Defense Matters

I'm cruising toward the end of Season 6 of my nineteenth-century Strat-O-Matic baseball league, and the playoff picture is starting to shape up. The second-year Resolutes have clinched a spot in the Creighton Cup series, and most likely will finish in first place. The Blue Legs and Haymakers are vying for the second spot in the Series, with the Legs maintaining a 1.5-game edge entering tonight's tilt against the cellar-dwelling Canaries. Needing every win to hold the Haymakers at bay, the Legs had a 4-0 advantage entering the eighth. Leading off for the Canaries was infielder George Wright, who hit a sharp liner into right. I made the die roll for Sam Crawford and he couldn't come up with the catch. Wright ended up on second, and a few batters later the Canaries had stormed back to tie the game.  

The Blue Legs were falling apart, but before any further damage occurred, I realized I had made a mistake. The Legs' right fielder isn't Crawford, but Wee Willie Keeler. Crawford is their center fielder. Keeler's defensive rating is higher than Crawford's, and the same d20 roll that resulted in Crawford's error would be a catch for Keeler. There's a big difference between having the bases empty with one out and having a man on second with no outs, so I felt the fairest thing to do would be to rewind the clock, so to speak, to the point where that liner was scorching toward right field. This time, Keeler made the catch easily and the Canaries failed to score. They went down in order in the ninth, as well, giving Legs starter Old Hoss Radbourn a complete-game shutout. One catch certainly made the difference in that game!