Make-Belive Baseball
When the baseball strike began, the Sun-Times shifted to the tumult and shouting of a “make-believe season.” STATS, Inc., of Skokie is syndicating this computer-generated fantasy to papers in most big-league cities, and the Sun-Times is giving it a page a day–a big commitment.
Last Friday, Mike Maksudian cracked a three-run homer as the Cubs came from behind to beat the Mets 5-4. Maksudian’s blast came in either the seventh inning (box score) or the bottom of the ninth (game brief).
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Running the STATS season was not the Sun-Times’s original intent. The paper wanted to produce its own fantasy season and syndicate it across the country. The Sun-Times expected this season to be created by an account manager at a suburban bank. The account manager was Bruce Winge.
But Davis labored under one crucial misconception. He supposed Winge “was actually playing these games out using a statistical, objective, mechanical process. We were under the impression this was a computer-generated simulation.” On August 8, when Winge and Davis finally sat down to sign the eight-page contract, Davis discovered this was not the case.
“Like I say, it’s real simple,” Winge explained. “If Frank Thomas hit 30 home runs the first half of the year I’m pretty sure he’ll hit about 30 the second half of the year.” Some players fade notoriously in the stretch, we reminded him. “Bingo!” said Winge. He knows that. If they faded before, they’ll fade for him.
Winge doesn’t see it this way. “The point is, for seven weeks no one at the Sun-Times questioned my product as we were massaging it. Every hoop they asked me to jump through I jumped through. And then at the 11th hour they decided they wanted to sever all ties.”
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