Originally Posted by Buster Cherry (Post 4536159)

The game has real life historical players and managers. Why not real life historical owners too? One of the teams I was GM for once had an owner who hailed from Hawaii. I suppose this would be okay if I had been playing a recent season but I was playing one in the 1920s. An owner from Hawaii? Good grief.

Originally Posted by BaseballMan (Post 4536548)

Id like to see it too. Right now i create my own historical manager. Id like an option like a manager's option of not getting fired. I hate creating the next historical owner and find out the team killed off the last historical owner and made a fictional one.
First thing would be to make a list of all historical owners. I'm not sure if that
data is available. In some cases its hard to figure out who was in charge when you have an estate or an equal partnership. Would be nice to have an option for a family estate or for companies.

Originally Posted by joefromchicago (Post 4538989)

All of that information is out there, although I'm not sure it's all in one place. SABR is putting together ownership histories for each team - the project is about half-way finished.

A problem for OOTP would be those instances when teams were owned by corporations, like when the Yankees were owned by CBS or the Cubs were owned by the Tribune Co. Right now, all of the news stories and notifications presume that a human being is the owner. So you could get a notice saying: "CBS has looked at your roster and he thinks you should get a new third baseman." Also, OOTP would need to include the option for female pronouns for those occasions when women owned teams, such as Marge Schott (Reds) and Helene Britton (Cardinals).

Originally Posted by Buster Cherry (Post 4539288)

The edit owner feature has a female option you can choose only the picture doesn't look much like a female. The female picture wears a baseball cap and the faces are a little softer but otherwise it looks like a male. Then again, Marge Schott...…...

Originally Posted by BaseballMan (Post 4539290)

I have historical owners on my transaction list but some owners are hard to find. For a business owning a team i just use Company for the last name. It could say The CBS company has looked at your roster.

Originally Posted by BaseballMan (Post 4539290)

What is mopre of a problem is when an estate owns the team. I just put the family name as first name and Estate as last. Unless i can find out who was in charge of the estate or running the team.

Originally Posted by joefromchicago (Post 4539624)

Well, as I see it, the problem isn't that companies don't have last names, it's that the game thinks companies are all men. But if you're more interested in getting the owners right than the pronouns, this isn't an insurmountable problem.


Usually when a trust or a consortium owns a franchise there's someone who is the "face" of that team. After all, somebody has to attend league meetings. For instance, in the wake of Tom Yawkey's death the Red Sox were owned by a trust that he set up. His widow, Jean Yawkey, was one of the trustees and was the most visible representative of the team's ownership. Technically, the trust owned the team, but if you had to point to someone as the owner, it would have been her. Likewise, Bill Veeck sold the White Sox (the second time) to a group led by Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn. Reinsdorf quickly became the most active member of the group and is now generally regarded as the "owner," even though I don't know if he has ever held more than a 50% stake in the franchise. And the aforementioned Veeck never held a majority interest in any of the clubs that he ran.

Originally Posted by BaseballMan (Post 4539884)

I kinda figured you could use the head of the trust but is that information still available?

Originally Posted by BaseballMan (Post 4539884)

How bout the Yankees with DanTopping and Del Webb. I lean towards Topping since he was president of the club.

Originally Posted by BaseballMan (Post 4539884)

I'm surprised that Bill James or some other baseball writer hasn't put out a book of owners in baseball history.

Originally Posted by Buster Cherry (Post 4536159)

The game has real life historical players and managers. Why not real life historical owners too? One of the teams I was GM for once had an owner who hailed from Hawaii. I suppose this would be okay if I had been playing a recent season but I was playing one in the 1920s. An owner from Hawaii? Good grief.

Originally Posted by reflections (Post 4541592)

Well Hawaii was around in the 1920s.

Originally Posted by Buster Cherry (Post 4541719)

I know Hawaii was around in the 1920's, Junior. But unless there were minor league teams in Hawaii back then there were no owners from Hawaii. It makes no damn sense at all to have a team owner of a New York franchise hail from Hawaii. Just because it was possible don't mean it was probable. Good grief.