OOTP is like Fantasy Baseball on steroids...(oops! bad choice of words
). The point being, fantasy baseball has no graphics yet millions of statheads play it competitively every year. OOTP only seems like a niche game mostly due to lack of exposure. I'm willing to bet that if fantasy players knew this was an option and that Winter is non-existent in OOTP, they would flock to this game by the 10's of thousands. I personally am a
'fantasy baseball to OOTP' convert as I found OOTP played out games, standings and stats much more compelling than the stat compilation competition found in fantasy leagues. I ran the Asahi league for several years as a fantasy league and then scrapped the fantasy crap for OOTP back in 2004(for which my league became the Asahi2 league). IMO, OOTP needs graphics just about as much as fantasy leagues need graphics.
As far as sounds, I wouldn't mind a bit of an ambiance tune here and there while roaming the interface and pre-game pages as long as it didn't go overboard and become annoying, but all in all, I'm very happy with my pages full of numbers.