OK, this may be the lockdown fever taking over but what started as a fairly simple idea for a league soon exploded into the unwieldy mess that I'm about to present.
So, imagine the world at the close of the 70's. Punk has edged out progressive rock on the airwaves and new regional baseball leagues start to pop up all over the United States (and Canada and Mexico too). I haven't decided what happened to the MLB; I'm either ignoring it or pretending that it collapsed when all current and future MLB players disappeared in some kind of rapture event.
So here's the deal.
- Seven Leagues scattered across the United States (with Canada and Mexico making contributions as well).
- They're all small with 8 or 12 teams and play somewhere between 120 to 126 games.
- Schedule starts mid April and the season concludes in September. In October, the 7 winners are all invited to the World Series (along with the defending champion to make it 8 teams) to play a knockout tournament to crown the ultimate champion.
- Players won't be able to transfer between leagues. They sign a deal with their chosen league and they are stuck there for life.
- Each league draws on a different era (starting with the 60's and ending with the 10's) for stats and player creation modifiers.
- Finances are set to 1980 but with a 75% reduction. Inflation then takes over.
- League Evolution is on but expansion, schedule changes, city moves, and nickname changes are disabled.
- No leagues have employed the DH but it is enabled as part of league evolution. The end of year tournament also doesn't use the DH but once a majority of leagues use it then it'll make the switch as well.
- There's no minors and no feeder leagues. Trying to keep the file size down and more focused on what I care about: the majors.
- I'm not American so some of my nicknames might be a little off.
That's it from me. I'll introduce all the leagues and then start with the 1980 season.