Leghe Italiane di Baseball (Serie A football-based alternative to Serie A baseball setup)

[Antonin]

Well, I started a league with the 156 game schedule you suggested. The league begins in 1957, simply because that is the year I was born. I have no interleague play, and use the DH for both sub-leagues. I use reserves.

Of course I took Roma to manage.

I love small fictional leagues like this, because you can really get to know the players. Having such beautiful uniforms helps bring the league to life and makes you want to spend a lot of time with it, and really lose yourself in the story it is telling. Do you have any suggestions for the names of the awards? I'm sorry, I don't speak Italian and would not trust myself to try to translate any award names from English.

Thank you!

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by Antonin

I love small fictional leagues like this, because you can really get to know the players. Having such beautiful uniforms helps bring the league to life and makes you want to spend a lot of time with it, and really lose yourself in the story it is telling. Do you have any suggestions for the names of the awards? I'm sorry, I don't speak Italian and would not trust myself to try to translate any award names from English.

Thank you!

Prego! I'm really glad you're trying this out. I am building a season using the real Serie A players, just by re-naming and changing around the standard teams. I've made 3 levels of minors, but I'm only going to do the logos (with the name extensions for colors). I have 1 level finished as of today and I'll load the logos after this!


I don't really have good information on pro baseball player history in Italia, but I found a page on BR Bullpen about the Italian Baseball Hall of Fame, which (because FIBS is the national organization for pro and amateur baseball and softball) includes softball players too. I clicked around and found a few names that seemed appropriate, and some more contemporary names...


Hitter: Premio Roberto Gandini
Pitcher: Premio Giulio Glorioso (what a great name!)
Reliever: Premio Roberto Cabalisti (I'm friends with him on Facebook, he holds records for games played and is second all time in saves and third in wins)
Rookie: Premio Alberto Rinaldi
Positional Offense: Premio Sal Varriale (another Facebook contact, from Brooklyn but played for Parma and now does MLB/etc Italian language broadcasts in Italia)

Defense Award: Premio Silvano Ambrosioni

Custom Award (for SBs): Premio Roberto DiFranceschi


I always make the championship in my Italian league the Coppa Sandro Pertini, for a former president of the Republic, medal winner in WWI, partisan against the Nazis/fascists during WWII.

[BBGiovanni]

It doesn't make sense to call this "Serie B" unless you play with promotion/relegation, but it sounds better with football teams I think. I chose the next 10 largest/most logical cities for teams. I set them up so the Serie B Settentrionale matches with the Lega Settentrionale and same for the Meridionale, but you could just make one league and let the computer match them up.


As a reminder, these logos use the real city names, but the game recognizes the Anglicized forms. So you'll have to manually load the Venezia logo or name your team Venice when setting the league up, etc.


Serie B Settentrionale


Venezia Lagunari ("Lagoon-eers")


Verona Mastini ("Mastiffs")




Padova Patavini ("Padovans")




Parma Ducali ("Dukes- Parma was a duchy for centuries)




Pisa Torri ("Towers", of course)




Serie B Meridionale


Cagliari Isolani ("Islanders", from Sardegna)




Taranto Delfini ("Dolphins")


Catania Elefanti





Messina Giallorossi ("Yellow-reds")




Perugia Grifoni ("Griffons")






NOTE: When you load these logos the codes should set the colors up so you get dark jerseys at home and white on the road. I usually use "vest-stripes" or "vest stripes B" for the jersey and "standard" or "pinstripes" for the caps (for really stripey teams).



Also, I play with the light background/theme, so some of these might not show too well on the dark theme. Better than the Marlins' logo though I bet!

[Antonin]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

...I clicked around and found a few names that seemed appropriate, and some more contemporary names...


Hitter: Premio Roberto Gandini
Pitcher: Premio Giulio Glorioso (what a great name!)
Reliever: Premio Roberto Cabalisti (I'm friends with him on Facebook, he holds records for games played and is second all time in saves and third in wins)
Rookie: Premio Alberto Rinaldi
Positional Offense: Premio Sal Varriale (another Facebook contact, from Brooklyn but played for Parma and now does MLB/etc Italian language broadcasts in Italia)

Defense Award: Premio Silvano Ambrosioni

Custom Award (for SBs): Premio Roberto DiFranceschi


I always make the championship in my Italian league the Coppa Sandro Pertini, for a former president of the Republic, medal winner in WWI, partisan against the Nazis/fascists during WWII.

Thank you!

[BBGiovanni]

Serie C Lega Meridionale

Salerno Granati (Garnets)


Foggia Satanelli (you can guess)


Sassari Torres (Towers)


Reggio (di Calabria) Amaranti (Maroons)


Benevento Stregoni (Sorcerers)

Serie C Lega Settentrionale

Brescia Rondinelle (Sparrows) (yes they're also called "Leoni" but I didn't want more than one Lions team in the league)


Livorno Labronici (Livornans) (note: someone decided the English equivalent of Livorno is "Leghorn", so that's what's in the database for the city)


Ravenna Leoni (Lions)



Trieste Alabardati (Halberdiers)


Modena Canarini (Canaries)

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by Antonin

Thank you!

Prego!
Watching games today, I realized that I probably picked the wrong team from Modena. Sassuolo (sa-SWOH-low) is a smaller town outside Modena whose team played their way into Serie A early this decade and is a real spoiler. Their new stadium is actually in Reggio nell'Emilia, another nearby city I hadn't included, so between all this and the dull Modena logo, I'm going to switch them out. They also have a great team song by famous rock star Filippo "Nek" Neviani, from Sassuolo himself.

Sassuolo Neroverdi ("Black-greens"; the English wiki also says "Watermelon Peels", but I suspect that's vandalism since there's nothing about it on the Italian page and a faulty/googlebot translation).

[Antonin]

Those Serie B logos are so nice, I might have to scrap my Italian League and restart it as a promotion-relegation league.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by Antonin

Those Serie B logos are so nice, I might have to scrap my Italian League and restart it as a promotion-relegation league.

I know the real Serie A baseball teams aren't exactly well-funded, but some of their logos aren't much to look at. And I know they need the sponsorship money, but the corporate names are dull too. It isn't fair to compare them to the football teams that have been around for 100 years, but the colors and symbols are really great for those teams.

[BBGiovanni]

I finally got a chance to pull together the teams for Serie D. These are smaller cities, but I cherry-picked some of the more interesting-looking teams, and chose a couple of smaller cities that have (or have recently had) Serie A football sides.



This completes the project... I'm going to start a new season up using Dogzilla's edited names project, and hopefully the Italian names will be way more diverse and accurate than the default ones, which I found really broke immersion because so many were obscure or silly. In bocca al lupo!

Serie D Settentrionale

Monza Brianzoli ("Brianzans", a province north of Milano)



Trento Aquilotti (Eagles)



SPAL Estensi (Società Polisportiva Ars et Labor), from Ferrara and recently relegated out of Serie A



Udinese Zebrette ("little zebras" from the lovely city of Udine in Friuli, between Venice and Trieste)



Atalanta Orobici (named for an ancient Alpine tribe, from Bergamo, Serie A)




Serie D Meridionale

Crotone Pitagorici ("Pythagoreans", for a famous ancient resident of Crotone)



Lecce Salentini ("Salentinans")



Catanzaro Magico



Siracusa Aretusei ("Arathusans, for the Greek nymph; remember that OOTP calls this city Syracuse)



Pescara Delfini (Dolphins)

[Antonin]

In OOTP22 I set up a pro-rel league, with Italia Serie A at the top and Italia Serie B below them. This is the first serious pro-rel league I've done, and I'm not sure how it will work. I maybe need to check if the financial model in Italia Serie B needs to be adjusted. Isn't it usually the case that lower league teams earn less money than upper league teams because of TV deals?

Anyway, playing pro-rel brings a new level of tension to everything. My Roma is just one spot above the relegation zone right now, in early June 1957. I did not make jerseys for any Italia Serie B teams, but will make jerseys for the 2 teams that get promoted at the end of the season.

Do you have any suggestions for award names for Serie B? Historical figures, perhaps? People who are revered by today's Italians? My Italian history is a little shaky beyond AD 476, the year Odoacer deposed the young Romulus Augustulus.

In my league I consider Napoli to be Roma's rival. Are there any other Roma rivals in real-life football? I did some google searching but could not find any.

These jerseys you made look really beautiful in OOTP22, especially with the facegen zoom setting "more jersey." I hope a lot of people will use them.

[BBGiovanni]

I'm SO happy someone likes these!I love hearing about other setups, and once I figure out installing Dogzilla's namesets I'm going to re-start my setup. I made some mistakes anyway within the league (I set up an association for a playoff with the US Independent Leagues against the international leagues, and that wrecked all the roster rules for the other leagues ).

Originally Posted by Antonin

In OOTP22 I set up a pro-rel league, with Italia Serie A at the top and Italia Serie B below them. This is the first serious pro-rel league I've done, and I'm not sure how it will work. I maybe need to check if the financial model in Italia Serie B needs to be adjusted. Isn't it usually the case that lower league teams earn less money than upper league teams because of TV deals?

If you search for a thread by andyhdz he talks about some tweaks to the finances to make. In my big US prom/rel, I just used the global financial coefficient adjustment, and reduced it by one step (10%? I forget) for each league below. Apparently the automatic promotion is ok, but if you manually promote teams based on how they win a postseason playoff the system can get bungled (or did in v.21). Remember to set the reputation levels for lower leagues that way too. And if you want more pro players to go there consider setting the league to "major league" instead of "international", because apparently that setting is more important than the reputation for free agent decisions.

Originally Posted by Antonin

Anyway, playing pro-rel brings a new level of tension to everything. My Roma is just one spot above the relegation zone right now, in early June 1957. I did not make jerseys for any Italia Serie B teams, but will make jerseys for the 2 teams that get promoted at the end of the season.

It's cool you started in the 50s! I had the same idea for my game, do the unis over time, but now I'm thinking I'd rather have a minor league setup. It will be a while before I rebuild and restart playing though, so I hope you keep sharing some details of your playthrough. And yes, I'm even more convinced now MLB would be greatly improved if owners couldn't just sell their players and collect revenue finishing in the back of the pack every year.

Originally Posted by Antonin

Do you have any suggestions for award names for Serie B? Historical figures, perhaps? People who are revered by today's Italians? My Italian history is a little shaky beyond AD 476, the year Odoacer deposed the young Romulus Augustulus.

I don't have particular suggestions for the award naming, but you have a good idea of theming the awards for the lower level. You could pick a science theme and name them after Galileo, Marconi, etc. I"m not sure how you'd fill out a list of Italians revered by current Italians though IF you only need to fill out Serie B, you could use Italoamericano players: DiMaggio, Piazza, Tony Lazzeri, Johnny Antonelli, Rocky Colavito, Tony Conigliaro, Mark Belanger, Danny Gardella, who tried to save baseball from itself, and my hero Yogi

And Creepy Crespi, my new favorite player! According to the wiki, he was drafted and broke his leg 3 times in WWII and was burned by medical malpractice so that he could never play again. (Thanks for leading me to look this stuff up, I had never heard of him!). Anyway, there are a lot of good giocatori italoamericani you could use, and in my fictional universes I usually assume guys like that played in Italia after their US career ends or outright. But it's reasonable to think that the LIB would have incorporated them into their Hall of Fame. Many probably qualify for citizenship IRL!

Originally Posted by Antonin

In my league I consider Napoli to be Roma's rival. Are there any other Roma rivals in real-life football? I did some google searching but could not find any.

So, I made this more difficult for you than I probably should have. In Italia, most of the bigger cities have two teams in Serie A. So, Torino has Torino and Juventus, Genova has Genoa and Sampdoria, Milano has AC Milan and Inter, and Roma has the Lupi and SS Lazio. They adopted the word "derby" from English when they adopted to the game, so the two games per season between each of these pairs is the city's "derby", and no matter how good or bad either team is, it's war! Moreso if they meet in the Champions League or Coppa Italia or something.

Napoli is much larger than most of those cities, but for reasons unknown to me they have only one team. They consider Juventus (Torino) to be their main rival, but lots of teams do because Juve is basically the Yankees of Serie A. I have heard stories from Napuletani about the horrible songs other teams' fans sing (one in particular calling for Vesuvius to erupt and wash the streets of Napule clean of all the human and garbage filth etc.), and of course there is the historic north v. south prejudice in that and other things.

I'm not sure how to fictionalize this setup on that point. I'd think that most teams would dislike Roma as the home of that government that's always telling everyone what to do/full of corrupt politicians/etc. etc. Napoli would probably have a big rivalry with Milan and/or Torino, because of the nasty stuff in the above paragraph and because so many southerners have migrated north to work/live permanently. I think that would look a little like Yankee/Mets fandom in NY, with some families rooting for their hometown team and others (boyfriends/daughter in law/transplants) still rooting for the visitors from the south. But rivalries are pretty random too, and they'd probably develop over time among whichever teams battle for the top of Serie A year after year.

The other wild card is Nettuno, it's their capital of baseball and close to Roma, so that would be a logical rival of Roma I think. Especially if they win a lot

Originally Posted by Antonin

These jerseys you made look really beautiful in OOTP22, especially with the facegen zoom setting "more jersey." I hope a lot of people will use them.

I hope so too. There's so much upheaval from year to year in Italian baseball that teams like Nettuno come and go at random, and I'm not sure that some of these added this year can sustain themselves over time. I think they've started doing prom/rel again, so a lot of these sides will sink back down quickly I bet. Going all-fictional (even if you just replace the current teams with these) will probably make for more immersion than real life! :P

Anyway, sorry to go on but I'm glad someone else likes to imagine a strong league in Italia! Buona giornata

Edit: and thanks for reminding me about changing the facegen view, I was just testing some uniforms yesterday and mad I couldn't see more of them... :/

[BBGiovanni]

Once I get the new names installed, I'm going to try to keep the league I have and just use the "randomize name" function for each existing player with a dumb/unrealistic name. So I don't have to start over...


Also, I entertain myself by going through the player lists and adding Italian second nationality guys to those with Italian names that don't have it already. I also unretire Barry Zito and give him 2nd nationality, he is ok for mopup in Serie A even at his advanced age

[20_range]

I was searching for something else, but I found this league. Great thread! Replying so people can look at it.

[BBGiovanni]

Thanks, maybe my favorite project ever

[Eugene Church]

Outstanding work, BBDiGiovanni... your Italian League set of logos are as good as they get.

I may even change my Taranto Tars in my Islandian :Pro Alliance to the Taranto Dolfini.

Do you have home and away caps and jerseys for the team?

Are the team colors black and red or navy and red?

[BBGiovanni]

Taranto is red and navy, I only did caps/unis for the Serie A teams

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Taranto is red and navy, I only did caps/unis for the Serie A teams

Thanks for the colors... guess I will be stuck with whatever unis I can create.

[salazar]

wow. I made today, but I'm new to the forum and still don't know how to reply directly or upload some photos. I'll try to post the Reggina one and eventually upload others I have here.

[salazar]

[WooBallFan43]

OMG this is amazing! I'm expanding my Worldwide save to Europe and this is PERFECT. Thank you? Where do I download it and how do I put it into an already existing save?