Opening Day 2023
As we prepare for Major League Baseball in 2023, we have one last day without any games to cram in as many sidequests as possible. Read those last-minute magazine articles. Crack open a pack or two of cards. Pop in the newest licensed video game. And reader, I’ve done all of these activities.
A new widely reported, and celebrated, mode introduced in MLB The Show 23 allows players to re-live pivotal moments in Negro League history. I was excited to see that Level 1 featured Leroy “Satchel” Paige, because I had encountered him in my Astrology All-Time database. (I have done the research back through most of the 1950’s, but haven’t published any yet.) The excitement grew and exploded when I recalled that I have Paige listed as a Cancer Crab, the sun sign of your humble narrator.
However… when I entered the game, we got an incredible interview with Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. He explains that Paige himself claims that his birth record was destroyed… which throws into doubt his astrological affiliations! I don’t know where Baseball Reference got the date of July 7, 1907, but it certainly doesn’s gel with the story Kendrick tells.
After thoroughly enjoying Level 1 of the Paige adventure path, I created a database line for each of the nine players who comprise the stoyrlines. Other than Paige, two players reached the post-integration AL/NL ranks. The famous Aquarius Jackie Robinson broke the color line with the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers and won the World Series with them in 1955. The year before, versatile Sagittarius Hank Thompson helped the 1954 New York Giants win a World Series of their own!
As it happens, Robinson’s Water Bearers and Thompson’s Archers were quite successful - from 1955 to 1957, the most fantasy points in the league were scored by SAG, SAG, and AQU. I haven’t gotten far enough back in my database to encounter any of the other players, so I don’t know how their signs compared to the powerhouses of the day. (It’s never a good idea to bet against Scorpio, of which Buck O’Neil is a member.) But I can’t wait to break into the mid-1940’s and see how Negro League talent impacted the Fantasy Astrological landscape!