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Total Classics 1968 By Jim825 The Year of the Pitcher In Major League Baseball, the trend throughout the 1960s was of increased pitching dominance. After the record home run year by Roger Maris in 1961, the major leagues increased the size of the strike zone from the top of the batter's shoulders to the bottom of his knees. A significant "power shortage" culminated in 1968, with far fewer runs scored than in the early 1960s. Pitchers dominated hitters, producing 339 shutouts in 1968, almost double the number of shutouts thrown in 1962. In the American League, Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers won 31 regular season games, the only player to reach the 30 win milestone since Dizzy Dean in 1934. Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians had the American League's lowest ERA at 1.60 and allowed a batting average of only .168, a major league record, and Catfish Hunter of the Oakland Athletics was the first American League pitcher to record a perfect game since Don Larsen in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. In the National League, Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals set a modern earned run average record of 1.12 over 304-2/3 innings. He won 22 games with a 15-game streak over his last 25 starts, logged 23 complete games with 13 shutouts, and never worked fewer than eight innings per start Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers threw a record 58-2/3 consecutive scoreless innings, and Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants led the National League with 26 wins and 30 complete games. Hitting was anemic as Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox would be the only American League hitter to finish the season with a batting average higher than .300. Yastrzemski's batting average of .301 was the lowest batting average of any league batting champion. The American League's collective slugging average of .340 remains the lowest since 1915 when the game was still in the so-called dead-ball era, while the collective batting average of .231 is the all-time lowest. The 1968 World Series featured the AL champion Detroit Tigers against the NL champion St. Louis Cardinals. The Tigers won in seven games for their first championship since 1945. The Tigers came back from a three-games-to-one deficit to win three consecutive games, largely on the arm of World Series MVP Mickey Lolich who earned three complete game victories. Bob Gibson of the Cardinals pitched three complete games in Games 1, 4 and 7, and set a World Series record of 17 strikeouts in Game 1. As a result of the dropping offensive statistics, the Major League Baseball Rules Committee took steps to reduce the advantage held by pitchers by lowering the height of the pitchers mound from 15 inches to 10 inches, and by reducing the size of the strike zone for the 1969 season. ------------------------------------------- The Total Classics 1968 mod brings you the sights and sounds of the 1968 baseball season. Besides rosters, portraits, uniforms and audios, the mod provides themed menu and loading screens, stadium select screens with actual stadium photos, 1968 jukebox music, 1968 batter walkup music and correct 1960's era stadiums for every team. The mod also includes OTBJoel's great Legends from the Booth audio. ------------------------------------------- *** INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS *** - After you download the total_classics_1968.7z file, double-click to open it. - Extract the contents of the file into a folder. - Double-click the explodeme.exe file - Find the location of a CLEAN (or patched) copy of MVP Baseball 2005 and click "Extract". - Allow the program to extract all of the new content. - Play the new Total Classics 1968 mod. NOTE -- You MUST use an "unlocked" profile in order to have access to the 1968 uniforms ------------------------------------------- *** VERSION HISTORY *** v1.0 Initial release