Things You Miss In Sports

You say his name, you get the video.

 

Just where he's started the game before, Game 7 of the 1955 series, before moving to 2B to replace Don Zimmer in the last of the sixth, making way for Sandy Amoros and the game-saving catch most acknowledge Gilliam could not have made.

 

I bought the Avalon Hill/Sports Illustrated USAC Auto Racing game in 1981, and my two buddies and I played the crap out of "the Race Game" nearly every weekend for five years. The board was an oval, and the two dice rolls matched the number of spaces each car could move, based on driver cards from the 1979 Indianapolis 500, I believe. It took hours to complete a race if you used all 33 cars but between nothing else to do and a six-pack of beer, it was great fun. I eventually painted all the plastic cars with Testors model paint to match the actual paint schemes for the drivers on the cards to make it easier to figure out who was whom.

I've always had it in my head to re-engineer the thing so that each dice roll would equate to one lap, but never got around to figuring out the number of spaces/number of seconds for the board game. However, I realized I could re-create a similar game on a spreadsheet, with total time elapsed determining running order and number of laps completed. In addition, I then could add realistic pit stop times (and fuel usage).

One of my Fortran programming class projects in high school was to create a sortable table based on Indianapolis 500 qualifying data from punch cards. I made it sort by date, then speed -- like the old four-day qualifying rules, including bumping. (Yes, I am that old.)

So I've spent the past couple of months playing around with the calculations. For fun, I tested it with the 1911 Indianapolis 500 field, having to take a somewhat uneducated guess at number and amount of pit stops and comparable lap speeds. Using a dice rolling app on the phone instead of hand-rolling 6,000 times, I just completed the race this afternoon

Just like in 1911, Ray Harroun was the winner, leading the final 91 laps. He finished two laps ahead of David Bruce-Brown and Ralph Mulford (switched in real life), mainly because he made two fewer stops, with Ralph DePalma in fourth (sixth in reality), four laps behind. The average speed for Harroun in the game was 74.534 mph (or six hours, 42 minutes, 29 seconds). He went 6:42.08/74.602 mph on the track, so the math was spot on, although the attrition rate was higher than it should have been.

Still, very enthused that it played that well off the bat. May try to recreate the 2018 500 next.

 

Collecting cards and trading doubles to friends for onsecyou still needed.

 

I played the 1968 season on APBA.
Tigers still won.

 

You should do the 1912 Indy 500 instead. Then, when you have a hard time finishing, you can take a dinner break in protest.

THE AMAZING TALE OF THE SLOWEST INDY FINISHER

 

And after bringing it up, goofy stories from the early 20th century when sports were far less organized. Like Ralph Mulford's Indy 500 chicken break and the totally bizarre shitshow that was the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis.
One gymnast won six medals -- three of them gold -- with a wooden leg, and that wasn't even close to the most bizarre story from those Games. Two guys almost died during the marathon, one got chased off the course by wild dogs, another got sick and took a nap mid-race, and yet another (a respected runner who won the Boston Marathon the following year) pulled a Rosie Ruiz.
And that's not even diving into the fun of "The Anthropology Games" that would make the world explode in rage today.

The 1904 Olympic Marathon May Have Been the Strangest Ever | History | Smithsonian

 

Paydirt. Loved that game.

 

College roommate and I played Strat-o-Matic (Baseball) to death in the early 80's instead of going to class (when we weren't playing hoops or drinking); those were good times.

Never forget, he had Nolan Ryan and I had Johnny Lemaster up and rolled 6 - 12 and hit grand slam, he flipped board and flipped me off and went to bed. Good Times.

 

I miss Heathcliff Slocumb.

Don't know why.

I just do.

 

Heathcliff Slocumb “while you got ‘em”

 

Kalas needs to say his name.