American League of Baseball - an OOTP save

[raysox]

Out of the Park is a baseball simulation game. I bought it because I love Football Manager, and I had money this summer. Little did I know that this game was EXTREMELY customizable. After playing with an MLB save, I found out about custom leagues. I did a 24 league save with teams whose logos I made from scratch. After a few seasons managing in the minors, I took a GM job and then ran the low budget, small market Tampa Bay Tarpons into the ground. I still argue that it was no fault of my own.

I had plans to do a concept series where I evolve a league from 1901 and expand to markets and logos of that era. So I thought "what the hell, I can have someone do it for me!"

The American League of Baseball started in 1900 with 8 teams. Those teams were the Baltimore Charms, Boston Beacons, Buffalo Chiefs, Chicago Juggernaut, Cleveland Tycoons, New York Royals, Philadelphia Keystones, and the St. Louis Pioneers. I gave them a AAA league of teams in North Carolina(which I won't show you), and a Rookie League in Florida(which is a city in Florida, then Rookie (pro team name).

My plan is to just make a post every 10 years of game time with logos, teams, champions, players, etc. As I'm typing this, it's 1925, and going strong except for a broken season in 1925 involving windows shutting down, a season being lost, and then upon start all the new season's stats adding to the lost one.

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

[raysox]

1901-1910 : Worst to First

Story

It was the deadball era. There were starters with 1.50 ERAs, and 4 man rotations. The original 8 teams would start in a single 8 team division. The best two teams qualified for the America Cup. The Chicago Juggernaut won the league, but the Boston Beacons won the Cup. At the end of the year, I had an email saying ALOB EXPANDS BY 2 TEAMS. The way this happened was the game picks cities on a list of cities without teams, and gives them random names from a list of team names. The teams were the Dallas Wolves, and San Antonio Toritos. The league could be divided into two subleagues, the east and west. So I put 5 in each, and gave the winner the right to play for the title.

The St. Louis Pioneers went 58-104 the first season, finishing last. The next year in an expansion-filled west, they went 94-68 and finished 3rd. The Pioneers then went on a run as the first dynasty. The Pioneers won the west 4 straight seasons from 1903 to 1906. They won the first two America Cups of this run.

During this time, the Philadelphia Keystones were struggling. The 3 seasons between 1904-06, they lost 104, 115, and 109 games. But somehow, they turned it all around. They became the 2nd dominant team of the decade. The Keystones won the east for 4 straight seasons, winning one cup in the process. Their dynasty continued as they made 10/11 playoffs up until 1918.

The first expansion team to ever compete was Dallas. They struggled with San Antonio, but then started to build up through the draft. They became the first team to three-peat winning cups in 1908, 1909, and 1910.

The league was evolving with more expensive contracts, more players, and better hitters. This was helped by a AA and A level league added in 1904 and 1907 in the Great Lakes and Texas respectively. This would set up a golden era the next decade.

Teams

I tried to differentiate the logos, colors, and jerseys as much as I could with the stylings of 1901 identities.

Baltimore Charms Boston Beacons Buffalo Chiefs

Chicago Juggernaut Cleveland Barons Dallas Wolves

New York Royals Philadelphia Keystones San Antonio Toritos

St. Louis Pioneers

America Cup

1901 - Boston over Chicago

1902 - Cleveland over Boston

1903 - St. Louis over New York

1904 - St. Louis over New York

1905 - Buffalo over St. Louis

1906 - Boston over St. Louis

1907 - Philadelphia over Chicago

1908 - Dallas over Philadelphia

1909 - Dallas over Philadelphia

1910 - Dallas over Philadelphia

Top 5 Players

5. Tanner Jones - Not much of a hitter, but won 7 straight Gold Gloves at 2B from 1901-1907 and 5 All Star Appearances

4. Ka-Pa Luo - Keystone of Dallas' dynasty. Got hurt way too often, but hit .294 and had 2078 hits when he retired.

3. Pat "Putt-Putt" Hill - Set the record of 34 wins in 1902 with Cleveland, finished with 264 wins and a 2.61 ERA

2. Johnathan "Meter Man" Butler - Only played 6 seasons before a forced retirement, hit .337 and had 4 MVPs

1. Jake "Bandit" Ivory - Noted when he had a low era but was on a bad Baltimore team. Most starts and 356 wins, with a 2.36 ERA

[martymcfry]

This is gonna be great!

[raysox]

Quick bump to get some reactions before I post 1920

[Veras]

I have a few questions about your degree of control over the league. Are you acting as manager, GM, or in some other capacity for one team? As commissioner for the entire league? Or just as an observer?

Either way this looks pretty cool so far, and I want to see where it goes.

I can't help but to laugh at the diversity of the league in the 1910s, though. And the fact that Johnathan "Meter Man" Butler earned his nickname a few decades before the parking meter was invented.

[RoughRiders99]

Oh, this is going to be awesome! I've always wondered if I should ever get OOTP or not. Maybe this thread will help and decide it for me!

[raysox]

Yeah I'm technically a free agent manager, but I have commissioner mode on. So all I do really is control the structure of the league, and release a bunch of bad older players taking spots from rookies in the minors.

But the league is evolving as if it started today. They don't have the census records to know that Dallas and San Antonio were tiny at the turn of the century. Also the names and nicknames are random. So you'll have a player named Harry Potter(which is true), and a player nicknamed "Loony Tune". The team names are also random, so the Toritos are named after a drink that wasn't invented yet. Also there's an expansion team named the Jets, which didn't exist yet haha.

[Roadrunner8ball]

This is gonna be great!

You got that right!

[Whittier S]

[reaching] Jet black?

[LA_Angels]

After you're done with this, you should make it into an online league.

[raysox]

1911-1920 : Setting Records

Story

The 10 team league continued into the next decade. It was the same old story. Every season from 1903-1924 had either Philadelphia, Dallas, or St. Louis in the America Cup. St. Louis started the decade off with 3 straight championships(and 6 straight playoff appearances). Led by Lou Pryor and Enrique Garcia. Pryor was at a time the best hitter in the league, and the first player to hit .400, and Garcia set up the foundation for one of the great pitching careers.

Philadelphia continued their runs to the championship. They made the playoffs every year from 1907-1918 except for once, and winning the next 3 Cups after St. Louis dominated the league. So in 9 years, we had 3 threepeats. In 1914, a 96 win Cleveland team missed the playoffs by 2 games. I felt bad because Philadelphia won 92 games and made the playoffs. Cleveland deserved a chance to play for the title. So 54 years before the MLB, I introduced the wild card. This was great because there were always really good teams missing out on the playoffs. Unfortunately, the 1917 Cleveland team cheated the system and went 77-85 and made a run to the title

1915 was a big year for the league. I had been waiting for there to be a league expansion from 10 to 12. I decided that I would rather expand the league than wait for the league to evolve at some point. I looked up the 2 cities with the larges population and put a team in Detroit and Pittsburgh. I didn't like the names of the teams they gave me, and randomized it till I got ones I liked. I went with the Detroit Brothers and the Pittsburgh River Cats. Their logos are below. The east and west now had a nice balance of teams with 6 each. Dallas started their dynasty game again, Starting in 1918 in a weakened western league, they're currently sitting on a 8 year playoff streak, winning titles in 1918 and 1919.

The first generation of players were starting to age and retire, and set the bar for different statistics. A group of 5 pitchers all hit 200 wins around the same time,then would drop like flies. Only 3 of those players continued playing to reach 300 wins. Jake Ivory was passed by rival Wiley Gibson who had a renissance of pitching in his late 30s to take a 13 win record over Ivory.

Teams

I figure I should talk more about this part. So Detroit was going to be blue and red because that wasn't a color used yet. I wanted to do a Dusquene english D but I kept changing it because I couldn't settle on what I wanted. I did a cross between the MLB Tuscan font and the Texas Rangers. The River Cats logo was a P infront of a triangle and I didn't like it. I was like "no one will ever see this" so i remade andrewharrington's pennsylvania logo. I went with purple and gold to be different, and did a cream colored home jersey.

Detroit Brothers Pittsburgh River Cats

America Cup

1911 - St. Louis over Boston

1912 - St. Louis over Philadelphia

1913 - St. Louis over Philadelphia

1914 - Philadelphia over St. Louis

1915 - Philadelphia over Chicago

1916 - Philadelphia over Chicago

1917 - Cleveland over Philadelphia

1918 - Dallas over New York

1919 - Dallas over New York

1920 - Baltimore over Dallas

Top 5 Players

5. Jake Dunseith - Phily's ace. 12 seasons for the Keystones. Currently sitting on 288 wins, and is probably the best chance to break the wins record.

4. Jeff Graham - Played 13 seasons in Dallas from 1906-19. Won 5 championships and won 304 games

3. Lou Pryor - Hitting .406 at the age of 26 is absolutely insane. He got hurt too often to break any records, but still was damn good

2. Melchiore Romosinho - Started playing in NY in 1905, he helped win championships for St. Louis and has 2970 career hits

1. Enrique Garcia - He started playing at 20 and just absolutely torched teams, and broke all sorts of records for pitchers.

[LA_Angels]

Nicely done. I really like the idea of adding a wild card in the early stages

[Jake3roo]

cool!

[kewp80]

Ahhh. Was planning on doing something exactly like this myself!

Do you have the template where you can get uniforms and hats that fit the time period?

[raysox]

Nah I just use the default ones with different colors aNd patterns, but I import the logos myself

[omnivore]

Awesome stuff, raysox. Also, anything that gets people over here discovering OOTP the better!

[RoughRiders99]

I just downloaded OOTP 15 and I have to say that I absolutely LOVE IT!!

[raysox]

Awesome! it's a really nice game if you get into it. Update on the league tho, I almost lost the whole save! But I did what I could to return to normal and I finished the 1928 season today. Expect an update this week.

[raysox]

1921-1930 : Hit Parade

Story

This decade started out wit a surprise! For the first time in 19 years, the American League of Baseball expanded on it's own. Montreal and San Diego were awarded teams. Montreal would be the Jets, and San Diego would be the Bucs. San Diego would have to travel half way across the country to find their closest team. But the 14 team league ran into problems. The divisions were uneven, and the game gave two teams a bye, resulting in a loss of about 18 games a season for every team. I went trough and added games between the off teams. I figured I the interleague play function got turned off. That year, Boston benefited from being paired with San Diego in interleague, and took a 89 win team to a win over Dallas.

That next year, the same thing happened. I had to go through and fix the schedule. Dallas won the 3rd championship in their run of 5 straight years of finals appearances. Since I didn't want to deal wit changing the scedule every year, I added 2 more teams to round it to two 8 team leagues, broken up into divisions. Los Angeles Portos, and Milwaukee Champions would even out the West. Boston, Buffalo, New York, and Montreal were in the Northern Division. Baltimore, Philly, Pittsburgh, and a now Eastern League Cleveland team made the Eastern Division. Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis and Milwaukee made the Central. Dallas, San Antonio, San Diego, and Los Angeles made the Western Division.

The division format hurt teams in the hunt for the playoffs. Pittsburgh and Cleveland became the best rivalry in the league. From 1922-1928 the two teams finished 1-2 in the division. Cleveland would win back to back championships in '23 and '24. Pittsburgh couldn't get over the hump and only made one finals appearance, but lost to St. Louis in 1928.

The game brok in 1925. I played a year (Pittsburgh won I think), then my computer restarted without saving. I thought I would pick up from there, but the game went to the start of the 1925 season. but what happened was weird. The stats from the lost season added onto the current season. 1925 saw records break for almost every record. In that year, Milwaukee added a big Dominican free agent. He and LF Tim Andrews lead the upstart Champions to their first championship. That's the only time they've ever made the playoffs. Buffalo ran a monopoly on the Northern Divison championship, winning 6 of 8 with stars like Everett Thornton, and Arron Cortez. They lost to Milwaukee in 1925, and won the next season. 1927 saw San Antonio finally use te expansion heavy West to their advantage, finally beating Dallas, they made the playoffs for the 2nd time in team history. This lead to the first champioship in team history, and the same team would win 2 years later. St. Louis also broke a 15 year title drought against the River Cats in 1928, and again in 1930 over Philly.

The decade saw tons of hitting records fall. Total hits, home runs, average(a San Antonio player batted .441), and every other major category fell this decade. Pitching wasn't as good as before, and the hitters showed it. The legendary players of the past really flamed out at the end. Ace Enrique Garcia went 1-14 with a 7.19 ERA. Jake Dunseith missed 1928 and never recovered to his great level. Melchiore Romosinho lost his starting position and started 1 game his last 3 seasons, ending with 2962 hits.

Teams

I normally take the names generated. Montreal originaly the Sound Tigers, and San Diego was the Steel. I ws gonn keep it until I realized Montreal had a similar name to Pittsburgh. I randomized it again and settled on the Jets and Bucs. Montreal is an edited Canadiens color with an M. San Diego has a skull and cross bones. I wanted to do a cursive style font for a logo, and decided Milwaukee would be cool. I gave them Oakland colors. Los Angeles would wind up with a Dodgers style logo in light blue and navy. Both names were randomly generated, Champions seemed funny and optimistic, and Portos is Colts in spanish.

Montreal Jets San Diego Bucs

Los Angeles Portos Milwaukee Champions

America Cup

1921 - Boston over Dallas

1922 - Dallas over New York

1923 - Cleveland over St. Louis

1924 - Cleveland over St. Louis

1925 - Milwaukee over Buffalo

1926 - Buffalo over St. Louis

1927 - San Antonio over Cleveland

1928 - St. Louis over Pittsburgh

1929 - San Antonio over Cleveland

1930 - St. Louis over Philadelphia

Top 5 Players

5. James Nickolson - Probably th best pitcher. Helped Pittsburgh for many years, and won the triple crown in 2030

4. Everett Thornton - Sitting at 26 hundred hits, he bounced between Cleveland and Buffalo winning titles with both.

3. Andy Cortez - 2nd guy to 3000, very quiet, but helped Buffalo win a title.

2. Martin Sanchez - Very flimsy, but is batting an unreal .370 in his career. 3 seasons batting over .400, and has 2619 hits at 31.

1. Don Graham - From the first Pittsburgh team, he was the first to 3000 hits and batted .335.

[omnivore]

Backup your leagues often!