Ghana: Hot bed of baseball, or just a local I can't find on the map?

megamanmatt · 04-21-2010, 05:14 AM

Haha, sorry for the odd title. I just am amazed how many players in my leagues end up from Ghana. Even with draft classes being made up of 1% foreign players there's still one, he was a hidden player though, not a draftee. So, as to the point of this, where is the weirdest, or what you consider the weirdest, places you get a lot of players from, or a particular good player from?

MrEndshiftresign · 04-21-2010, 05:45 AM

I just recently had a player drafted from Uganda. He didn't stick around for long, though...

attackemu · 04-21-2010, 02:12 PM

Ghana is in West Africa, in case you ever need that information again.

Who Killed Kenny? · 04-21-2010, 02:53 PM

I changed my baseball abity setting from "Non Existent" to "Poor" for most countries. So I am not surprised when I have a Ghanan baseball player. I also have Mars as a country, so I even get Martians....

BTW, this thread reminds me of the ones from 2006 when we first got all these countries. A Ghana league was used as the example.

attackemu · 04-21-2010, 04:49 PM

I did just notice how Ghana is rated FAIR for some reason as a baseball country. Man, the initial country ratings are terrible.

BMW · 04-21-2010, 04:49 PM

I always like players from obscure countries. They tend to occur more frequently in OOTP, but that can be controlled by the setting.

Currently, my online league has just under 5,000+ players in it. I looked at Baseball Reference and filtered out any country that had more than one MLB representative from 1950-2010.

These are my obscure (only in the baseball talent sense) countries, and their Baseball Quality:
8 players from Argentina. [Average]
2 players from Bolivia. [Poor]
16 players from Brazil. [Average]
1 player from Brunei [Poor] (Eko Kartini!)
9 players from Chile. [Poor]
10 players from Costa Rica. [Good]
1 player from Cyprus [Poor] (Timon Tsirimokos!)
7 players from El Salvador. [Average]
1 player from Guam [Poor] (Nick Rankins!)
11 players from Guatemala. [Average]
2 players from Honduras. [Fair]
10 players from Italy. [Average]
1 player from Malaysia [Poor] (Eko Bintang!)
2 players from Malta [Poor]
1 player from Russia. [Fair] (Valery Lajentsev!)
1 player from Slovakia [Poor] (Andel Sicak!)
1 player from Tunisia [Poor] (Nazeem bin Mu'ayyad!)
10 players from South Africa. [Average]

Cryomaniac · 04-21-2010, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by attackemu

I did just notice how Ghana is rated FAIR for some reason as a baseball country.

Inside joke perhaps?

BMW · 04-21-2010, 04:56 PM

Here is the actual breakdown of the minors last year:

Code:

USA                   3919 55.78  Excellent
D.R.                  1544 21.98  Excellent
Venezuela             840  11.96  Excellent
Unknown               684  9.74   n/a
P.R.                  135  1.92   Excellent
Canada                94   1.34   Excellent
Mexico                92   1.31   Excellent
Panama                79   1.12   Excellent
Colombia              54   0.77   Excellent
Australia             52   0.74   Excellent
Cuba                  32   0.46   Excellent
Netherlands Antilles  24   0.34   Good
Nicaragua             24   0.34   Good
Taiwan                22   0.31   Good
Japan                 16   0.23   Excellent *
South Korea           16   0.23   Excellent *
Brazil                11   0.16   Average               
Netherlands           11   0.16   Average
Haiti                 9    0.13   Average
Argentina             8    0.11   Average
South Africa          6    0.09   Average
Germany               4    0.06   Fair
Italy                 4    0.06   Fair
St. Maarten           4    0.06   Fair
Virgin Islands        3    0.04   Fair
El Salvador           3    0.04   Fair
Saudi Arabia          3    0.04   Fair
Czech Republic        3    0.04   Fair
Aruba                 2    0.03   Poor
India                 2    0.03   Poor
Honduras              2    0.03   Poor
Ecuador               1    0.01   Poor
Canary Islands        1    0.01   Poor
England               1    0.01   Poor
Guatemala             1    0.01   Poor
Belgium               1    0.01   Poor
Bahamas               1    0.01   Poor
Azores                1    0.01   Poor
New Zealand           1    0.01   Poor

Jamaica (3 MLB Players from 1980-present) Fair
Virgin Islands (3 MLB Players from 1980-present) Fair

Spain (2 MLB Players from 1980-present) Poor
France (2 MLB Players from 1980-present) Poor !

Guam (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor
British Honduras (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor ^
Russia (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor ^
Scotland (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor ^

Afghanistan (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !
Belgium (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !
Indonesia (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !
Philippines (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !
Saudi Arabia (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !
Singapore (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !
Vietnam (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !


* Merits Excellent due to quality of their own sports leagues.  
  May want to reduce to Good to get your MLB players to be
  in-line with the actual MLB

! May be US Expatriate Family  May want to consider Non-Existant.

^ May produce more than one player.  May want to consider
  Non-Existant.

24Rocks · 04-21-2010, 05:14 PM

Auguilla- 1 Brandon Dorey (Non Existent)
Plus other host of people from countries that have Non Existent Raiting, I go looking for this so ya i find a lot.

attackemu · 04-21-2010, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BMW

Here is the actual breakdown of the minors last year:

Code:

USA                   3919 55.78                 
D.R.                  1544 21.98                 
Venezuela             840  11.96                 
Unknown               684  9.74                  
P.R.                  135  1.92                  
Canada                94   1.34                  
Mexico                92   1.31                  
Panama                79   1.12                  
Colombia              54   0.77                  
Australia             52   0.74                  
Cuba                  32   0.46                  
Netherlands Antilles  24   0.34                  
Nicaragua             24   0.34                  
Taiwan                22   0.31                  
Japan                 16   0.23                  
South Korea           16   0.23                  
Brazil                11   0.16                  
Netherlands           11   0.16                  
Haiti                 9    0.13                  
Argentina             8    0.11                  
South Africa          6    0.09                  
Germany               4    0.06                  
Italy                 4    0.06                  
St. Maarten           4    0.06                  
Virgin Islands        3    0.04                  
El Salvador           3    0.04                  
Saudi Arabia          3    0.04                  
Czech Republic        3    0.04                  
Aruba                 2    0.03                  
India                 2    0.03                  
Honduras              2    0.03                  
Ecuador               1    0.01                  
Canary Islands        1    0.01                  
England               1    0.01                  
Guatemala             1    0.01                  
Belgium               1    0.01                  
Bahamas               1    0.01                  
Azores                1    0.01                  
New Zealand           1    0.01

Nice. Where'd you get those numbers?

BMW · 04-21-2010, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by attackemu

Nice. Where'd you get those numbers?

I do some research on minor league players and aggregate data each year.

Malleus Dei · 04-21-2010, 06:16 PM

I've been to Ghana. Baseball there is sandlot level.

majesty95 · 04-21-2010, 07:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

I've been to Ghana. Baseball there is sandlot level.

I've been to a lot of sandlots. Never seen any Ghanans.

injury log · 04-21-2010, 07:17 PM

It bears mentioning that some real life teams are getting more creative about finding talent internationally. Looking at the real life Pittsburgh Pirates' international signings from the last couple of years:

Gift Ngoepe from South Africa
Dovydas Neverauskas from Lithuania
Dinesh Patel from India
Rinku Singh from India

and the Twins:
Andrei Lobanov from Russia
Max Kepler from Germany

That's just off the top of my head, so I'm sure there are others. Those guys are genuinely from the countries listed; they didn't move to the US as kids or something.

Antonin · 04-21-2010, 07:36 PM

For the last couple of OOTP versions I've played a Ghana League. Backstory: Ernesto 'Che' Guevara visited Ghana in the mid-1960s, met with President Kwame Nkrumah and briefly toured the country. This part is true.

According to my backstory, those discussions with Nkrumah included agreements on cultural cooperation. Which, for Cuba, meant [among other things] sending baseball teams. The Ghanaians decided that they liked the sport, and by the 1970s established a professional league.

My occasional pan-African leagues are based on the same premise--that Cuban cultural goodwill ambassadors or military advisors planted baseball on the continent.

In Liberia's case, my backstory is that US embassy guards popularized the sport.

In my regular US-based OOTP fictional leagues I see a lot of players from unlikely places. The number one starter for my Cleveland team is from Aruba. I've also seen South Africans, Greeks, Dutch, French, and Chinese [from the PRC]. I like it. I enjoy diversity.

Cryomaniac · 04-21-2010, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antonin

For the last couple of OOTP versions I've played a Ghana League. Backstory: Ernesto 'Che' Guevara visited Ghana in the mid-1960s, met with President Kwame Nkrumah and briefly toured the country. This part is true.

According to my backstory, those discussions with Nkrumah included agreements on cultural cooperation. Which, for Cuba, meant [among other things] sending baseball teams. The Ghanaians decided that they liked the sport, and by the 1970s established a professional league.

Ideas like this are what makes OOTP cool.

actionjackson · 04-21-2010, 08:37 PM

If you want to corner the market in that hotbed of baseball activity, might I suggest you send Spritze on a scouting expedition the next time he's there.

Malleus Dei · 04-21-2010, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Ideas like this are what makes OOTP cool.

What makes OOTP cool is that it is a first-class baseball simulations. Ideas like that are what makes Baby Jesus cry.

Spritze · 04-22-2010, 01:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by actionjackson

If you want to corner the market in that hotbed of baseball activity, might I suggest you send Spritze on a scouting expedition the next time he's there.

Oddly enough I am working with the owner of a Short Season Class A baseball team and the United Nations Unicef organization towards the end of bringing a couple of Ashanti tribesmen over to the United States for training and possible signage if they can hit the curveball. I don't expect fruition for a year or two though, glaciers are faster than progress through the U.N.

FYI.... The Ashanti tribal lands in Ghana are the only area of sub-saharan Africa that was never under colonial rule. Many tried, Dutch, English, French, they all failed. Mostly simply because the Ashanti are taught from birth to be polite and not to take any crap from anyone. A lesson we could all learn from.

superdaws · 05-12-2010, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Philippines (1 MLB Player from 1980-present) Poor !

! May be US Expatriate Family May want to consider Non-Existant.

Not necessarily an expat family. There is a very short, 10 games I think, League in the Philippines.

04-21-2010, 05:14 AM	#1
megamanmatt Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Lakeville, Minnesota Posts: 2,416	Ghana: Hot bed of baseball, or just a local I can't find on the map? Haha, sorry for the odd title. I just am amazed how many players in my leagues end up from Ghana. Even with draft classes being made up of 1% foreign players there's still one, he was a hidden player though, not a draftee. So, as to the point of this, where is the weirdest, or what you consider the weirdest, places you get a lot of players from, or a particular good player from? __________________ "The Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles, where there are no lakes; The Oilers moved to Tennessee where there is no oil; the Jazz moved to Salt Lake City where they don't allow music; The Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles and then back to Oakland, no one in Los Angeles seemed to notice." Note to self: Princess Kenny was really off-putting.

04-21-2010, 05:45 AM	#2
MrEndshiftresign Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Cavite, Philippines Posts: 173	I just recently had a player drafted from Uganda. He didn't stick around for long, though... __________________ "Damnation! Fine then, Get me current players, LIVING players. Scour the American League, the National League, the Negro League..." - C. Montgomery Burns

04-21-2010, 02:12 PM	#3
attackemu All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Brooklyn Posts: 972	Ghana is in West Africa, in case you ever need that information again. __________________ "Disguised in EMU's Blunt and sometimes hostile post is actually very sound advice. I think you would be wise to consider what he said." -ihatenames

04-21-2010, 04:49 PM	#5
attackemu All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Brooklyn Posts: 972	I did just notice how Ghana is rated FAIR for some reason as a baseball country. Man, the initial country ratings are terrible. __________________ "Disguised in EMU's Blunt and sometimes hostile post is actually very sound advice. I think you would be wise to consider what he said." -ihatenames

04-21-2010, 05:14 PM	#9
24Rocks All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Scarborough, Ontario, Canada Posts: 808	Auguilla- 1 Brandon Dorey (Non Existent) Plus other host of people from countries that have Non Existent Raiting, I go looking for this so ya i find a lot. __________________ Jonny Former OOTP Online leagues: LOHO: Detroit Tigers ISL: San Diego Padres VSL: Pittsburgh Pirates NPBL: Ohio Raptors/Nova Scotia Fishermen AFBL:Ontario Blue Pirates Check you my YOUTUBE or TWITCH

04-21-2010, 02:53 PM	#4
Who Killed Kenny? Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 410	I changed my baseball abity setting from "Non Existent" to "Poor" for most countries. So I am not surprised when I have a Ghanan baseball player. I also have Mars as a country, so I even get Martians.... BTW, this thread reminds me of the ones from 2006 when we first got all these countries. A Ghana league was used as the example.

04-21-2010, 04:49 PM	#6
BMW Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2003 Location: New Jersey Posts: 2,030	I always like players from obscure countries. They tend to occur more frequently in OOTP, but that can be controlled by the setting. Currently, my online league has just under 5,000+ players in it. I looked at Baseball Reference and filtered out any country that had more than one MLB representative from 1950-2010. These are my obscure (only in the baseball talent sense) countries, and their Baseball Quality: 8 players from Argentina. [Average] 2 players from Bolivia. [Poor] 16 players from Brazil. [Average] 1 player from Brunei [Poor] (Eko Kartini!) 9 players from Chile. [Poor] 10 players from Costa Rica. [Good] 1 player from Cyprus [Poor] (Timon Tsirimokos!) 7 players from El Salvador. [Average] 1 player from Guam [Poor] (Nick Rankins!) 11 players from Guatemala. [Average] 2 players from Honduras. [Fair] 10 players from Italy. [Average] 1 player from Malaysia [Poor] (Eko Bintang!) 2 players from Malta [Poor] 1 player from Russia. [Fair] (Valery Lajentsev!) 1 player from Slovakia [Poor] (Andel Sicak!) 1 player from Tunisia [Poor] (Nazeem bin Mu'ayyad!) 10 players from South Africa. [Average]

04-21-2010, 07:17 PM	#14
injury log Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 9,162	It bears mentioning that some real life teams are getting more creative about finding talent internationally. Looking at the real life Pittsburgh Pirates' international signings from the last couple of years: Gift Ngoepe from South Africa Dovydas Neverauskas from Lithuania Dinesh Patel from India Rinku Singh from India and the Twins: Andrei Lobanov from Russia Max Kepler from Germany That's just off the top of my head, so I'm sure there are others. Those guys are genuinely from the countries listed; they didn't move to the US as kids or something.

04-21-2010, 07:36 PM	#15
Antonin Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Ohio Posts: 2,537	For the last couple of OOTP versions I've played a Ghana League. Backstory: Ernesto 'Che' Guevara visited Ghana in the mid-1960s, met with President Kwame Nkrumah and briefly toured the country. This part is true. According to my backstory, those discussions with Nkrumah included agreements on cultural cooperation. Which, for Cuba, meant [among other things] sending baseball teams. The Ghanaians decided that they liked the sport, and by the 1970s established a professional league. My occasional pan-African leagues are based on the same premise--that Cuban cultural goodwill ambassadors or military advisors planted baseball on the continent. In Liberia's case, my backstory is that US embassy guards popularized the sport. In my regular US-based OOTP fictional leagues I see a lot of players from unlikely places. The number one starter for my Cleveland team is from Aruba. I've also seen South Africans, Greeks, Dutch, French, and Chinese [from the PRC]. I like it. I enjoy diversity. __________________ "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" - Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols), San Francisco, 14 January 1978

04-21-2010, 08:37 PM	#17
actionjackson Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Toronto, ON Posts: 6,181	If you want to corner the market in that hotbed of baseball activity, might I suggest you send Spritze on a scouting expedition the next time he's there.