[Curtis]

My advice would be to either: A) Start in 1961-2. You could bring expansion to the NL a year early, or to the AL a year late. I do NOt recommend starting with 18 teams in '61 and adding two the next season, unless you're going to wait for OotPB2007 and that version makes expansion easier. I think the 60s and early-to-mid 70s were the best era of baseball, with a good mix of power and speed, and it's also a mixed-racial period.

B) Start in 1941. The draft absences are just beginning that year, and for the next four seasons only the hardest of hardcore fans would recognize anyone. One advantage is fewer teams, which means needing to coordinate fewer owners (and fewer AI-controlled teams). Also, blacks and Hispanics enter play not too far in, which could be a consideration in a multi-racial group of owners.The disadvantage is that the next twenty years were a boring time in baseball, when the emphasis was on station-to-station play and home runs, and off speed and defense.

or, C) 1901. The game is really designed to begin there, and I'm a big fan of deadball play. This was thinking man's baseball, but it might bore modern fans. Errors were three times as common as they are today, and twenty homers was phenomenal. Your friends might not be able to relate.

I do not recommend 1920, because everyone knows Ruth and Gherig, and the owners who don't get them are likely to be unreasonably discouraged. There's also likely to be a pro-Yankees bias in general among casual fans, but this era was actually better balanced than the post-war era. There were Athletics and Cardinal dynasties that were every bit as good as the Yankees, for those with a little more knowledge of the era. Also, fielding was getting closer to modern norms, small ball was still practiced and strikeouts were still relatively uncommon. Fans of the stolen base, or those who prefer pitching, are likely to be disappointed.

Another option is to begin in 1871-6. NOBODY knows the players from that era. You could ignore the comings and goings of the various secondary major leagues, and you could have the National Association/National League with anywhere from eight to twelve teams and still be reasonably historical. There are some pretty big disadvantages to the 19th century, though. There are a lot fewer players to select from. Money means virtually nothing. If the game reflects reality, there should be six to seven errors per game, and more than half of all runs should be unearned. There's practically no information available about parks (dimensions, seating capacity, park factors, etc.).

One thing to consider is beginning in 1901 with the ARod/Garlon random debut database. You could set modern fielding, hitting and pitching equivalents. Also, since you're already starting with a fantasy, you could set up your league with whatever structure and number of teams suits your fancy. If you start with few enough, you could even add a layer (and later a second and maybe a third) of minors. You get a good mix of players from all eras, including the 19th century, and some 'extra' Negro League players. Players affected by WWI, WWII and Korea have their factors adjusted to reflect 'what if' they hadn't lost some of their peak seasons.

And, hey! Who doesn't want to see how Tom Seaver would pitch to Babe Ruth?