“I can’t believe (insert manager’s name). He’s rolling so lucky this weekend.”
“Bad dice. That’s what it is. Bad dice. I can’t roll a 66 to save my life.”
These are typical comments we hear at every APBA get together. When we’re down, we blame bad luck on our dice or perhaps lucky dice for our opponent.
The logical side of me has a hard time believing this. I can accept that for a certain time period (a six game series for example) a manager may roll numbers that are favorable on a better than average probability but luck is a concept I don’t “roll” with.
Let’s get down to basics here. The APBA Basic Game (and Master Game) uses two dice which are six sided cubes. Assuming they are not weighted, the chances of each side landing face up are 1 in 6. The chances of a particular combination (say, a red ‘1’ and a white ‘6’) are one in 36 hence the thirty-six results on an APBA card. Again, not rocket science but good to get to the basics.
In a typical APBA baseball game, we roll maybe 40 times maybe more. That’s a pretty small sample size. Over one of our league’s weekends, we’ll play 24-30 games. Yes, it’s true some teams may hit a ‘hot’ streak but that’s a more credible sample size to draw from.
But take a 162 game season’s worth of dice rolls and I think that the ‘good’ rolls and the ‘bad’ rolls are going to even out. If not. take that man’s dice away. Yet, I still hear claims of some managers perpetually having ‘lucky dice’. When I advance my idea that the dice rolls do even out, I’m rebuffed by some.
The claim? They get their ‘good’ rolls when they really count.
I don’t buy it.
Perhaps it’s just a philosophical difference where there is no answer. Or maybe we’re just arguing semantics. A mathematical anomaly on my part is just plain ‘luck’ for someone else.
The question is: do some benefit from these ‘mathematical anomalies’ more than others?
I open it up to you. Do you believe in luck (good or bad) in APBA?
I refer you to Bill James’s “clutch hitting” work.
Humans are hard-wired to see patterns in randomness. Perceived “Luck” is just that. (Unless you’re dealing with a real dice mechanic – I’ve seen some of those, but not in an APBA context.)
Quotes I have heard (made?) at APBA Conventions:
“There is only one manager in ILLOWA (our APBA League) who rolls worse dice than I do.”
“No one who plays APBA with John Doe (manager’s real name withheld) for any length of time believes that the breaks even out. Luckiest guy I ever met. He ought to go out in the street and look for wallets.”
“In seasons when my 7th hitter has 22-6, my dice get a lot better.”
“I don’t have to coach when the runner is thrown out on 25, 55, or 51. I never roll those numbers.”
“How about you roll for my team and I roll for your team?”
Who has one or two more to add?
@DonS “‘Player X’ isn’t doing well for me because I never roll speed numbers”
Of course there is luck in APBA, it’s a dice game. The dice rolls do even out over a long season. That said, my team seems to have enjoyed lucky dice over the last couple of years, at least, we seem to be hitting more home runs than w should hit. Of course this is my perception, I haven’t studied it scientifically. Last season our luck seemed to run out in the 1st round of the playoffs, when my opponent seemed to get my rolls.
This year everything seemed to be rolling along better than it should have for my team. Our record stood at 13 games above .500, 69 games into the season. Then we ran into bad luck, losing nine straight, now we’re only four games above .500, fighting to make the playoffs. It seemed as though my team went through, “when you’re hot, you’re hot” and “when you’re not, you’re not”.
Other games of chance seem to claim hot streaks, craps for example. I don’t fully understand “hot streaks” and I know, logically, that each dice roll has an independent chance of rolling any one of 36 possible outcomes, each & every roll. Yet, I’ve experienced “hot streaks” and know they’re real.
Good Luck & 66’s!!!
Don S – that 22-6 comment reminds me of a Yogi quote – “What makes a good manager? A good ballclub.”
Or my favorite APBA weekend comment…….”My pitchers aren’t hitting”
How come people remember the 3 66’s and they conveniently overlook
that their opponent rolled “4” 12’s?