Welcome to the United Leagues of Braeland!
This is a league I first created back in 2007. It was directly inspired by DreamTeams’ wonderful Metro Leagues. However, the fictional island nation of Braeland goes back to my daydreaming high school days. Years later, when I wanted to create a fictional world for my own baseball universe, I merged the two ideas and the United Leagues were born.
Long before the baseball connection, I envisioned Braeland as being a country that experienced a lot of political intrigue, so I developed quite a bit of backstory for it. Then, when I tied in baseball to the narrative, I fleshed out some ‘chapters’ for a fictional book. Most of that stuff I’ve summarized in a timeline, but there is still a few chapters that I would like to include in this dynasty. Thus, at the start, there will be a lengthy timeline and then a bit of non-baseball narrative. I hope you will indulge me.
I’ve played and rebooted the League many times over the years, trying various levels of minor leagues, no minor leagues and playoff formats. I found that I prefer having two levels of minor leagues (AAA & AA) as well as a wildcard format, to keep the pennant races a little more compelling. I will be using the 20 to 80 player rating scale.
The United Leagues comprise of two leagues with 8 teams each, with the top two teams in each league qualifying for the United Cup. Scouting & financials will be on. The reserve clause will be used, at least until the 1960s, or sooner, if I get bored with a lack of free agency. The DH will not be used anywhere, until the 1970s (maybe).
The Amethyst Leagues of Braeland and Heritage Leagues of Braeland constitute the AAA & AA leagues respectively. Originally, those names where just stopgaps until I could think up better names, but I never did, so I might as well take the ‘interim tag’ off of them already.
Since baseball is relatively new to Braeland, the quality of play relative to America will obviously suffer. Thus the few foreign players that make the roster can be viewed as those who couldn’t make the more established Major, Minor or Negro leagues. There will be no inaugural draft; instead the teams each held tryouts for prospective players and signed their own players.
The league begins play in 1937, since that’s the year that sort of fell neatly into the timeline. Up until now, I’ve always used an April to October season, even though it’s set in the Southern Hemisphere. But for this dynasty, I've set Opening Day in October.
The succeeding posts will present the following information:
- A Braeland history timeline,
- Selected chapters from the fictional book (such as the one in the initial post),
- An introduction to the cities and clubs that comprise the United Leagues; their star players and predictions on how well they will fare in the upcoming season,
- Results of Opening Day (finally!)
I plan on being an observer, reporting on the leagues. Whether that’s on a weekly basis or a monthly basis is yet to be determined. This is my first dynasty, so I’m not sure what to expect or what would be the best way to present the information as it develop, so I expect I’ll be going through some growing pains. Any comments, question and/or suggestions will be greatly appreciated!