196 game PCL Schedule
 

In advance of the PCL database coming out, I looked around and couldn't find a schedule for an 8 team league in the 190 game area that the PCL played. What else to do but to put one together. I took one of gmo's 154 game schedules and added 42 more games per club (2 series vs each opponent) at the end. Then some heavy editing to get off days staggered.

The season starts in mid-March and ends mid-October with clubs playing each other 28 times (14H/14A).

This won't cover the couple of seasons the PCL operated with 4 or 6 clubs, but this will cover the majority of the 54 seasons that the PCL played. Also, I don't think anyone's editing the listing of schedules that gmo had posted, so this won't be added there. This will be the only link to it.

Here is a 200 gm schedule for the old PCL that gmo originally created as well.

Man, I wish I'd had this yesteday. It would have been much easier to cut down to 196 than the 154 gamer was to build up.

My only thing against this 200 gamer as it sits is that teams don't play all the other teams an equal amount of times.

FYI - Using the WayBack Machine of Mr. Peabody, The coast league usually had Mon and Tues as travel days and 7 game series between clubs with doubleheaders every Sat and Sun. As a general rule.

IIRC, that's how the 200-game schedule here is set up, except only using Mon as a travel day and a DH on Sunday.

That should be an easily doable schedule from scratch. I might work on that version as well. The other one I've done offers staggered off days.

Why he went to 200 and had an uneven number of games vs opponents is baffling when dropping to 196 makes everything equal.

I understand IRL they never played the same number of games, etc., but for our purposes, my schedule makes more sense.

I'll have a 196 game schedule with the M/Tu off days and 7 game series with DH on Sa/Su up tonight.

He went to 200 because the PCL played 200 games at times. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. I don't get why yours makes more sense. If the PCL didn't play a balanced schedule, why would you want your recreation to be less accurate?

It makes more sense to me for there to at least be an equal number of home/away games and to play the other 7 clubs an equal number of times. YMMV, but dropping only 4 games to get that is worth it to me.

After perusing standings, I find it actually much more common for a club's total number of games played to be below 200 than above.

Here is the above mentioned schedule format.

196 games beginning in late March and finishing in early October.


Each series is 7 games long with singled contests on Wed/Thu/Fri and DH on Sat/Sun.

Mon/Tues are off days.


28 games against the 7 other clubs (14A/14H).

First, apologies, Cooleyvol, I forgot to get back to you earlier about this. In the midst of much craziness it slipped my mind.

It may make sense to you but it is historically inaccurate as far as the PCL is concerned. PCL schedules were, due to the weekly pattern of play it used and the doubleheaders scheduled for holidays, at best only semi-balanced. (Indeed, for numerous years clubs apparently weren't even scheduled to play the same number of games in total, let alone against individual opponents.)

The PCL also changed schedule length on a fairly regular basis. For example:

1930: 201 games
1931: 187 games
1932: 189 games
1933: 187 games
1934: 188 games
1935: 177 games
1936: 176 games
1937-38: 178 games
1939: 176 games
1940: 177 games (though six clubs actually played 178 games)
1941: 176 games
1942: 178 games
1943: 155 games (though two clubs had 157 games on their schedules)
1944: 167 games (though all clubs actually played 169 games)
1945: 183 games
1946: 183 games (though two clubs actually played 186 games)
1947: 186 games
1948: 188 games
1949: 187 games
1950: 200 games
1951: 168 games
1952-53: 180 games


Historically, doubleheaders were played only on Sundays (and holidays). Also, only Mondays were used for travel league-wide.

Not a problem on the return PM.


I'm aware its not accurate historically, but for OOTP, this makes more sense, IMO. I merely made what I'm going to use available.

Fair enough. But I'd say the, ah, eccentricities of the PCL's scheduling is part of that league's charm. :)

I would agree. I also would say that those eccentricities are the hardest part to implement into OOTP. Of course, someone could take this last schedule and add a few random games to it and they'd have a pretty close copy of what the actual schedule looked like.

Here is the same 196 game schedule with single games on Tu/Wed/Th/F/S and DH on Sunday as LGO described above.


I have zipped all of these up and sent them to Padresfan.

Anyone interested in a brief year-by-year history of the PCL may wish to check out the attached file. For each season it lists the member teams, any changes to the membership made for that season, the official classification of the league, schedule length, and the playoff format (if one was in use). It covers the 1903-2004 seasons.