Now, as many of you know, I have been searching for the right kind of random debut league.
One problem in the past was either that there were a lot of good players, but not enough players that I liked that I would want to start my opening team for the league's start.
But I recently realized that I had another problem. When I did draft say, Yankees or Mets players I liked when they played in real life, there was a sense of unreality that took something away from the enjoyment - Bobby Murcer or Don Mattingly, but in 1901 or whatever and with players from the 1960s. It just did not work right for me, at least not for the first decades of a new league.
I realized that part of the problem was that regardless of the makeup of the inaugural draft pool, I would usually end up drafting players that played between say, 1965 and 1995, because I saw them play. So there was no sense of mystery for me, and I was still relying on what I knew, so it may be a random debut league, but there was nothing random about how I drafted.
Trying to let the AI draft for me just resulted in teams that bored me: who wants your favorite player ever in a league, and not draft him?
What to do?
Then it hit me: just include only players from 1901-1960. That is what I did this time.
So for the first few decades ONLY players from 1901-1960 will be included. At some point, once the league has enough history to it to be a realistic world, I will include players from say 1961-2001, and then much later on only more current players.
So initially, while some of the players are famous, and others I know from having had them on virtual teams, as a group the players are largely unknown to me, or have an air of mystery, especially when combined with fictional teams from smaller cities, in an era that preceded my 1960 birth.
The pitchers from the 1950s for example, have a certain working class aura to them - they are probably as good as the 1960s pitchers who had the advantages of the raised mound and increased strike zone, but Robin Roberts, Harvey Haddix, even Warren Spahn don't seem as glamorous as Tom Seaver, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson. So it fits the era somehow, almost in a steampunk way.
I try to never draft the very best players available, in part to give my team a challenge, in part to have the sense of managing a gritty small-town team that has good players but needs to build to be a contender over time.
So I did not draft Stan Musial, or Babe Ruth (aging or no). I did allow myself Yogi Berra, age 20, a great, great player, but catchers (maybe the exception is Johnny Bench) are not really superstars and are not glamorous or showy. Nicknames like "Pudge" or "Yogi" speak to that.
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