Thanks endgame so much for all of your help. Good news!!!!!!
Uninstall and reinstall has fixed the history issue

I'm tired after a long day but decided there was no way I was going to get to sleep if I didn't at least try before going to bed.
They told us how fast v17 was and my initial imports of my league were being completed in about 5 minutes. I thought wow, this is great. My first import on the reinstalled OOPT17 took a lot longer. Not sure how long didn't think of checking when I started. I do know it had been going for a bit and still took 8 more minutes after I started to keep the time so I would guess ~15 minutes or so. I thought this was a good sign that maybe things were going to work out.
Also my initial import had a couple of graphics quirks IE logos, caps, and unis for my Cubs, the Mets, White Sox, and Yankees were not the real MLB gear. They were all game created. On my first import on the reinstalled v17 all of the teams had their real MLB gear and logos. I thought this was another good sign. Clicked on one of my veteran players, crossed my fingers, and hit the history tab.... It was all there
So, yeah something must have happened during installation that corrupted the game. Or maybe the first installation file I got was corrupted during the original d'load?
I don't know but whatever it was has been sorted and I'm up and running again.
Thanks also to Andreas for taking the time to help.
You have a good weekend endgame, thanks again.