Gibson and Paige Set to Battle “Teddy Ballgame” and “Joltin’ Joe” in Bragging Rights League

Some guys still sit at a table with cards, dice and charts and roll the bones for hours at a time, keeping score along the way and imagining in their head the action that’s taking place on the table in front of them.  My buddy Jeff Polman is one of those guys.  But rather than keep the results to himself, Jeff writes about them and shares the highlights with his reading audience.  Fortunately he’s creative and imaginative—what would you expect from a guy who’s written two Hollywood screenplays?—and rather than bore us with typical play-by-play, Jeff creates entire worlds around his Strat-O-Matic replays.

Previous virtual milieus included Philadelphia and Detroit circa 1924 where 17-year-old Vinny Spanelli spent “his every waking hour following his beloved and usually awful Phils by sneaking out of school to sneak into mid-afternoon games at Baker Bowl,” and veteran reporter Cal Butterworth, “star baseball beat writer for the Detroit Free Enterprise,” who followed and reported on Ty Cobb and his Tigers throughout Jeff’s “1924 and You Are There!!” replay, called a “living baseball novel” by the author himself.  Then Jeff stepped into his time machine and traveled ahead to 1977, where his “Play That Funky Baseball” featured a wacky cast of characters led by Carlton B. Gip, aka C. Buzz Gip, who lived in Squallpocket, Maine (or did he?) and who was recruited by two men in black, “basically Tommy Lee Jones times two,” from Patriot Act Inc. and given four glowing dice and the responsibility of replaying the 1977 season.  I can’t come close to doing enough funky justice to that brilliant concept, so I urge you to “Hustle” your way over to “Funky Town” and check it out for yourself.

After a brief respite to recharge his batteries, Jeff is at it again, this time turning history on its ear or “flopped on its end,” as Jeff puts it in his new Bragging Rights League.  “What if history were flopped on its end, and a team of 1941 white stars were inserted into the thriving, all-black major league for a hotly contested 60-game season? Would Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller be able to hold their own against the likes of Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and Satchel Paige? And what might happen to the players off the field? Heck, let’s find out.”

And it’s the off-the-field stuff that makes Jeff’s replays shine.  In his 1941 virtual reality, Booker T. Washington and his son Ernest, and Langston Hughes have taken up residence in the Oval Office and served at least five terms between them; whites were not able to break the “Moses Walker Color Code” until ’41 and still weren’t allowed to vote; and the teams are named after some of the greatest musicians and band leaders in the history of music, men like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Tommy Dorsey.  The Chicago Dorseys comprised of Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Jimmie Foxx and other white stars will have their hands full with the rest of the league, which boasts Negro League legends Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston and many others.

For more information, check out this press release and be sure to head on over to The Bragging Rights League home page, where outfielder Jeff Heath has weighed in with his initial thoughts.