Business as Unusual
at the Virtual Ball Park

by Michael Finley
Exclusive to St. Paul Pioneer Press

Sweep the rubber. Bite a dog. The boys of April are pounding leather, and antsy fans are already craning for a peek beyond the exhibition season.

Newspaper columns, crowded through the winter with news of arbitration and contracts, are suddenly about hitting the pickoff-man, new pitches, and basketball players with bats in their hands.

The baseball season is heading this way, like a split-fingered forkball with mustard and relish. My inbox will soon be full of first-baseman's mitt, my appointments calendar crowded by a stapled copy of the St. Paul Saints 1994 Schedule. And I'll be nibbling my lip wondering whether to turn up the game on WCCO while I work, or turn it off entirely. Surely, the atmosphere of striving helps my work somehow?

I sort of have it reconciled already. In my mind baseball and business are mutually reinforcing. I tell myself I can learn a lot about management by listening. What greater productivity lesson could there be than studying the efficiency of a good RBI man like Cecil Fielder? If teambuilding in an era of constant change and divided loyalty is the future of business, then what better tutor than Andy MacPhail? If total quality management means focusing every participant onto the overall organizational objectives, who is the greater teacher, W. Edwards Deming or Tony LaRussa?

I would love to read a Harvard Business School case study of the 1991 Twins. Talk about leveraging resources -- what other strategic plan ever achieved such penetration with the unlikely likes of Scott Leius, Gene Larkin, and the no-holds-barred wrestling of Kent Hrbek?

Having said all that, I confess I have been cheating this winter. Mounted on my hard drive has been a fun program, APBA Baseball for Windows (Miller Associates, $69.95, 800-654-5472). A data-based program containing a ton of stats from last summer's Major League rosters, it turns the user into a team manager. You pencil in the lineups, you choose the stadium. you decide which reliever should start tossing in the bullpen.

The game is really four modules: Baseball, League Manager, Advanced Draft and StatMaster.

It is not an action game -- you do not see little pinstriped figures sliding into home plate. But it can be very visually striking at times, as when you program it to play a night game at Wrigley Field.

The data is rich yet stale -- my disk was for the 1992 season. I am reminded afresh that that Ed Sprague of Toronto had two passed balls that year, that Chuck Knoblauch enjoyed a lusty total average score of .786, that Rob Dibble gave up only three home runs all season long. Somehow, with two World Series between me and the minutiae, the minutiae seem more -- minute.

The game can be enjoyed a number of different ways, from as many different perspectives. As owner, you can elect to play with or without the designated hitter rule. As manager you can decide whether your baserunner on third bolts for home. As team trainer, you can decide whether a player is tired and needs to sit down for a game or two. You can play against the computer, or you can sit back and watch a game passively, as a spectator. You can get rained out, ejected.

Once you succumb to this madness, there is no telling how far you may plummet. APBA is more than happy to sell you add-on data products to deepen the habit. These include disks of beguiling scouting tips compiled by sabermetrician Bill James. James' figures rank every player from best to worst according to position, by year, by batting side or pitching hand, by age, and by a host of other arcane baseball performance yardsticks.

You can also buy disks containing complete statistical information for any of almost 60 Major League seasons going back to 1908 -- presumably picking up all crazed Cubs fans wishing to reenact the last season their boys finished in clover.

By buying disks of previous years, team owners can undo errors that have left true believers through the ages in tears, or hysterics:

Whether to have sent in Dave Stapleton to replace Bill ("Butterfingers") Buckner in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series.
The umpiring irregularities of 1977 (Reggie Jackson's bizarre ball-kicking incident against the Dodgers) and 1985 (when the Royals took advantage of Don Denkinger's preposterous home-plate calls to upset the Cardinals).
Whether the 1987 Twins were indeed a team of destiny, or whether Bush, Gaetti and company could only win it between the chalklines, never in the claustrophobic confines of rotisserie ball.

Note that I have at no time suggested that Baseball for Windows recreates the beauty of baseball. Being an indoor game, it has no great hope of that. (Note gratuitous toadying to anti-Dome clique.)

While no substitute for the real thing, APBA Baseball for Windows was for me an intriguing lifeline through the dead months following the holidays. And I know for a fact that Baseball for Windows has measurably impacted my office productivity.

Just maybe not the way I might have wished.

Michael Finley writes about technology for a variety of publications. You can write to him via the Pioneer Press, or he can be reached at mfinley@mfinley.com.