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I Am Officially Impressed
Alright, I am completely sucked into this game. I've been working on a new history of baseball game for weeks, including a schedule of expansion and stuff, and I was finally ready to start tonight with the inaugaural 4 teams in 1876, running it as the commish. And the games were incredible. The third year, there was a tie at the end of the season and I had no playoffs. So a one game playoff decided the championship, and the result was a 12-11 victory in 10 innings for the Philadelphia team. The most impressive part? It was 11-6 Philly going into the bottom of the 9th. That's an incredible season. And now my expansion teams are getting involved. St. Louis, added in 1886, won its first championship in 1889 and has kept going with two more. In the last two years, they faced fellow expansion teams, Baltimore (1880) and Chicago (1885).
Still, my favorite part has been following the career of 1 player- Tim Stewart. Stewart joined the Philadelphia team at the league's beginning, and led the league in everything that year but wins, because Philadelphia lost a lot that year. But soon he led everything, en route to 5 Pitching Triple Crowns. Yes, 5! And countless best pitcher awards on top of that. But what impressed me most was this. After years with Philly, he went to rival NY, and despite impressive K numbers, he lost a lot of games. Then he went to Chicago, and after a shaky year, he helped lead them to a spot in the playoffs (instituted after there were 8 teams). In the playoffs, he pitched 10 innings for a complete game win. I decided that since he was a free agent approaching 40 (I left free agency on for an 1800s league: oops), I would sign him to Philly as the commish, for one last go round. But the OOTP AI beat me to it. I saw the news item: Stewart goes to Philadelphia. And that has forever endeared me to OOTP. The game recognized a retiring, popular player, and had his original team sign him. And as a reward, he put up a league winning 15 wins, and the team finished 1.5 games out (.5 out of 2nd) after a four way tie had to be resolved with extra tie-breaking games. And after his Best Pitcher award (which I named after him), he was immediately inducted into the HOF- by the game. Making him the league's first HOFer. And I'm thinking that when Philly needs a ballpark expansion, he might just be the one who it's named after.
So just wanted to say thanks for an awesome game. Can't wait to see what other great stories there are.
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