1969 SOM AP Replay set to begin

Strat-O-Matic baseball V16 arrived a couple weeks ago and as I 'prepare' it to play along with the 2011 MLB season I've decided my next retro AP replay season will be 1969. After completing my last two replays, 1950 and 1934, I thought it was time to get back to my favorite baseball decade, the '60's. Having already done '61, '64, '67, and '68 in the past, 1969 looked like the obvious choice to me. 1969 was the first year of divisional play in MLB and both leagues expanded to 12 teams. As manager of the Detroit Tigers it'll be a good challenge to try to overtake the '69 AL East Champion Baltimore Orioles.
The Tigers (90-72) finished 2nd to Baltimore that year, 19 games behind. It'll be tuff to outplay the Orioles but '69 featured the same basic Detroit roster of players that made up my favorite team of all time, the 1968 World Champion Detroit Tigers. I'm looking forward to 'working' with these players again. Besides Baltimore and Detroit the AL had good teams in Minnesota, Oakland, Boston and even Washington. These teams had the players I followed while growing up: Killabrew, Carew, Oliva, Yastrzemski, the Robinsons, Cuellar, McNally,Palmer,Jackson, and Howard.
The NL of course had the Miracle Mets and many other good teams. I'll manually manage a variety of NL games during the season. There are alot of good NL players I want to play with: Aaron and Niekro in Atlanta; Mays, Marichal and McCovey in SF; Santo and Jenkins in Chicago; Clemente, Stargell and Alou in Pittsburg; Rose, Perez, Bench, and May in Cinncinati; Seaver, Koosman and Jones in NY; and Gibson and Carlton in St. Louis.
When I got out the cards for 1969 I realized I'd forgotten that the front, basic side was printed in brown ink! The back side is black on white. These cards will make the season even more fun to replay!! I know I only have a month before the 2011 MLB season gets underway but I'm now very excited to get this '69 season started and will play as much as possible before it gets put on hiatus.