It never fails to amaze me to see APBA players want to simulate an event and then find a way to achieve it. The Mid-West Baseball League have been doing a homerun derby since 2003.
Stray Corrado wrote me to announce that the MWBL just held their annual 2012 Christmas Classic Home Run Derby. That was a new concept for me and I was intrigued.
Here are the rules as explained by Stray:
How is the MWBL going to handle the Christmas Classic Home Run Derby? This is an idea that came from a league (BUNT), that I check out from time to time, and think has a great web site. Dave Snyderman one of the members came up with the idea a few years ago and which has been refined somewhat as they went along. The MWBL refined the idea a little more, but will adopt this concept for the 2003 MWBL Christmas Classic Home Run Derby.
It is very simple really. What the MWBL Commissioner will do is take a pair of percentile dice. These are 2 dice, each with 10 sides, and ideally, both with different colors, one red one white. If you ever played any role playing games you probably have seen these dice. They are readily available at hobby shops and game stores that cater to the role play crowd. When rolled, these dice will produce a number between 01 and 00 thus the name percentile dice.
To determine each hitter’s chance of hitting a home run, we assign them a % chance. This is equal to ½ their total Home Runs in the previous MWBL season, plus 10%. The rest of the contest consists of rolling the dice and recording whether it was a homer or an out until 10 outs are recorded. So, for example, Bonds in 2002 who had 68 HR’s at the end of the season would homer on a roll of 01-44. We also allowed 00 to be a homerun so everyone got an extra 1% chance of hitting one.
Each Home Run hit will follow with a roll of two percentile dice, and one six sided dice. This will help us create the total distance for each Home Run hit. The six sided dice on all rolls of a (6) six will result in a re-roll, with a (5,6) result will be a (5), any rolls on the re-roll will result in (4) four. On all rolls of a (5,4) five or four the result will be in the number being a (4) four, on all rolls of a (3,2,1) three, two, one will result in the number being a (3) The two percentile dice will follow, with the white dice being the foot distance in (10) tens, and the red dice being the distance in single feet. Thus a roll of a six sided dice of (TWO), white Percentile (FIVE), and red percentile (SEVEN), would result in the batter hitting a (457) Four hundred fifty seven foot home run. We then follow the actual rules of the Home Run Derby.
Curtis Granderson was the MWBL’s victor in the 2012 Christmas Classic Home Run Derby. You can see MWBL’s press release on the event and here are the final results.
