POSITIVE/MUTABLE
GEMINI - Pirates
SAGITTARIUS - Cubs
LEO - Giants
AQUARIUS - Dodgers
POSITIVE/CARDINAL
ARIES - Phillies
LIBRA - Braves
NEGATIVE/FIXED
TAURUS - Athletics
SCORPIO - Angels/Rangers
NEGATIVE/CARDINAL
CANCER - White Sox
CAPRICORN - Tigers
NEGATIVE/MUTABLE
PISCES - Yankees
VIRGO - Red Sox
===
When organizing the 12 Astrology Baseball teams for fantasy sports purposes, I split them into four "divisions" with three teams each, based on the classical elements associated with each astrological sign: earth, air, fire, and water. However, I have to take a different strategy when using a video game to simulate a full astrology baseball season, since that involves picking a real-life team to stand in for each astrology sign's team, and the real-life divisions aren't easily divided into groups of four. Thankfully, 12 goes into six just as easily (remember, each of the two leagues in MLB has an east, central, and west division), and there are more ways to categorize astrological signs than just elementally.
First of all, there's polarity (i.e. positive and negative), which actually does correspond to the elements (air and fire are positive, earth and water are negative), but for our purposes, we can assign the two polarities to the American and National leagues (but not necessarily in that order). Additionally, each sign has one of three qualities: cardinal, fixed, and mutable, each of which describe four signs in total. This also corresponds to the elements, in that there is one sign of each quality in each of the four elemental groups. Looking at this through the lens of actual baseball, it's clear that each of the six divisions corresponds to a polarity/quality pairing (i.e. Negative/Fixed or Positive/Mutable), with only two of the teams in each division representing Astrology teams (and the other three able to be safely ignored for simulation purposes, because they're all but guaranteed to miss the playoffs).
Now the only question that remains is how to divide up the teams. While it's tempting to look for correlations between sign and team nickname - Gemini as the Twins, Pisces as the Marlins, Aquarius as the Mariners - I've found that that strategy dries up pretty quickly, and has no guarantee to create an easily-simulatable alignment. However, given that each sign is traditionally associated with a color, this is a much better place to start. While interpretations vary as far as which color goes with which sign, the custom caps that I designed for my Fantasy Astrology Baseball league show some of the most common associations. I've also introduced an additional layer by trying to limit myself to baseball's oldest teams, but I'm not requiring that the qualities remain in the same real-world geographical locations across both leagues. So with that in mind, let's look for some commonalities!
Red and blue are some of the most common colors associated with baseball teams, so it would be wise to leave aside signs like Aries, Virgo, Scorpio, Pisces, and even Aquarius, which I've also seen assigned to blue or indigo rather than the teal I used above. A good place to start is Leo, since
only two teams wear that sign's orange color: the Orioles and the Giants. Before looking at the other Positive/Fixed team that shares a division with Leo, let's check on any other standouts. Leaving aside the above mentioned team name correlation for Gemini, the only team with yellow as a prominent color is the Pirates. Similarly, there's only really one team that has the Taurus-associated forest green as its primary color: the Oakland A's. Sticking with things near and dear to my heart, my "home sign" Cancer links with the color silver. While every team wears gray on its road uniforms, but the only team that maintains a similar color palette at all times is the White Sox.
These last three choices seem to solidify National League as Positive and the American League as Negative, so let's follow this line of logic and see if we can make the rest of the teams work. Since the Pirates are the only color-coordinated real life team of the 2018 Astrology Champion Gemini sign, let's set the NL Central as the Positive/Mutable astrology division. Sagittarius is the the other sign in that division, and while there are no teams with the requisite purple in that division, the Cubs have both blue and red in their palette, which are the two component colors in purple. If we're going this route, then Leo, a positive sign, has to be the Giants, which again, doesn't leave a suitable light green team for Aquarius. However, I've read some sources that peg Aquarius as being associated with the color blue (because, you know, they are the Water Carriers), which opens the door for them to be represented by the division rival Dodgers. The last Positive division (Cardinal) includes two powerhouses, Aries and Libra, the first of which can pretty easily be linked to the Phillies (the only truly red team in the AL East). While the magenta/pastel color of Libra could fit with the uniforms of either the Braves or the Nationals, I picked Atlanta, one of baseball's three oldest teams, given that Washington has only played host to their team since 2005.
Moving to the Negative astrology league (i.e. the American League), and starting with the Fixed division (i.e. AL West), we now have to find a suitable Scorpio team to pair with the Taurus/Athletics combination. While the current version of the Angels has more red than any other team in the division, that doesn't quite work if we go back in time to the Disney era. Coincidentally, that was before the Rangers had transitioned from red to blue, so this sign is somewhat in flux. The White Sox are the best choice to represent Cancer in the Negative/Cardinal division (i.e. AL Central), there's not a clear brown team to act as Capricorn. I picked the Tigers, since every other team in the division is significantly more colorful. That leaves the AL East to act as our Negative/Mutable division, and thus the only options to represent Virgo and Pisces are the bitter rival Yankees and Red Sox. I could honestly go either way as to which team links with which sign, but I paired Virgo with the Red Sox, since their uniform (somewhat counterintuitively) has a fair amount of blue in it. Conversely, I feel like the Yankee pinstripes could be analogous to fish scales, which is of course the animal most associated with Pisces.
So, to recap, here's how I've arranged the teams/signs:
POSITIVE/MUTABLE
GEMINI - Pirates
SAGITTARIUS - Cubs
LEO - Giants
AQUARIUS - Dodgers
POSITIVE/CARDINAL
ARIES - Phillies
LIBRA - Braves
NEGATIVE/FIXED
TAURUS - Athletics
SCORPIO - Rangers
NEGATIVE/CARDINAL
CANCER - White Sox
CAPRICORN - Tigers
NEGATIVE/MUTABLE
PISCES - Yankees
VIRGO - Red Sox
That's not to say that this is the only correct alignment, as there are other considerations to take into account. For example, the Twins and the Rockies have the purple color palette associated with Positive/Mutable Sagittarius, but the latter would mean flying in the face of my attempt to use MLB's older teams, and either choice would mean sacrificing the only yellow option for Gemini. Capricorn's brown color is most similar to the colors of the Padres or the Brewers, but then the challenge becomes finding a better silver team than Chicago AL for its fellow Negative/Cardinal sign Cancer. Then of course there are no true magenta/pastel-shaded teams for Libra (barring the Diamondbacks' late-90's throwbacks) or dark red/burgundy teams for Scorpio (barring the Diamondbacks' current uniforms), as they are of course one of baseball's two most recently-added teams.
Expect to see some of these team/sign pairings brought into a (simulated) reality upon the release of MLB The Show 19, but until then, I'll be posting some recaps of the 2018 Fantasy Astrology season from the perspective of these divisions. And I also have something else in the works that I won't go too in-depth about right now, except to say that it
No comments:
Post a Comment