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Western League Baseball (3/8 - Texas Comets)


Roadrunner8ball

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Howdy folks, and welcome to the Wild West!

This is something I’ve been working on for the past few weeks since the MLB season has started, making teams in-between work, school, and baseball. It is an 8 team league set west of the Mississippi and extends all the way to the Pacific Coast. DSaline’s USBL is a big part of the inspiration for this series which I used his ideas for fields for each team and trying to be extremely in depth with each backstory. Teams will mostly be released sporadically, but hopefully one team will be released a week with half of the league already finished. An important note is that neither the Pacific Coast League or old Western League existed in this universe. Enjoy! C&C is appreciated as always.

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In the year 1950, America’s baseball landscape in the West Coast was scattered and bland. There were many leagues from the Great Plains to the Pacific but they were scattered and small and mostly all lasted no more than a few years before disbanding. The Western League came about when the suffering Rocky Mountain League and Pacific League, the two best leagues in the West at the time, combined with a handshake by Jack Quinn and Lyndon Kurtis in a meeting between the 2 leagues in Houston, Texas. They planned for a smaller sized league to increase the caliber of talent on the field and for teams to be associated with a larger group of people, something both leagues had previously struggled at.

 

The 1951 season started with teams in Kansas City, Houston, Cheyanne, Seattle, and Denver. Throughout the years the teams have changed, formed and collapsed, but the current set of teams have been around since the 1990 season when the league brought in two new teams to bring the total to 8.

 

Teams play a 170 game schedule (yes, I based that loosely off the old PCL regular season schedule) starting the last week in March and ending around the first week in October. The top 2 teams then enter the playoffs where they battle for the Quinn-Kurtis Trophy, named after the men who brought the league together, in a best of 7 series.

 

Some other minor notes, the DH has never been used in the Western League, the fans and owners laughed at the idea when a team brought it up in the 70s due to the fact that fans, owners, and players love having pitchers hit due to the strategy in it. Also, all teams have three uniforms, home, away, and an alternate to be worn either at home or on the road.

 

The league logo depicts the majestic mountains found in the Western parts of America (i.e. Sierra Nevada’s, Rocky Mountains, etc.) against a backdrop of a starry sky with 8 stars. Each represents a team in the league. It is recolored for each ball club and appears on the back of hats and jerseys.

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Baseball in Kansas City has existed ever since the year 1900, when the Kasas City Blues joined the Great Plains League. They destroyed the Great Plains league including putting up a 134-13 season in 1909. When the league disbanded in 1910, after the Blues had won 6 championships including having pitcher Ross Denbow win a club record 456 games in those 10 years with the club, they joined the Rocky Mountain League. In the RML they enjoyed a string of success including a run of 7 straight championship series appearances from 1934-1940. 

 

In 1951 they joined the Western League as a founding member and have had great success. They are the proud owners of 10 league championships, with their latest coming in 2013 on the back of current star Connor Johnson. The then only 23 year old played in 165 games that year and in the leadoff spot the shortstop had 17 home runs and 89 RBI with a league leading 67 stolen bases and 19 triples. He carried the team to a 2nd place finish with a 101-69 record, where they finished 6 games behind the league leaders. In the finals he went off the rails, going 14/23 with 4 homers and 13 RBI in the Blues’ 4-1 victory to capture the Quinn-Kurtis Trophy. This season they are led by Johnson, now 27 and still considered their top player, Japanese born catcher Hashimoto Sato, and center fielder Javier Cárcera. They are a team considered by many to have a ton of talent in the lineup, but a pitching staff with many question marks on the back end of their pen and rotation.

 

The Blues’ jerseys and logos are considered to be a new take on a classic look that has been in KC for over 115 years. Throughout their history they have had navy pinstripes adorning their home jersey with an interlocking K and C in the hat, helmet, and on the heart on their jerseys. The KC has been modernized throughout the years, think of the Leafs and their logo trough the years, with the latest modernization coming in 2005. Both the away and alternate feature the Blues wordmark with a single stripe on the sleeves as well as the collar. The double blue was adopted in the 1960s when more color options were available to choose from in fabrics and KC fans loved it. 

 

Independence Ave Stadium was opened in 1945 to house the Blues. It is one of only a few fields in the WL to have a circular OF wall. It has a lot of foul territory down the lines and the 45,000 that pack it on most nights get a chance to see some spectacular diving catches in front of the dugouts and stands.

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Amazing work! I love what you've got here in terms of starting up and all. I love your presentation as well. Only thing is, you spelled professional as "prosfessional" in your league logo, but that's a simple fix:P

 

Great start here. Can't wait to see more. 

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Thank you for all the great comments! Glad to see that KC is being so well received. 

36 minutes ago, bucknut42 said:

Amazing work! I love what you've got here in terms of starting up and all. I love your presentation as well. Only thing is, you spelled professional as "prosfessional" in your league logo, but that's a simple fix:P

 

Great start here. Can't wait to see more. 

I cannot believe I didn't see that. The original post is updated with the correct spelling.

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The Wyoming Bison, the team which calls Cheyenne, Wyoming home, have been around for almost 90 years, the 2018 season will be their 90th campaign, under various names. They started in 1928 when two prospectors, Jim Kate, and Harry King, decided to assemble a group of newly graduated college students from the local area to form the Cheyenne Red Stockings. Most of the boys were from the University of Wyoming and Kate and King wanted them to be able to pursue baseball after college. The two entered the team into the Pioneer League with a roster that consisted of 12 players for an 86 game season. They fell flat on their faces, oh boy did they. They went 11-85 their first year on the circuit and only drew in 550 people a game at the Wyoming Grounds, which held 1,500 fans. Until 1935 they did not post a winning record or a winning percentage above .450, and the team was falling in both popularity and finances. The team was lackluster on the field and the players seemed more interested in the beer and wages than playing well. In 1936 their luck changed as a 30 year old man by the name of Morris Quinnhouse was hired as the team’s manager. His first order of business was to cut the entire team (he was famously quoted saying “I don’t want players that don’t want to win” in an article published the next day) and change the name of the team. That quote adorns the team’s locker room today and is a rallying cry for the players to give it their all every game. He wanted to start all over in Cheyenne and build from the ground up. They were changed to the Wyoming Bison as he adored the beauty of the bison in Yellowstone, which he visited every winter. The rest is history. He went around the region picking the best players and Wyoming never looked back. They won the Pioneer League every season for the next twelve years. It was, and still is, the largest string of consecutive championships in American sports history. 

 

They moved to Rocky Mountain League for one season in 1949 and joined the Western league as a founding member in 1950. Up to this season they have won 12 championships including a three-peat from 1956-1958 and won 4 in 5 years in 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2002.

 

Today Wyoming is a team on the rise after being a bottom feeder team the past few years. Their prospects are littered with talent including the #2 and 3 prospects in the league thanks to a rebuild. They are lead by 25 year old pitcher Scott Wickman on the hill while 21 year old Joe Castle and 23 year old Teddy Porter man the corners as well as the 3 and 4 spots in the lineup. 

 

The Bisons logos and jerseys are a fan favorite in the West. They sport a silhouette of a running bison as the primary with red and brown. The red is a nod to the old red B that adorned the hats of the Bison all the way back during their championship run in the 40s. It’s on their brown primary cap with a tan colored outline. The jerseys, both home and away, feature the script in a western style cursive font. The alternate is a vest with a red base and tan cuffs. The alternate hat features a red base as well with a tan version of the running bison. 

 

Frontier Field is heaven for lefties as the 318 ft porch in right helps many homers get over the wall. Since 1998 the Bison have called it home while selling out nearly 60% of their home games since the opening. 

 

Hope you guys enjoy!

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Here's a little something extra that I'll be posting along with each new team I post. I am going to sim just the 2017 season on OOTP as something extra to add realism to the project. I won't be tracking trades, injuries, and such, and it is only for one year, but I am excited to see how to league would hypothetically play out for this season. You'll also get a sneak peek at the rest of the cities for the league. So here are the standings as of May 25, 2017 (today)! Currently KC and a team from Houston (who will be released next) are tied for first through 56 games with the rest of the league not far behind.592760963177c_WesternLeagueStandings.png.0e77b4c37edba19cf91c143abed42ea2.png

 

 

 

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18 hours ago, Michael Bolton said:

Loving everything about this, especially the league's logo. Do the 7 stars above the mountain have any significant meaning?

I mentioned in the OP that the 8 stars (I'll have to fix that, apparently on the league logo I couldn't read or count) each represented a team in the league

Edit- The league logo is now updated with the correct amount of stars. Sorry about that

18 hours ago, theep3 said:

What is the font you use for the standings graphics?

For the standings and presentation I used Tertre which is on dafont.com. It's just a simple and clean font hence why I like using it in those cases

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16 hours ago, THEANGEL&THEGAMBLER said:

Wow these look great!

Will you release the OOTP file after your done?

Releasing the OOTP file would take a lot more work on my end (right now the sim is just the bare bones) but if enough people are interested I'd be glad to do it! Plus playing it on my own would be fun 

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Whoa these are nicer sets along with these wordmarks that really suit the teams. 

 

Only one question, how was Houston, TX, team selected for this league? I would have recommended El Paso, TX as only team in Texas which would have made sense for all Western teams.

 

And this is also actually an surprising part, no California teams? I understand that it is in Baja California but none in actual state of California? I am also curious on why?

 

Keep up the good works, dude!

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FEAR THE FROG! LET'S GO TCU!!

 

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4 hours ago, JMtexan09 said:

Whoa these are nicer sets along with these wordmarks that really suit the teams. 

 

Only one question, how was Houston, TX, team selected for this league? I would have recommended El Paso, TX as only team in Texas which would have made sense for all Western teams.

 

And this is also actually an surprising part, no California teams? I understand that it is in Baja California but none in actual state of California? I am also curious on why?

 

Keep up the good works, dude!

Thanks for the kind words! For Houston the answer is quite simple. I defined "west" as all the land west of the Mississippi hence why Kansas City and Houston fit in.

 

As for California it's not that I didn't want to include cities in California, it's just they way it worked out. I found great cities to place teams with nicknames that I loved that I could build great identities around. I looked at cities in Cali and none really gave me something I loved in their history as for each team's nickname I want to connect it to a city's history or baseball roots. All great questions and I hope these answers are able to help you understand my reasoning! 

 

I hope to have the next team up by Friday at the earliest or by Sunday night hopefully. With high school baseball playoffs starting up this week, time isn't something I've had a lot of in the recent days to craft a well thought out story. I will say though that Houston, the next team, is one of my favorite logos that I've ever made.

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