The 1987.B baseball season is behind us and it’s Cubs Win, Cubs Win… 29 years early. The Chicago Cubs, after a savvy trade of Bo Jackson and a Hardship Draft investment in pitching, rose from last in the NL Central to World Series Champions. This is a pretty big change compared to 1987.A (or, I guess, “real life”) where in the Cubbies didn’t win the big one until 2016.

1987 League Leaders / Award Winners

Tragically this information may be lost to history. The folder that contained it went missing.

Ah, about that Hardship Draft…

New Rule: The Hardship Draft

At the 1987 All-Star break the season was looking pretty lop-sided. My New York Mets were mowing people down, which was great, but the rest of the least was either top of the division or in the cellar. There were no teams in the middle. Since Divergent League is meant to be an exciting baseball story generator, not a competitive media empire like the MLB, we decided to add the Hardship draft. From the forthcoming Divergent League rulebook:

The Hardship Draft takes place the weekend of the All-Star Break. Right before the Home Run Derby or All Star Game the bottom 20% of teams (rounded up) are able to select one player from any non-human controlled team or the Free Agent pool to add to their team.

It resulted in a MUCH more competitive season, and a really exciting playoffs. You can watch some of those games on the 1987 Season playlist from our YouTube channel.