[Pelican]

Wow, respect to each of you for facing the challenge of learning a game that is new to you. I never really considered it, but OOTP presupposes familiarity with baseball rules, traditions, and statistics. Many of us have played and coached and watched hundreds of games. The good news is that the basics of the game are simple. It’s the strategy that can be complex. Sort of like chess in that respect. If chess players kept detailed stats going back 150 years.

The good news is that OOTP is adaptable to virtually any level of challenge. One way to start might be to set up a replay of the 2022 Season, same rosters, same schedule, letting the AI act as field manager (game strategy) and general manager (trades, financials, player development) for all teams. That way, you could watch individual games and get a feel for play, see what the managers do, see how the players perform. After the game is over, you can examine the boxscore, and begin to understand how statistics are compiled, and what they mean. Then you can look at scores from all games, standings, statistics, transactions, milestones, going day by day. At any point - if you are playing in “commissioner” mode, you could take over one of the teams. Think of this as purely practice and getting a feel for the game play. Results are not important, yet.

Glad to hear there is a YouTube series on baseball. You could do worse than to watch the Ken Burns series for PBS (in the U.S.) for the history of the game.

One thing I’d strongly suggest is getting out to watch an actual game. MLB would be great, or better yet Spring Training. But any organized game will help you make sense of things, down to Little League. The rules are basically the same. Depending upon where you are, you might be in season. I hope so.