Fictional quickstart with 124-year history

[Layton is my Homeboy]

I am making available a fictional quickstart I have been working on for the last couple weeks. My goal was to create a league in 1876 and have the league gradually evolve and expand over time in a manner roughly similar to real life.

The quickstart is packed into a ZIP archive which can be downloaded here (WARNING: the download is extremely large, at about 772 MB - it took me about two-and-a-half hours to upload it). Download and unzip to your quickstart folder to play.

Overview
The American Baseball League begins in 1876 with 16 teams (8 in the American League and 8 in the National League). The initial teams are all concentrated in the northeast. The team locations are based on data from the 1870 US Census. Market sizes and financial information are based on a spreadsheet formula using census populations as a baseline.

Over time, some franchises move from their initial cities to get into growing markets. Further, the league gradually expands to 32 teams. The overall pattern of migration and expansion is designed to be roughly analogous to real life; for example, the first few teams to move to the west coast do so in 1960 (IRL, the Dodgers moved to LA in 1958). The financial model is designed to give a competitive advantage to larger market teams. Again, this is intended to be roughly analogous to real life.

Uniforms and player photos are intended to be era-sensitive. Clubs in 1876 wear old-skool uniforms and the pictures are in sepia tone. Eventually, they change to interwar-era uniforms and black & white photos, and finally to modern uniforms and colour photos. For the early years, only players who reached the all-star game have photos (this is in order to save on space). Modern players should all have photos. One side-effect of not having all of the historical player photos is that when you open the profile of a player who never got a photo, the game will generate one using the modern uniform and settings.

Naturally, league totals, financials, and creation modifiers were set to auto-adjust each season, although I used a modified financials.txt file in order to strike the desired balance between revenues and player salaries.

The older teams use simple letter-based logos (custom ones, not the default game-generated ones). Modern teams have logos which I selected from cephasjames' collection. Most have custom uniforms, although I didn't spend as much time as I wanted to setting up all the uniforms.

The stadia are based on the MLB2K10: The Show stadium pack. Where my universe had a team in the same city as the MLB, I used the same stadium (eg the San Francisco Seals play at AT&T Park). For the rest, I basically randomly assigned unused and classic MLB parks.

For most of the history of the universe, there were no minor leagues (this was done to save space). They were added in the early 2000's (2003, IIRC). I didn't have the time to set up customized, realistic minors. Consequently, the minor leagues are all split into the game default SL1 & SL2, and all minor league teams have game-generated logos, etc.

The quickstart begins in November 2009, just after the expansion draft for the new Las Vegas Outlaws and San Antonio Longhorns. If I had been thinking, I would have made the quickstart before the expansion draft to give managers the option of taking over a new club from day 1. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking.

League Structure
The league structure is as follows. After each team, I have included the year established, playoff appearances, and championships, as well as any previous names.

AL East
Atlanta Mudcats (established 1876; 16 playoffs; 5 championships; previously: Louisville Sluggers, Indianapolis Colts)
Baltimore Wildcats (1876; 12; 5; Baltimore Browns)
Boston Athletics (1876; 22; 9)
Miami Marlins (1969; 9; 1)
New York Black Sox (1876; 54; 26; New York Black Stockings)

AL Central
Cleveland Cardinals (1876; 7; 4; Cleveland Green Stockings)
Dallas Desperados (1959; 12; 2)
Detroit Dragons (1876; 20; 6; Detroit Knickerbockers)
Kansas City Knights (1876; 8; 2; Buffalo Haymakers)
Minneapolis Saints (1876; 22; 9; Providence Blues)

AL West
Denver Mountaineers (1959; 10; 0)
Las Vegas Outlaws (2010 expansion team)
Riverside Tigers (1987; 7; 3)
Sacramento Eagles (1987; 8; 0)
San Antonio Longhorns (2010 expansion team)
Seattle Hawks (1969; 6; 0)

NL East
Philadelphia Liberty (1876; 30; 9; Philadelphia Minutemen, Philadelphia Americans)
Pittsburgh Railers (1876; 20; 9)
Tampa Sharks (1969; 3; 0)
Virginia Blue Claws [Norfolk] (1977; 4; 0)
Washington Senators (1876; 12; 2)

NL Central
Chicago Bulldogs (1876; 46; 12; Chicago Pinstripes)
Cincinnati Bobcats (1876; 15; 5; Cincinnati Red Caps)
Memphis Blues (1962; 2; 0)
Milwaukee Badgers (1998; 3; 0)
St. Louis Jays (1876; 15; 5; St. Louis White Caps)

NL West
Houston Bandits (1977; 2; 0)
Los Angeles Pirates (1876; 32; 13; Newark Bridegrooms, Newark Dodgers)
Phoenix Phantoms (1969; 7; 3)
Portland Lancers (1998; 0; 0)
San Diego Cutters (1962; 13; 2)
San Francisco Seals (1876; 8; 2; Rochester Reds, Omaha Barnstormers, New Orleans Jazz)

If I had to do it all over again...
I rushed through this league in some ways because I was pushing to get it done before I start a new job on Monday. As a result, there were some things that didn't get done quite the way I wanted. The following is a list of a few things I would want to do differently if I started again from scratch:

• I ended up having to tweak the financial model from the original for two reasons. First, the disparity between big-market and small-market teams was larger than I wanted (at one point, the New York club won about 13 championships in 14 years before I intervened to weaken them). Second, my original spreadsheet made the markets too large in general. The median market size was 7 in my original spreadsheet. I ended up having to tweak the formula to get a median market size of 5 (what the game calls "average").
• The market sizes are based on US Census data. From 1950 to present, it is based on CMA's, which include suburban areas (this was done to reflect the fact that some cities would be grossly under-sized without including their suburban populations). Prior to 1950, the market sizes are based on city-limits populations only. Where data were unavailable (and also for post 2000 figures), I tried to extrapolate based on the data I had. I could have probably gotten more accurate numbers with a bit more time and research.
• With more time, I would have spent the time to customize the minor leagues to be more realistic (ie have a couple leagues at each level, grouped geographically, and with custom logos). In the same vein, I would have liked to spend more time working on the uniforms for the big league clubs.
• I accidentally switched off the all-star game for a number of years. This thwarted my technique of piggy-backing on the baseball cards to generate player photos selectively.
• If doing this again, I would want to find some creative ways to minimize the file sizes. For example, since there were no minors I had to use a reserve roster. Looking back, I probably could have just used a smaller reserve roster size and smaller draft pool to limit to total number of players in the database. Another idea is to turn down the statistical detail level for the early game since, realistically, I don't really care about career batter vs. pitcher matchups of players from the 1870's. In fact, I could probably dial down the detail level or "normal", which still gives all of the major splits I would personally ever care about (R/L, home/away, monthly).

Anyway, please feel free to download the quickstart and try it out if you are interested. And please feel free to leave me any feedback you have.

p.s. Watch out for the St. Louis Jays' second baseman. I hear he's a pretty solid hitter.

[cooper_gd]

Gonna try it. Thanks!

[tdean001]

Thanks, man... Looks great.