FOOL Baseball Leagues (Over 200 seasons simmed and counting)

[Alan T]

What is FOOL?

FOOL stands for Front Office Offseason League and is a community of leagues that were originally founded by Dark Cloud several years ago with the purpose of fast-sim Online League play. FOOL's community of leagues consist of OOTP 11 and OOTPX leagues that have in total simmed over 200 seasons combined during their existence.

What makes the FOOL Community so strong?

The FOOL Community consists of many owners that interact with each other across leagues with a high level of forum participation. (Over 600 forum posts in the last week including live sims, discussion, responses and other interaction.) The FOOL Community has a very healthy combination of many beta testers (both past and present) that are always happy to share their strategy or thoughts on the game, as well as newer OOTP players (some of which are in their first online league). While healthy ribbing or competitiveness can be found among the owners, that doesn't prevent anyone from helping out others as the need arises.

FOOL's Fast Sim approach helps increase owner immersion!

One of the greatest selling points for the FOOL leagues is the extra immersion that is possible from our format. In traditional leagues, the slower pace shifts the focus on the day to day moves necessary to try to win now. Often times in other leagues a struggling team leads to owner inactivity as a lengthy rebuilding process could take over a year in Real life time. With FOOL, the focus shifts to team building, player development and the big picture.

Each week, FOOL sims through an entire sim-season of play. The season is broken down into 5 individual sims that cover the important stages of the season. Owners focus on what players to draft while carefully planning which minor league level they should play at. FOOL Owners get to enjoy the task of developing the minor league prospect into a future Major leaguer. They get to decide when to bring the player up to the big leagues and if things work out as well as they hope, some day they could possibly watch their player become an all star or even some day a Hall of Famer!

While this can be done in any online league, only the rare few last the 15-25 seasons necessary to see a single player through. With FOOL, it is common that owners develop severe attachments over their favorite players. A Hall of Fame career can be molded in the course of 5-6 Real life months of FOOL play! No longer do the individual players end up being a mechanism of success, but FOOL owners often struggle with the desire to keep a player until they retire even if better players are available.

FOOL-X Hall of Famer Kien-lung Teng:



FOOL Hall of Fame - 143 members currently
FOOL-X Hall of Fame - 39 members currently


FOOL leagues are setup for competitive balance that gives every owner a chance to succeed or hang themselves!

The real-life several years that we have been doing this has led to what we feel as very competitive rules regarding player transactions and finances. It is entirely possible for an excellent owner to put together a really nice dynasty in the FOOL leagues. (FOOL's Hartford Harpooners made the playoffs 15 out of 16 seasons between 1977 and 1992, and FOOL-X's Spring Lions made the playoffs 13 out of 16 seasons between 1964 and 1980) Our healthy league balance also still gives every team a chance to be competitive from year in and year out. Obviously not every team will always have the same talent levels, but with our quick progression of seasons, any rebuild project is only one Real life month away!


In the 125 seasons of FOOL play, the most titles that any franchise has is only 14. Meanwhile, 6 different franchises have had at least 10 titles during that time. A healthy parity that puts the NFL to shame. Each season, the champions of our leagues have their banner added to our Champion's Row.

The Current FOOL Champion Halifax Winter Wolves:




FOOL Champion's Row
FOOL-X Champion's Row



FOOL baseball is not just downloading and exporting. There is oh so much more!

In addition to the great conversations to be found on our Forums each week, FOOL baseball has many other additions to help add to the overall owner immersion! Each week, the season's sim is run live on the forum at the same time. Members of the league all join in to watch how the season unfolds and to provide their own commentary to events that may occur. We watch for major surprises from both players as well as teams that may shock you. We keep track of major milestones that are passed as well as previously unbeatable records as they are broken.

In addition, FOOL leagues take full advantage of the Statslab Tools written by fhomess that are a great addition to any Online League. With Statslab, we have the full ability to go through time and compare virtually any and every stat that may be of interest.

Each week, the league commissioner's office releases its Pre-season review. The pre-season review lists the commissioner's picks for Player of the Year, Pitcher of the Year, Rookie of the Year as well as a league report card for how well each team is expected to do that season. Digging in a little further, each team has its own report card that lists the previous season award winners, stats leaders, key players lost , key players Aquired, rookies to watch and a pre-season report card for each team broken down by position.

Of course we have the traditional awards every season of All Star game selections, hitter and pitcher of the year, but we put our own twist to it. For the truly great players in our league's history there is always a chance of having one of the league awards named after you. We currently have the FOOL-X Pitcher of the Year award that likely will be ended up being named for this great:

Mauro 'Exorcist' Morales


Our awards don't just stop there. We have our own special awards that are handed out after each season to help honor the "lighter" side of baseball. Awards such as the 'Best Bang for the Buck Award', the 'Home Run or Nothing Award', 'Unluckiest Pitcher Award', 'Running on Empty Award' and many others are given out to those that are most "deserving".


We can't seem to get rid of owners, but how can you learn more about FOOL baseball?

One of the most common comments that our owners make is playing in a fast sim OOTP league totally ruins other slower-paced OOTP leagues for them. Once they experience FOOL, they can't seem to find the same level of excitement or entertainment elsewhere. Our ownership turnover is very low, with some owners having been around since virtually the beginning. It is not uncommon for us to go 6+ months without any openings at all. So it can sometimes be a frustrating task to get into the FOOL leagues.

What should you do if the idea of fast-sim baseball or our FOOL leagues intrigue you? By all means feel free to drop by our league website to check us out:

FOOL Website


You can also take a look at our forums to get a feel for the league. If you still are intrigued or even more curious, I fully welcome PMs or emails at any time. Feel free to drop me a note asking questions about our league or even things that make you curious about the format. I would be fully happy to add good prospective owners to our waiting list, but I am also equally happy in just talking about the leagues, format, OOTP or baseball as a whole.

Come find out why FOOL baseball is unlike any other OOTP experience there is!

[hyde4us11]

As you guys can likely tell by this great write up, the one thing that was left out was the fact our commish is first class. Alan works as hard as anyone I have ever seen as a commish. Might I add he doesn't even run a team in either league. Without any doubt I can say we have the BEST commish in the history of OOTP. You can see first hand if you get yourself on the list and join us. You won't regret the wait you may have thats for sure.

[darkcloud4579]

Once you go fast-sim, you don't go back.

[BHapp]

How do I sign up?

[canadiancreed]

Damn now that is an advertising campaign!