April 3, 1998

To whom it may concern,

Please accept this letter of introduction to the bearer of this letter, my good friend and trusted baseball manager, Jasper Nelson, the first.

Many of you already familiar with other famous managers like Rabbit Schindel and Red Martin will find Jasper Nelson to be a likable fellow.  Jasper is Red Martin's second cousin, once removed, and his uncle was Rabbit Schindel's brother-in-law.  He grew up watching our National Pasttime in the late 1970's, and hasn't really learned anything new since then.  

While he is tolerate of statheads and uses an occasional calculation himself while managing a contest, he abhors sabermetrics.  Thus, he isn't really too concerned with a player's change of successfully stealing a base when he decides to give a guy the green light.  If he needs the base and knows that the runner has a decent chance, he'll let him go.  He knows that bases are  stolen "on the pitcher" and not on the catcher, so don't think he'll be dissuaded from running just because you've got a hotshot catcher behind the plate.  He probably won't give the pitcher a second thought either.

Jasper further displays his disdain of sabermetric thinking by using two plays which are almost universally dismissed as "bad" these days, the sacrifice and the intentional walk.  Rabbit Schindel taught him just about everything he knows about advancing the runner, but Jasper got his free pass strategy straight from real managers.  He knows to put the man on who's a dangerous slugger in the late innings of a game still "within reach," and he'll walk a player to get to the pitcher if he needs to get out of an early inning without any damage.  Jasper also believes that a batter can get "hot" in a game and is become more dangerous than his batting average indicates.  When such a hot batter could really hurt him and put the game out of reach, Jasper has no hesitation in giving up first just to get to a colder bat.

Put Jasper in charge of your replay of a season from 1975-1983, but don't ask him to touch 1981; he's not a fan of free agency or labor negotiations. 

If you have any further questions about my friend Jasper Nelson and how to use him effectively in a replay, please feel free to contact me at wigleyj@baxter.com.  

Sincerely,
Jay Wigley
Cleveland, Mississippi