1911 Season Introduction

The 1911 season is the oldest season offered by Strat-O-Matic for play by cards and dice. In fact, it is the only dead-ball season available as the next oldest created is the 1920 season, which marks the start of the live-ball era.

There are many seasons from the first two decades of the 20th century that also provide compelling choices:

• 1903: The first World Series marks the start of 50 years of stability in the MLB, as every team will remain in the same city until 1953
• 1904: One of only two seasons without a World Series (the other being 1994) as the New York Giants, who won 106 games with six future Hall of Famers on their roster, declare themselves world champions and refuse to play the AL pennant winner
• 1906: The Cubs win 116 games, scoring nearly double the amount of runs as they gave up, but lose the first cross-town World Series to the White Sox
• 1908: Both leagues are decided on the final day as three teams finish within one game of the eventual pennant winners (the Cubs will go on to win their final World Series for another 108 years)
• 1914: The "Miracle Braves" bounce back from last place on July 4th to win the National League by 10.5 games, then sweep the Athletics in the World Series, who had won three of the previous four Series. A third major league, the Federal League, also starts up and will also operate during the 1915 season
• 1918: The Red Sox win their last World Series for another 86 years by defeating the Cubs in a war-shortened season, led all season by a young double duty pitcher-hitter named Babe Ruth
• 1919: Ruth shatters the dead-ball era as he transitions to play more in the outfield, but the Red Sox struggle and he will be sold at season's end to the Yankees. The World Series features the Reds and White Sox, but fans are robbed of a legitimate champion as the "Black Sox" throw the playoffs intentionally

On the surface, I did not see anything as compelling as these seasons as to why 1911 was chosen in particular as the first, and only, dead-ball season. The Philadelphia Athletics would win the World Series in real life after dominating the American League to win by 13.5 games. However, they had already won the title the year before and would win again in 1913, so this season is hardly unique for their early dynasty. The team they defeated, the New York Giants, won the National League by 7.5 games, not extremely close but a nail-biter compared to the AL race. They had already won the World Series in 1905 and would go on to win the pennant but lose to the AL champion in 1912 and 1913, as well.

Digging deeper, though, reveals a great cross-section of dead-ball era players at various points in their careers:

• Ty Cobb, arguably the greatest player of the era, has possibly the best season of his career. The Georgia Peach bats .419, the second best average in AL history behind Nap Lajoie's .426 in 1901, and leads the majors in runs, hits, doubles, RBIs, stolen bases, slugging percentage, OPS, and total bases. His Detroit Tigers will need all of this to remain competitive as the only team that can even slightly threaten the Athletics.
• Speaking of Lajoie, he is still playing at an elite level as the player-manager for the Cleveland Naps, the only such team in the majors named in one man's honor. Lajoie, who split the Chalmers Award for best batting average in baseball with Cobb following some controversy the year before, would bat .365 the year he turned 37. Injuries would limit him to just 90 games, otherwise Cleveland may have been more competitive than their third place finish.
• The "$100,000 Infield" gets its start in Philadelphia. Hall of Famers Eddie Collins and Frank "Home Run" Baker, along with Jack Barry, are joined by Stuffy McInnis and will remain the every-day starters through 1914. While this would not be a very impressive nickname in 2020, over a century ago it rang as the highest praise.
• Honus Wagner wins the last of his eight National League batting titles at the age of 37. Wagner will continue to play at an elite level for a couple of years but will never lead the NL in any major category again.
• Cy Young pitches his final season in the majors. Even after turning 44 in March, Young will make 18 starts for both the Naps and the Boston Rustlers before calling it quits to get awards named after him a few decades later. Young is one of only two players born in the 1860s, the other being an uncarded player who appeared in just one game, still active in 1911.
• The Rookie of the Year Award would not officially be rewarded for another two world wars, but voters would've had a tough time choosing if they could only just choose one. "Shoeless" Joe Jackson hits .408 in his first full season, the highest total for a runner-up in the 20th century. That still may not have been enough as Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander won a majors high 28 games, including an also high of seven shutouts, in his very first season. Alexander would yet still improve on this and become the dominant pitcher in the National League by mid-decade, akin to Walter Johnson in the American League.

Though I would personally prefer to run a replay of the 1914 season, since I am a Braves fan after all, I love the aspect of physical cards and dice baseball that Strat-O-Matic offers and will certainly settle to run a replay of 1911. The game will certainly be different than I am used to with more modern card sets. With pitchers expected to go all nine innings on their own, plenty of errors on defense, hit and runs and stolen base attempts used liberally, and no home runs, the game of baseball for any pre-1920 season is almost foreign.

I look to forward to starting this project soon by playing all 1,232 games, followed by the best-of-seven World Series for the two pennant winners, over the coming years. This will be a long undertaking but I hope that anyone who reads this will enjoy the content. After a short review of 1910 and a preview for 1911, we will start off the season with a nearly full slate of games on Wednesday, April 12, 1911!