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The image on the left is of an original player disc as found in the 1969 version of the game. The image on the right is a recently handmade disc. Although the discs look like they are different sizes, they are identical. My antique handscanner had a little problem with the disc. Looks pretty good, huh?
Structure of the Disc Although at first glance, the segments of the disc appear to be random, there is a definite pattern. I have analyzed the 60 discs that were included with my 1969 edition and came up with the following layout. Starting at the 12 o'clock position and going around clockwise. Those sections marked optional are only used if a player's stats are such, that a particular at-bat outcome would form one large section. These optional sections are used to evenly distribute the at-bat around the disc.
The best that I can make out is that sections such as Single II, Strikeout, Fly Ball I, and Ground Ball III are divided in an attempt to keep these at-bat outcome sections to no more than 12-15 degrees of arc.
Batting Stats As many people know, All-Star Baseball isn't a very sophisticated game, and as such, doesn't require extensive statistics. As a matter of fact, all the stats needed to create player discs, can be found on the backs of baseball cards, and Yahoo! Sports. The only statistic required that isn't readily available is the groundball/flyball percentages. There is an outstanding book put out by Stats, Inc. that contains the necessary groundball -to- flyball ratio for each player. At present, my formulas, attempt to extrapolate groundball and flyball data from the other existing data. I take the singles -to- extra_base_hit ratio and divide that into the total number of outs to obtain the groundball -to- flyball figures. The logic for this is that, in general, extra base hits are typically flyballs, while singles are more like ground balls. This is a gross estimation and probably extremely inaccurate, but in the games I've played using handmade discs, the games "felt" right. I am considering altering the formula to compare singles to extra_base_hits and strikeouts, or evenly splitting the outs into groundballs and flyballs.
| 1 | Home Run |
| 10 | Strikeout |
| 2 | Ground Ball III |
| 5 | Triple |
| 8 | Fly Ball I |
| 13 | Single II |
| 12 | Ground Ball III |
| 9 | Base on Balls |
| 10 | Strikeout (optional) |
| 14 | Fly ball I (optional) |
| 11 | Double |
| 6 | Ground Ball III (optional) |
| 7 | Single II (optional) |
| 4 | Fly Ball I (optional) |
| 10 | Strikeout (optional) |
| 9 | Base on Balls (optional) |
| 3 | Fly ball I (optional) |
Disc Creation Discs can easily be made by using the pie chart graphing function of nearly any graphical spreadsheet program. The disc above was created using ClarisWorks for Windows' spreadsheet. The first step is to import player statistics from Yahoo! Sports' Fantasy Baseball Download data. Next, modify the chart's data range to point to the stats of the player currently being created. At this point you will have a pie chart that looks something like:
Next, clipboard COPY the pie chart and PASTE it into the DiscMaker ClarisWorks Draw file. Change the left and top offsets to be 1 inch each. ARRANGE and MOVE TO BACK the chart. It now looks something like:
Using the numeric legend, position the numbers so that they are centered in each pie wedge. Update the player's info. At this point, ARRANGE, UNGROUP the chart. Now set FILL COLOR to white. Select the outer rectangle of the chart and then press DEL.
(more to follow)