FABL 1950s Recap
I’ve never been a big fan of New Years Resolutions. Not only do they seem cliché and disingenuous, but Capricorn season doesn’t seem like the ideal time to start something that’s going to last. No offense to the Sea Goats, but it is the middle of winter. Wouldn’t it make more sense for a New Year to begin in the Spring, when the cycle of growth begins? I guess it’s similar logic to how a new day technically begins in the middle of the night…
Anyway, despite my misgivings, the calendar flipping to 2024 seems like a perfect excuse to dust off this old blog and start posting regularly. When last we left our reverse-chronological trip through Fantasy Astrology Baseball History, we had finished the last year of the 1950s. So before starting a new decade, it’s fitting to look back at the ten years we just covered.
In terms of big picture sign-by-sign performance, Leo and Taurus were neck and neck for overall decade lead, separated by just over 300 total fantasy points. Leo also had the more important distinction of winning the most yearly titles, capturing the championship in 1950, 1952, and 1959. Next in line was Scorpio and Sagittarius, with two wins each. Taurus, despite their overall excellence, was stuck with one title, tied with Libra and Aquarius, whose 1957 win was their last until the shortened 2020 season.
On an individual level, Libra pitcher Robin Roberts scored the most points of the decade, with 25,913 points over 10 years. Again, Taurus was painfully close to the top spot, with Warren Spahn (25,537) relegated to second place by a margin of more than 300 points. Number three overall, and the top-scoring batter of the 1950s, was the versatile Scorpio Stan Musial (22,526). Stan the Man started for the Scorpions for nine out of the possible ten years, playing first base and all three outfield spots.
A couple of Earth signs take the 4 and 5 spots. Virgo outfielder Duke Snider (21,811) split the decade between the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. Meanwhile, Capricorn pitcher Early Wynn (21,712) went from Cleveland to the White Sox, winning the AL Cy Young Award for Chicago in 1959. Next, we get our second Libra, Mickey Mantle (21,461), who won back-to-back MVP’s in 1956 and ’57. The Mick was followed by two Aries Rams: Snider’s Dodgers teammate Gil Hodges (20,924) and longtime White Sox ace Billy Pierce (20,747).
Rounding out the top 10, we have catching legend Yogi Berra (19,720), a Taurus, and the only non-US-born player in the top 50, Minnie Minoso (19,498), a Sagittarius from Cuba. In fact, Minoso got his start in the Negro Leagues, making the All-Star Team for the New York Cubans in 1947 and 1948.
Including the Negro Leagues in my Fantasy Astrology database is what I’m most excited about as we move into the 1940s, even if the statistical data is spotty in the years immediately following and preceding AL/NL integration. It seems that Negro League teams played a great deal of barnstorming-style exhibition matches, with a relatively low percentage of their schedule consisting of official league games with preserved box scores. So while the sample sizes are generally too small for a true apples-to-apples comparison, there’s no question that the top Negro League players belong in the same conversation with their segregated AL/NL counterparts.
However, that conversation will have to wait until the week after next, since Baseball-Reference doesn’t have any Negro League statistics at all after 1948. But stay tuned, because now that AstrologyBaseball.com is back in action for 2024, we’ll be doing our first Negro Leagues analysis before the karmic wheel turns to Aquarius season!