The Game's Gone Global: My Fictional Baseball Universe

[WooBallFan43]

Now I could start off with a massive, long-winded speech about some alternate universe where baseball reigns supreme, but who wants to hear that? Especially when that's simply not true. So with that unadorned intro, I welcome you to my fictional baseball universe.

Stretching around the globe, from Anchorage to Auckland, Belfast to Boston, baseball is truly global. All teams and leagues are fictional (with some exceptions abroad, I'll get into those when we get there) and the save is still under development as I continue making/finding branding for an ever expanding list of teams and leagues. But I'm happy to share the league structures and teams, with branding for teams that already have them, here for everyone to use. If you want to help out and make branding for the missing teams, feel free to share them. Feel free to take whatever you need for your own endeavors too. I'm also open to some name changes for certain teams so, please, I would love to get some feedback on them and the project as a whole.

I've made a slideshow documenting the entire baseball system here updated whenever I feel like continuing this project: https://docs.google.com/presentation...it?usp=sharing
Key for Slideshow:
Underlined means branding has been secured and that team is "done"
Italicized means team exists in real life

This series is heavily inspired by j.tom, whose Wide World of Baseball wholly inspired this crazy adventure, and many thanks to all the talented graphics/stadium creators whose work I've asked for/stolen over these last few months. (I'll shout out specifics when I post the teams). And finally, my heartfelt thanks to Lukas, Markus, and the entire OOTP community. This is one of the best communities on the internet and combined with a simple forum that doesn't take up 3/4 of my computer's memory and crashes every second, (Cough, cough, Sportslogos.net) leads to a worthwhile user experience and makes it easy for new users to join an always expanding community.

With that out of the way, let's go to the preeminent league system in the world: the United States Baseball League. I'll see you there.

[WooBallFan43]

This is the list of leagues and will be continuously updated as I add on to this:

UNITED STATES BASEBALL LEAGUE (US/Canada)
Tier 1: Major League Baseball (MLB)
Tier 2: National Baseball Championship (NBC)
Tier 3: American Baseball League (ABL)
Tier 4: Frontier Baseball Association (FBA)


ANZAC League (Australia/NZ)


Japanese Professional Baseball Organization (JPBO) (All thanks to tehsuigi)


The Euro Leagues Leagues separated by country (i.e. Paris is never playing Liverpool)
British Isles Baseball League (British Isles)
Championnat National de Baseball (France)



POTENTIAL LEAGUES YET TO BE MADE
Leghe Italiane di Baseball Serie A-D (Italy) Not in the game as I've yet to find a template for it. Might have to make it myself.
Canada
Benelux League Got the cities, just need to get names.
Korea
Caribbean and/or Mexico Probably might just steal 20_range's Liga del Caribe ATP
India
Iberia

[WooBallFan43]

Before we get into listing the teams, I just want to say that pretty much all of these team names were made with the help of ChatGPT. I also made 7 logos with AI before I realized that it looks tacky and stopped. (Didn't help that Chat got significantly worse at following my instructions, often being a hinderance instead of a helper) If AI logos offput you, I completely understand (same here), but what's done is done and I'm not changing them.


The USBL. The league system that American baseball runs through. 4 tiers of pro-rel goodness allows any of the 102 teams scattered across the map to win the highest league in the land, and in extension, the world. Here's how the system works:

Tier 1: Major League Baseball (MLB) (Tier 1) (20 Teams, 2 Relegated)
Tier 2: National Baseball Championship (NBC) (Tier 2) (24 Teams, 2 Promoted, 2 Relegated)
Tier 3: American Baseball League (ABL) (Tier 3) (26 Teams, 2 Conferences [East, West], 1 Promoted per Conference, 2 Relegated per Conference)
Tier 4: Frontier Baseball Association (FBA) (Tier 4) (32 Teams, 4 Divisions [Northeast, South, West, Midwest], 1 Promoted per Division)

As you can see this is heavily inspired by European soccer and particularly the Premier League, the best league in the world. Think of the USBL as the EFL of baseball in this universe. Unlike soccer, however, every league has playoffs, as we can all agree the best thing in sports is playoff baseball. So here's the playoff system for each league.

MLB: Top 8 teams make it, simple playoffs from there to determine a champion.
NBC: Same format as MLB, but the 2 teams that make it to the championship series are promoted.
ABL: 2 Conferences, Top 4 teams from each conference make it. Again, the 2 teams that make it to the championship series are promoted.
FBA: 4 Divisions, Top 2 from each division make it and battle against each other in the first round to decide promotion. The rest is purely for pride and glory.
First round series are 3 games, Divisionals are 5, and LCS/World Series go 7.

As you can see, the playoffs decide promotion, not the regular season. Sure, you can have a great year and get the 1 seed with 100 wins. But you're not guaranteed promotion. You still might lose to the 82 win 8 seed in the first round. A fate that is scarily common in the game, at least according to Reddit.

Now that we got the overall league format set, lets meet the teams, starting with the top tier, Major League Baseball.

[WooBallFan43]

The MLB. 20 teams, one goal. To win the World Series. Here are the contenders:

New York Empire — New York, NY
Detroit Forge — Detroit, MI
Houston Eclipse — Houston, TX
Chicago Racketeers — Chicago, IL
Los Angeles Stars — Los Angeles, CA
Dallas Wranglers — Dallas, TX
Miami Vice — Miami, FL
Seattle Navigators — Seattle, WA
San Diego Breakers — San Diego, CA
Philadelphia Framers — Philadelphia, PA
Boston Minutemen — Boston, MA
Denver Bighorns — Denver, CO
Minnesota Frostbite — Minneapolis, MN
St. Louis Explorers — St. Louis, MO
Atlanta Dreamers — Atlanta, GA
San Francisco Quake — San Francisco, CA
Washington Federalists — Washington, D.C.
Baltimore Barons — Baltimore, MD
Cleveland Guitars — Cleveland, OH
Toronto Cypher — Toronto, ON

[WooBallFan43]

This set is just a better version I made of the OOTP generated logo using eriqjaffe's logo maker. Very simple with only 2 colors. Red represents the red carpet the "stars" walk on. They play at the Great Western Coliseum made by Flying_Canuck.

[WooBallFan43]

Taking the field at Calvert Park, this set I took from a 2K default expansion team redesign by Reddit user Guiseppecef (Wordmark coming soon, on my other computer)

[WooBallFan43]

This one's a recolored version of one of cephasjames' generic logos. I recolored it to match the OOTP generated logo which works beautifully as a hat logo.

[tehsuigi]

Thanks for including the JPBO! I'm still immensely proud of it. Best of luck on your project!

[WooBallFan43]

Originally Posted by tehsuigi

Thanks for including the JPBO! I'm still immensely proud of it. Best of luck on your project!

Thank you! It's the epitome of what an international league should be. Culturally aware and fun.

[WooBallFan43]

Pretty simple here, paying homage to Lewis and Clark. Again took from cephasjames.

[WooBallFan43]

I made it a goal to not use any real life names in this (i.e. No Expos for Montreal or any former minor league teams like NOLA Pelicans). But I didn't realize that the logo I found in cephasjames is from the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes until it was in the game. I'm not changing it, but, oh well. They play at Richter Park.

[WooBallFan43]

We come to the first AI logo. *sigh* Up close it looks a bit scuffed but in-game it's not bad. They play at eriqjaffe's Surf Park.

[WooBallFan43]

And here's the second. I used the hat logo from the Astros Space City Connects as the hat logo for the Eclipse.

[WooBallFan43]

Again taken from cephasjames.

[WooBallFan43]

This one I actually found off of a random Pinterest post when I was looking for Miami Vice baseball logos. And yes, the team is owned by James "Sonny" Crockett in-game. (Will post screenshot later, on my other computer) Also here's the full background because I know people like to use these. Not me though. Makes the text illegible.

[WooBallFan43]

Alright, now we're headed to the second tier with the NBC. Here's the list of the 24 teams:

Phoenix Firewalkers — Phoenix, AZ
Utah Snowrunners — Salt Lake City, UT Definitely needs a name change, welcome to any name ideas. Want to keep the Winter Sports theme.
Brooklyn Dockers — Brooklyn, NY
Austin Datarunners — Austin, TX
Tampa Bay Surge — Tampa, FL
Oakland Uprising — Oakland, CA
Kansas City Reign — Kansas City, MO
Indianapolis Overdrive — Indianapolis, IN
Pittsburgh Puddlers — Pittsburgh, PA
Portland Lumberjacks — Portland, OR
Milwaukee Barrelers— Milwaukee, WI
Cincinnati Gorillas — Cincinnati, OH
Orlando Thrillseekers — Orlando, FL
Anaheim Imagineers — Anaheim, CA
Buffalo Currents — Buffalo, NY
Omaha Oracles — Omaha, NE
New Orleans Spirit Kings — New Orleans, LA
Montréal Voyageurs — Montréal, QC
Vancouver Chinook — Vancouver, BC
Halifax Barricade — Halifax, NS
San Antonio Alamos — San Antonio, TX
Las Vegas 21s — Las Vegas, NV
Nashville Rhythm — Nashville, TN
Carolina Reapers — Charlotte, NC

[WooBallFan43]

Again from cephasjames, but this time representing the city, not necessarily the team name. Think of their jerseys like Globe Life Park era Texas: No Rangers in sight.

[WooBallFan43]

Playing in the Gorilla Cage, this cephasjames logo is perfect for a Harambe inspired team. Plus their away jerseys are silver! (And if anyone can figure out how to make Harambe the owner in-game that would be funny as heck )

[WooBallFan43]

And now we welcome you to BC Place, again made by Flying_Canuck. Home of the Vancouver Chinook, set taken again from cephasjames, they have some of the best branding in the USBL. Not bad for a second division team!

[WooBallFan43]

For this one I just used Owgust as the main logo. Simple. Nothing really to add.