1964 Baseball Season

 

Highlights:

There wasn't much of a race in 1964.  While the pundits predicted a two team race in each division at the start of the season, the season developed into three runaways for the division races and one team remaining with a winning record to take the Wild Card.  The Highland Flyers set a league record with 115 wins but Philadelphia's 104 provided the largest lead at 28 games over the second place Pittsburghers.  Philadelphia had the best offense and third best pitching while Highland had a clear lead in pitching and was second in home runs hit.  Mars Hill comfortably won their division while Surf City took the Wild Card.  League performance was very close to actual MLB stats as 3RBL scored 8.3 as compared to MLB's 8.08 mark.  Batting average was .245-3RBL versus .250-MLB; .304 versus .313 OBP and .387 versus .378 SLG.  ERA was 3.68 versus 3.58.

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Presley Division:

Pittsburgh was supposed to contend and their offense was second best in the league.  However, it was second to Philadelphia who also had the third best pitching while Pittsburgh's was seventh.  Philly scored 0.7 runs more per game than Pittsburgh and allowed 0.2 less runs, a sure fire formula for success.  While Philadelphia's long time star Mickey Mantle was still potent (he became the league's first man to hit 400 homers for his career), it was the rise of Billy Williams that spurred the Philadelphia offense.  Williams finished 4th in batting with a .322 mark; sixth in slugging with a .550 figure and was 4th in homers (36) and 2nd in RBI (117) to lead the team in each category.  Tony Cloninger (20-8) and Bob Bruce (18-7) were surprises on the mound and were the most dependable Philadelphia hurlers.

 

Brando Division:

The 4th best pitching staff and 2nd best defense boosted a sub-par offense enabling Mars Hill to take the division by 19 games over Lansing.  Claude Osteen (19-10) was the top winner but Whitey Ford, the all-time winner in 3RBL history, was the ace of the staff.  The Mules did have on advantage, however, Rookie of the Year Boog Powell led the league in slugging (.631) and home runs (49) while batting .298 and driving in 115 runs.  

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Dean Division:

Highland effectively throttled the entire league.  A 2.60 team ERA led second place Surf City by 35 points.  Combined with the best team defense (.985) and the second most runs scored per game (4.7 versus Philadelphia's 4.8), Highland essentially started each game with a 1.5 advantage in runs.  As always, Henry Aaron was the key to the Highland offense.  He finished second (.332) in batting average to teammate Joe Torre (.340) and became the first 3RBL player to amass 2,000 hits, finishing the season with 2,009.  Aaron was 4th in OBP (.385), fifth in SLG (.552), 1st in runs scored (119), 2nd in hits (217) and 4th in home runs (36).  He even stole 21 bases and finished with a 91.3% success rate.  Dean Chance (24-8) was Mr. Everything in pitching in 1964.  He posted the most wins, had the lowest ERA (1.93), pitched the most innings (289), completed the most games (17),  had the second most shutouts (5) and led the league in strikeouts (284).  Jim Kaat (20-7) and Robin Roberts were also standouts as was Gary Peters.

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Post Season:

But Highland could not make it out of the first round.  Highland drew the Wild Card and came up short on a grueling seven game series with Surf City.  Philadelphia easily dispatched Mars Hill and after splitting the first two games against Surf City at home, the Freedom traveled to the West Coast and shut the Beach Boys offense down for three straight games to clinch their second 3RBL championship.