Sean Holloway
    71-83, .474  27  3rd

Rumblin' . . .  Bumblin’ . . .  Grumblin’
by Lance Mueller
What’s there to say…horrible start, nice midseason turnaround, collapse at the end…sound familiar?  The Colts continual, habitual, chronic (you get the picture) tendency of looking like contenders on paper and performing like pretenders on the field has left GM Lance Mueller wondering what to do.  The acquisition of Gil Hodges seemed like a move that would put the Colts over the top, instead they finished worse than before they acquired him.  There were highlights: Gus Zernial’s home run record, Hodges and Zernial’s three-dinger games, another great year from Ernie Banks, a solid first outing from rookie Jim Landis, and the emergence of veteran Bobby Adams. But the lowlights far outweighed the positives: mediocre pitching from a roster full of good arms, a 3-14 start, an overblown budget with underachieving results, dropping fan interest despite a new train stop, $18 million in lost revenues, and of course Whitey broke…again.
   The ’57 season was filled with few surprises and many minor disappointments but the lasting feeling was one of pent up frustration reaching a boiling point. The Colts have too much talent too be a .500 or below team.  There are many reasons why this team continues to put up mediocre results but one key factor is Wrigley Field. The “Friendly Confines” are anything but friendly to pitchers…and the baseballs that are so unceremoniously deposited on Sheffield and Waveland Avenues.  Wrigley is a hitter’s paradise and the Colts could field a bullpen of starters who throw 100% groundballs and still give up more dingers than just about any other staff.  All of this has led the Colts front office to start talks with league officials about the rules and ramifications of “relocating” a team within the same city.  Comiskey Park ’s more pitcher friendly makeup and it’s 50,000+ seating capacity make it an attractive alternative to Wrigley.  Alas, a move is still very much up in the air, the only thing for certain is the Colts will put ’57 behind them and focus on having a strong draft in an effort to compete for the WestDivision title…where the home games of that battle will occur is still a question waiting for an answer.

A Giant Sucking Sound No More . . .
by Sean Holloway
When Sean Holloway took over the GM duties back in September 1955, no one, not even Holloway himself had an idea of how bad things were in Detroit .  The Sound, under former owner Brad McNeely, made little to no sound at all – except for the footsteps of fans stampeding for the exits or the cacophony of groans, jeers and invectives of the several hundred masochistic fans that remained.
   After 1954, few in Detroit thought it could get worse, but the combination of overpaid fat boys on the field and McNeely’s blunderous moves in the front office resulted in Detroit not only finishing dead last two years in a row, but also having a shaky balance sheet and financial difficulties to boot.  Then, when word was leaked that ESPN notified McNeely about including the 1955 Sound (55-99) in its “Worst Ever” list, fan outrage in the Motor City hit an historic high.  McNeely panicked after discovering the City’s motto ( Detroit – where the weak are killed and eaten) and left town in a hurry.  When angry fans reached the Sound’s front office, they found that McNeely made no attempt to shred damning evidence against him (such as Clem Labine’s and Ferris Fain’s contracts, or for that matter, Labine and Fain themselves), lending further credence to the theory that the team was nothing but a tax write-off.
   Native Detroiter Holloway stepped in gamely, but even he was unprepared for the mess known as the Sound.  “I’ve unfortunately often had to watch the Lions attempt to play football, lived through the ‘Dead Wings’ of the late 1970s-early 80s, and I went to Michigan State.  The magnitude of the sucking coming from the Sound, though, stunned even me.  And it wasn’t just the poor play that ticked Holloway off: “when you have pseudo-street punk Eminem hanging out with his ‘crew’ in the dugout, good things won’t happen.  It soon became clear to me that things around the clubhouse had to change drastically.”
   And change they did.  High-priced under-performing veterans grumbled as Holloway instituted mandatory practices and work-out regimes, as well as requiring them to actually sit through games to the end, instead of leaving early to get a head start on exiting ballpark traffic.  The final straw was when the GM ordered that the team would travel together and stay in the same hotels on the road.  This infuriated most of the vets, especially SP Vic Raschi, who stated “I did my time and paid my dues……as a veteran I deserve a $3.2 million salary per year, as well as all the perks that go along with it”.  Holloway, upon hearing Raschi’s scathing condemnation of the new rules, retorted “he certainly did do his time – on the bench and in the minors” before breaking into his best vacuum cleaner-imitation of a sucking sound and following Raschi around the locker room – a clear signal that Raschi was most likely done in Detroit.
   Soon after that, the slash-and-burn started, with Robin Roberts and Raschi heading to Chicago and Bob Rush traded for a draft pick.  Other pathetic vets woke up to find their contracts weren’t renewed, and Holloway instituted a number of changes aimed at injecting new life into the floundering franchise, be it through rookies or hard-charging veterans.  By 1957, catcher Toby Atwell found himself batting second and became a .300 hitter and a Gold Glove winner, while Dusty Rhodes saw new life in the outfield on the way to batting .330.  The infield was revamped with the additions of 2B Bobby Richardson, SS Tony Kubek (1957 Gold Glove winner), and 3B Frank Malzone.  Joe Cunningham moved from his familiar position at 1B to RF and finished with a .315 average.  Pedro Ramos and Johnny Podres became the anchors of the starting rotation, while Sandy Koufax, Bob Grim, and Gordon Jones were the new go-to guys in the pen.  With Gene Cimoli, Jim Greengrass, Joey Jay, and Lindy McDaniel in the minors and some luck with rookie picks in next year’s draft, DET is looking to further improve.
   “We ain’t done anything to earn the respect of the league yet” chimed Holloway at a recent press conference immediately after the season ended with the Sound finishing 73-81 and third in the East Division – a vast improvement over the 1955 debacle.  “We have, though, come a long way, and I’m fairly sanguine about the future.  No one, though, should expect this team to become the new Washington Monuments or Brooklyn Superbas of UL.  We’ll work on the basics and always play hard, and, with a little luck, we may be in position to compete with the elite teams of the league within a few years.”
   After this brief synopsis of his two-year tenure, Holloway then dropped a bombshell on the gathered reporters.  The Sound will be no more……at least not in name.  In an effort to distance the organization from its horrendous past, the team will become the Detroit Griffins starting next season.  “It was clear to me that something had to be done” stated Holloway.  “If you looked up the word ‘suck’ in the dictionary, it had a picture of the Sound’s logo after the definition.  This will just not do.  Pride is the key to playing well.  And besides, what the hell kind of a name is the ‘Sound’ anyway?  Was this guy on dope or what?”
   Thus, in 1958, Detroit will start the season with many new faces, a new attitude, a new name/logo, and even maybe a bit of hopefulness.  Walking back to his slammin’ 1999 Chevy Prism LSI in the Griffins’ parking lot, Holloway was asked if this new logo will have immediate and tangible effects for Detroit .  “No” he responded, “but it’s a start.”
  

   San Francisco Spiders
     John Nellis
    71-83, .461  12  3rd(t)

   Boston Beacons
    Charlie Qualls
    66-88, .429  34  4th(t)

Player of the Year
Roger Maris
(.288-23-89, .889 OPS)

More Pessimism
by John Nellis
The past season was once again a disappointment for S.F. . The Pitching staff really needs an overhaul, and the free agents that were brought in have really been a bust. The team has never recovered from the poor initial expansion draft.  The offense is starting to come along with OF Rocky Colavito leading the way. The team still needs another bat or two to generate more offense.  The fans once again showed their displeasure and we had another down year in attendance and popularity. We will have to work hard to bring them back, unfortunately we have a long, long, way to go.

Not So Bad
by Timothy J. Smith
The Spiders were actually in the West Division race for much of the year, and were only five games out as late as July 31.  However, they fell out of the race with a 26-32 finish while St. Louis and Louisville pulled ahead of the pack.  The difference was clearly pitching.  The Spiders just don't have the top-of-the-rotation quality to compete.  Hal Brown (12-16, 4.98), Bobby Shantz (13-11, 4.30), and Tom Sturdivant (12-13, 4.60) were workhorses, compiling over 700 innings between them, but all three are bottom of the rotation guys, and alas, the bright star Sturdivant was not renewed.
   The club ranked second in batting, and third in home runs and runs scored.  RF Rocky Colavito built on his strong rookie year, batting .261-36-107 to lead the club in home runs, RBIs, and slugging.  CF Jim Lemon also had a breakout year (.287-16-93) and Vic Wertz (.261-20-78) hit 20 jacks for the seventh straight season.  Wes Covington (.290-13-41 in 260 PA) and Sam Mele (.310-10-32 in 304 PA) were productive part-time players, and 2B Red Schoendienst reversed a long-term decline to post career highs in batting (.327) and OBP (.364) and his highest OPS (.821) since 1952.

The Best of the Worst
by Charlie Qualls
Yes, another downer season, but a far cry from 1956’s 101 loss debacle.  Although having a strangle hold on 8th place going into the last week, we found our way back into the wank tank, ending in a three-feller-in-the-cellar tie with L.A. and New York.  But thanks to a winning record against the other two lasties, we find ourselves… in 8th place.  And unlike like last season, there were