Welcome to the Corner League

I have for some time tried to devise a usable format for the Negro League set of players.

The problem is the number 37 -- the number of pitchers in the set.

One can do four teams with nine pitchers per team. Nine is rather skimpy by today's standards, but it wasn't unheard of in the 1970s. But a four-team league feels too small. A six-team league would be easy to schedule as series, but would have six pitchers per squad. That would be closer to historically realistic for blackball teams, but the set's accompanying literature implictly discourages staffs that small. A dozen pitchers are not to be started on less than four days rest.

The solution I came up with: A five-team league with two games a "day" at a central location. One team, at least, gets that day off. As I brainstormed this over weeks of walking the dog, I envisioned it at the softball field behind a tavern/seasonal restaurant of my youth at Lake Itasca known locally as "the Corner."

Only in my imagination a different real park would be there each day for the two games.

So ... five teams. The Loons, the Tourists, the Conifers, the Walleyes and the Herons. They will play each other 10 times each, five "home" and five "away," 40 games apiece. I'll sprinkle in six slots without games to give the pitching staffs more time off.

I'll select the team rosters and the schedule at random, although I will have an off slot on Day 1 and two games on Day 2. Every team will have at least seven pitchers among its 19 players. To have eight will require that at least one be both a pitcher and a position player (there are five such in the set). I doubt I will allow nine.

Another roster rule: Each team must have two players coded to catch, and at least one of them must have catching as his primary position. I don't want a team that has Heavy Johnson and John Beckwith as its only backstops. Double Duty Radcliffe, a pitcher-catcher, is a gray area. If he lands on a team with, say, Josh Gibson and Frank Duncan, he's going to be a pitcher first; if he's on a team with Duncan as the only other catcher but with seven other pitchers, he's going to do a lot of catching. I'm not locking myself in on Radcliffe.

I will pull player names from a bag and use the 20-sided die to assign the player to a team. The NeL set is loaded with multi-position players, so I expect teams will have all positions covered, but I reserve the right to make adjustments to insure that each team has a real second baseman or whatever.

I will use the DH. Injuries for remainder of game only. With all the off days, I don't think pitcher rest will be a major issue, but I will deduct an inning off a pitcher's point-of-weakness factor for short rest.

The stadiums will be from Pittsburgh, as the Steel City was a significant center for blackball in the East and I am fond of at least two stadiums there. Chronologically the four will be: Forbes Field from the 1924 set, Greenlee Field from the NeL set, Three Rivers Stadium from the 1973 set and PNC Park from the 2017 set.

(Addendum: I scrapped the first attempt at a schedule and made a second one that avoided having teams play twice in one day. PNC Park and Three Rivers Stadium will be used for 14 league days apiece, Forbes Field for 13, Greenlee Field for 12. If the regular season ends in a tie, the one-game playoff will be held in Forbes Field, with last ups determined by lot.)