Thursday, February 3, 2011

An Almost Perfect Wrold

Well Larry Serota, one of the two kings of the 1967 Punchouts (the other is Al Richter) has just posted his final tally of lineups over at Net54baseball.com. After tracking down the final two lineups (turns out they belonged to Team Captains Elston Howard and Willie Mays, making both four lineup men) the final count looks like this:


LAST FIRST LINEUPS NOTE
AARON HANK 2
ALLEN RICHIE 3
ALLEY GENE 2
ALOU FELIPE 2
ALOU MATTY 3 2 POSES
ALVIS MAX 3
APARICIO LUIS 4
BARBER STEVE 2
BATTEY EARL 3
BOYER CLETE 3
BOYER KEN 3
BROCK LOU 2
BUNNING JIM 1
CALLISON JOHNNY 2
CAMPANERIS BERT DELETED
CARDENAS LEO 3
CARTY RICO 2
CASH NORM 3
CEPEDA ORLANDO 4
CHARLES ED 1
CLEMENTE ROBERTO 3 2 POSES
CLENDENON DONN 2
COLAVITO ROCKY 1
CONIGLIARO TONY 2
DAVIS WILLIE 2
EDWARDS JOHNNY 2
ETCHEBARREN ANDY 2
FLOOD CURT 2
FREEHAN BILL 1
FREGOSI JIM 2
GIBSON BOB DELETED
GREEN DICK 3
GROAT DICK 3
GROTE JERRY DELETED
HALLER TOM 2
HART JIM RAY 2
HERSHBERGER MIKE 4
HOWARD ELSTON 4
HOWARD FRANK 4
HUNT RON 3
JACKSON SONNY 1
JONES CLEON 2
KAAT JIM 2
KALINE AL 2
KILLEBREW HARMON 3
KNOOP BOBBY 3
KOUFAX SANDY 2
KRANEPOOL ED 2
LEFEBVRE JIM 2
LOCK DON 2
LUMPE JERRY 1
MANTLE MICKEY 3 2 POSES
MARICHAL JUAN 2
MAYS WILLIE 4
MAZEROSKI BILL 2
McAULIFFE DICK 1
McCARVER TIM 3
MCCOVEY WILLIE 1
McLAIN DENNY 2
McMILLAN ROY DELETED
MENKE DENIS 2
MORGAN JOE 2
OLIVA TONY 2
PEPITONE JOE 2
PERRY GAYLORD 1
PINSON VADA 2
POWELL BOOG 4
REICHARDT RICK 1
ROBINSON BROOKS DELETED
ROBINSON FLOYD 1
ROBINSON FRANK 3 2 POSES
ROMANO JOHN 4
ROSE PETE 2
ROSEBORO JOHN 1
SALMON CHICO 2
SANTO RON 2
SCOTT GEORGE 3
SIEBERT SONNY 1
SNYDER RUSS 3
STARGELL WILLIE 3
STOTTLEMYRE MEL 2
TORRE JOE 2
TOVAR CESAR 2
TRESH TOM 2
VERSALLES ZOILO 1
WAGNER LEON 2
WHITE BILL 3
WHITFIELD FRED 3
WILLIAMS BILLY 2
WYNN JIM 3
YASTRZEMSKI CARL 3





TOTAL 198

As predicted here, there and elsewhere, the total of 198 brings finality with 14 Team Captains known with a single lineup, 40 with two, 24 with three and 8 with four. 86 players are in the set and with the four pose variations there are 90 poses in all. As Larry states, 66 groups of three smooths out the math as lineups are particular to the groups of players in each triad (the connected panels as sold in the ten cent "long" packs).

Amidst all this carefully executed perfection though lurks the single lineup question. Namely, if you eliminate the four 66'ers (players who changed leagues and were pulled after only captaining one lineup) there are still ten single lineup players. Eight of these would likely have been replaced by turning a three lineup player into a four lineup-er and I suspect two captains went from two to three lineups as replacements were filled in a second print run as the skewing from 1 through 4 is extreme even for Topps.

In a perfect world, the distribution of captains would probably have been with either 2 or 3 lineups. The interaction of pulled players' lineups must have impacted this though, as it seems there would have been 44 two lineup captains and 22 three lineup captains if everything had gone according to plan (if two players went from 2 to 3 lineups the count of those would have been 22). In a set where rules of three rule, that makes (almost) perfect sense.

Here's shot of Luis Aparicio, one of the four lineup players, Captain of Captains!

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