How many of you run solo, fictional leagues? - Page 2

kingfc22 · 09-10-2002, 03:42 PM

I have two fictional solo leagues. One I have a team and play every game. Only have 3 years on that one, but the other, all I do is sim and record a bunch of history. That league has over 40 years of hisory and I do find myself attached to certain players and follow their careers closer than others.

Iron Horse · 10-01-2002, 01:02 AM

I definitely get attached to certain players in my fictional league.

The main two are Joseph Friesen, the stud CF I picked in the first round of our initial draft, and Gene Snyder, an over-the-hill pitcher I signed off the league scrap heap. I had a pitcher go down to injury in maybe late May and this 41-year-old free agent won 21 games the rest of the way.

I know I've wished I could sell the rights to Joseph to the actual Reds. Then they could trade Dunn or Kearns for some pitching.

The flip side of this question is, does anyone else develop irrational negative feelings for certain fictional players? John Paz always seems to be taking awards away from Friesen, and he was on our arch-rival. I finally got tired of competing with him and tried to sign him away. He wouldn't even talk to me, didn't care for our organization, even though he did leave our rival for another team. I hate that guy.

Killebrew · 10-01-2002, 04:54 AM

Yes & yes

I create smalltown-style leagues and change the minor league team names to local colleges, high schools and junior highs. I actually had the most fun with a fictional small town fastball league, but I guess that fun was mostly in my mind since OOTP does not care if a baseball or softball is used

.

EvanW · 10-01-2002, 12:59 PM

Definitely.

I just started another fictional league so I could use Cato's OOTPHist to keep track of it. Even in the first year, I got attached to some players. My 37 year-old starter who won 20 games and took the League Pitching award in the first year...sad to watch him decline. In the third year of the sim, I wanted to keep him in the majors during his entire last season, but we were in a pennant race and I couldn't afford his 0-9 record...he ended up down in AA ball.

I replaced him with a prospect who went 5-1 for the rest of the season, and is currently 8-1 at the beginning of June. He's only 25 and I hope he's going to be anchoring my staff for a long time to come.

I don't have a particular player on a different team that I dislike, but somehow there always ends up being one team in the division as an arch-rival. Greensboro's been a thorn in my side ever since I started the league. They've finished second to my first place division wins in all three years simmed so far.

--
Evan
852BL: St. Louis Cardinals
TSTBL: Sacramento Rivercats

Ryan W. · 10-01-2002, 01:03 PM

Yes and Yes. I started one ( and used my utility

), but screwed it up by adding all-time greats to it. Just wasn't the same, so I started it over. Am only in my 3rd month with the new league.

sixto · 10-01-2002, 04:09 PM

how about this...boy, i sure do rarely talk about this stuff out loud. sorry for the long post.

so, 1978. i'm 5 years old and my friend vincent is 7. we play a lot of wiffle ball. we create the "Wiffle Ball League." i strike out nearly every at bat, because i'm 5. my team is the philadelphia fanatics.

we create teams, with made up players. we make lineups before games and announce the games to each other as we play. i decide i don't want to be the philly fanatics anymore. vincent takes over the name. i become the stars. that i recall, i had no geographical affiliation. eventually i settle on houston. houston sucks, they sure do. i lose nearly every game. he "moves" his team to ft. lauderdale.

our family takes summer vacations in wildwood crest, NJ. my 3B becomes chris schellinger, named after schellinger ave in wildwood. vince names his CF joe jawa. yep. as i recall, he was pretty short.

we'd name players after all sorts of things. one day i remember he came home and announced he had a new LF, tony berol. i can only assume he named him after a pencil sharpener he saw in school.

the wiffle ball league expands - i begin making up other teams and players. because i'm a t-baller, i don't name teams the Hawks and the Cougars, but Jojo's Tavern and, more creatively, Jerry's Tavern. i keep page after page of players and statistics, which were all made up. every year i'd have a baseball season in my head. we did actually keep track of the number of homers we hit during the summer in wiffle ball, and those were attributed to the players we named after ourselves. eventually i became a 40-HR hitter. vincent started topping 70, pre-mcgwire.

then he moved to FL for real, but the league never died out in my mind. it flourished (i had a boring, boring childhood). i expanded, i retrocreated teams that had always been there, i created history. without benefit of wallman's utility, even. i renamed it the baseball of america league.

i created it in microleague (but inadvertently deleted it), in earl weaver, in apba (BBW), in hardball.

so now i'm retrostarting the league in 1885 in OOTP. i really have no idea how i will "import" players into the league from the mental history i have of the league from 1978-1991 or so, when i finally more or less outgrew it. and it's not like i've kept all the bits of paper with player names and stuff on them, although i do have the EW and BBW disks for reference. anyone got a 5 1/4" drive?

i doubt that it will really work all that well, because i'll have to rename players once i reach the 70s and 80s, and find some way to adjust their abilities. i think i'll be all right, mentally, with players getting traded from teams they were "historically" on, but i just don't know how it will work. it will be very interesting, though, to give it a try. wonder when i'll get to the 70s. it's taken me a month to reach 1888. will go slower once i get up to speed with cato's utility.

yeah, so. you can say i'm attached to some players.

6

YoungEagle · 10-01-2002, 04:23 PM

Yes and Yes.

I run 2 solo leagues, both with modern era settings.

In one league, I own a National and an American league team. I play out about 75% of these games. I'm four years into that league and my teams, The Detroit Bass and the Richmond Bluefish have met in the world series twice. I can sense a 1950's Yankees / Dodgers type rivalry building up in this league.

In the other league, I sim all the games. I'm 23 years in at this point with the Miami Suns.

Lots of fun.

JAttractive · 10-01-2002, 05:23 PM

Yes and Yes.

Here are some irrational things I have done because of my attachment to player's:

1. Traded/released them so they could start on another team even though keeping them was more valuable to me.
2. Traded back for one because he still wasn't starting and I would rather have him on MY bench if that was the case.
3. Refused to release/trade a guy even though I had better players on the farm just because I couldn't bring myself to let him play for someone else.
4. Signed players for one or two years (some for 7+ million) just so they would finish their career with me even though they were clearly aging, cost me a ton, would not be valuable and with more useful players waiting in the minors.
5. Having my star player pitch the last game of the season with a Wildcard round impending just because I felt he deserved a chance to continue his streak of 20 win seasons... I of course lost the Wildcard and probably would have won if he could have pitched twice in it.
6. Having favourite players play in positions/spots when they are clearly not the best suited but whom I had become attached to and could not bring myself to "demote" them out of it.

slackmeisterPA · 10-01-2002, 08:03 PM

Yes and Yes. But now, with Wallman and Cato's history utilities, I tried starting a league and just commishing it. I am only 4 years in, but already I am having a lot of fun. Up next is expansion!

treedom · 10-01-2002, 09:01 PM

Other than expansion, what exactly are your duties as commissioner in a solo league??

Delgadodawg · 10-02-2002, 01:55 AM

Yes and Yes...I am in the 11th year of my Canadian Fictional League

Drood · 10-02-2002, 03:48 PM

Another Canadian league. COOL! I just reached the 20 year mark with mine (all simmed. Played a couple of the all star games).

Alas, due to a screw up (which in my fictional world I've put down to the league being bought out or something) I lost the HTML output from 1950-1955, so my league's stats don't stat properly until 1956. Then in 1960 there was the "great cleansing" where the hall of records burnt down and the record book was reset (real reason: I screwed up the league totals and wound up with a stupid number of HR's). So the league, despite being 20 years old, only has 14 years or so of recorded history, and only ten years of records.

Would use Cato's util, but it seems way complicated to me compared to Wallman's DB util. The extra work with Cato's util doesn't seem worth it to me.

Since 1960 I've kept ALL box scores. My league output is taking up a ludicrous amount of harddisk space these days

One thing I have started doing to maintain my interest is an idea I stole from someone on here. (Don't remember which league now.) Anyway, he has a thing called "Sons of Jon" where he creates players and then follows their progress. I've started doing this, creating 2-3 new players every couple of years. So far only one has gone onto great things, but it's fun to see how they do. I have about 10 players currently, and after the retirement of the friends I put in at the start of the league, and the great Billy Wommack, it's nice to have other players to get behind. (Since the legends from the very first season are all retired now.)

chinaski · 10-02-2002, 04:54 PM

I just had my 8 year solo career league go down the tubes to a corrupted league file. no backup either

Im really having a hard time starting a new league now, i was actually heart broken when i found out the league was lost. I was oddly attached to alot of my 'players'. weird.

Drood · 10-03-2002, 03:36 AM

I don't use the in-game backup feature. I just zip up the league directory every couple of years.

I've now got 21 years of history in my league. I'd be depressed if I lost it all!

TC Dale · 10-03-2002, 11:27 AM

I do as well. Right now I am really having a go round with the Cincinnati team. The only thing I do different to make it harder....is I delete all free agents after the amateur draft, all star game..... and then every other year after the World Series.

It makes it harder to move up, due to the lack of FA's, but I find it more interesting to try and fight my way clear to the top.

Needless to say, I am like others when I get used to a player that I had in another simulation. If I see him available I try and get him. Even if it is his last year of playing. He always had good stats for OF and so what if he couldnt hit, he could play defense

I enjoy that. I find that sometimes I wont trade someone because of the memories......and then find that I hampered the growth of the minor leaguers because of it.

Ever find yourself adding said player to the HOF because their stats didnt show it, but they were YOUR HOF because they came thru when you needed them in the lean years?

I have.

Yogi

Drood · 10-03-2002, 04:26 PM

Not added anyone to the HOF, but I was hoping that my star, Billy Wommack, would not retire before he reached the HOF mark. He made it, but if he had retired before he had, I think I'd have had to induct him myself.

09-10-2002, 03:42 PM	#21
kingfc22 All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Fremont, CA Posts: 651	I have two fictional solo leagues. One I have a team and play every game. Only have 3 years on that one, but the other, all I do is sim and record a bunch of history. That league has over 40 years of hisory and I do find myself attached to certain players and follow their careers closer than others. __________________ GO GIANTS GO NINERS GO LAKERS GO BLUE CUBL - Red Earth Firebirds 2000 CL Central Champs NABL - Washington Senators now Buffalo Bandits

10-01-2002, 01:02 AM	#22
Iron Horse Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Indiana Posts: 47	I just wish I could trade some of them to the real Reds. I definitely get attached to certain players in my fictional league. The main two are Joseph Friesen, the stud CF I picked in the first round of our initial draft, and Gene Snyder, an over-the-hill pitcher I signed off the league scrap heap. I had a pitcher go down to injury in maybe late May and this 41-year-old free agent won 21 games the rest of the way. I know I've wished I could sell the rights to Joseph to the actual Reds. Then they could trade Dunn or Kearns for some pitching. The flip side of this question is, does anyone else develop irrational negative feelings for certain fictional players? John Paz always seems to be taking awards away from Friesen, and he was on our arch-rival. I finally got tired of competing with him and tried to sign him away. He wouldn't even talk to me, didn't care for our organization, even though he did leave our rival for another team. I hate that guy.

10-01-2002, 01:03 PM	#25
Ryan W. Jack of all trades Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Somewhere, not sure where. Maybe nearby, maybe far away. Posts: 1,371	Yes and Yes. I started one ( and used my utility ), but screwed it up by adding all-time greats to it. Just wasn't the same, so I started it over. Am only in my 3rd month with the new league. __________________

10-01-2002, 09:01 PM	#30
treedom Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: Transylvania Posts: 2,900	Other than expansion, what exactly are your duties as commissioner in a solo league?? __________________ A rake and a roustabout.

10-01-2002, 04:54 AM	#23
Killebrew Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 3,326	Yes & yes I create smalltown-style leagues and change the minor league team names to local colleges, high schools and junior highs. I actually had the most fun with a fictional small town fastball league, but I guess that fun was mostly in my mind since OOTP does not care if a baseball or softball is used .

10-01-2002, 12:59 PM	#24
EvanW Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Atlanta Posts: 68	Definitely. I just started another fictional league so I could use Cato's OOTPHist to keep track of it. Even in the first year, I got attached to some players. My 37 year-old starter who won 20 games and took the League Pitching award in the first year...sad to watch him decline. In the third year of the sim, I wanted to keep him in the majors during his entire last season, but we were in a pennant race and I couldn't afford his 0-9 record...he ended up down in AA ball. I replaced him with a prospect who went 5-1 for the rest of the season, and is currently 8-1 at the beginning of June. He's only 25 and I hope he's going to be anchoring my staff for a long time to come. I don't have a particular player on a different team that I dislike, but somehow there always ends up being one team in the division as an arch-rival. Greensboro's been a thorn in my side ever since I started the league. They've finished second to my first place division wins in all three years simmed so far. -- Evan 852BL: St. Louis Cardinals TSTBL: Sacramento Rivercats

10-01-2002, 04:09 PM	#26
sixto Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,271	how about this...boy, i sure do rarely talk about this stuff out loud. sorry for the long post. so, 1978. i'm 5 years old and my friend vincent is 7. we play a lot of wiffle ball. we create the "Wiffle Ball League." i strike out nearly every at bat, because i'm 5. my team is the philadelphia fanatics. we create teams, with made up players. we make lineups before games and announce the games to each other as we play. i decide i don't want to be the philly fanatics anymore. vincent takes over the name. i become the stars. that i recall, i had no geographical affiliation. eventually i settle on houston. houston sucks, they sure do. i lose nearly every game. he "moves" his team to ft. lauderdale. our family takes summer vacations in wildwood crest, NJ. my 3B becomes chris schellinger, named after schellinger ave in wildwood. vince names his CF joe jawa. yep. as i recall, he was pretty short. we'd name players after all sorts of things. one day i remember he came home and announced he had a new LF, tony berol. i can only assume he named him after a pencil sharpener he saw in school. the wiffle ball league expands - i begin making up other teams and players. because i'm a t-baller, i don't name teams the Hawks and the Cougars, but Jojo's Tavern and, more creatively, Jerry's Tavern. i keep page after page of players and statistics, which were all made up. every year i'd have a baseball season in my head. we did actually keep track of the number of homers we hit during the summer in wiffle ball, and those were attributed to the players we named after ourselves. eventually i became a 40-HR hitter. vincent started topping 70, pre-mcgwire. then he moved to FL for real, but the league never died out in my mind. it flourished (i had a boring, boring childhood). i expanded, i retrocreated teams that had always been there, i created history. without benefit of wallman's utility, even. i renamed it the baseball of america league. i created it in microleague (but inadvertently deleted it), in earl weaver, in apba (BBW), in hardball. so now i'm retrostarting the league in 1885 in OOTP. i really have no idea how i will "import" players into the league from the mental history i have of the league from 1978-1991 or so, when i finally more or less outgrew it. and it's not like i've kept all the bits of paper with player names and stuff on them, although i do have the EW and BBW disks for reference. anyone got a 5 1/4" drive? i doubt that it will really work all that well, because i'll have to rename players once i reach the 70s and 80s, and find some way to adjust their abilities. i think i'll be all right, mentally, with players getting traded from teams they were "historically" on, but i just don't know how it will work. it will be very interesting, though, to give it a try. wonder when i'll get to the 70s. it's taken me a month to reach 1888. will go slower once i get up to speed with cato's utility. yeah, so. you can say i'm attached to some players. 6

10-01-2002, 04:23 PM	#27
YoungEagle Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wayne, MI Posts: 364	Yes and Yes. I run 2 solo leagues, both with modern era settings. In one league, I own a National and an American league team. I play out about 75% of these games. I'm four years into that league and my teams, The Detroit Bass and the Richmond Bluefish have met in the world series twice. I can sense a 1950's Yankees / Dodgers type rivalry building up in this league. In the other league, I sim all the games. I'm 23 years in at this point with the Miami Suns. Lots of fun.

10-01-2002, 05:23 PM	#28
JAttractive All Star Starter Join Date: May 2002 Location: St. Catharines, Ontario Posts: 1,135	Yes and Yes. Here are some irrational things I have done because of my attachment to player's: 1. Traded/released them so they could start on another team even though keeping them was more valuable to me. 2. Traded back for one because he still wasn't starting and I would rather have him on MY bench if that was the case. 3. Refused to release/trade a guy even though I had better players on the farm just because I couldn't bring myself to let him play for someone else. 4. Signed players for one or two years (some for 7+ million) just so they would finish their career with me even though they were clearly aging, cost me a ton, would not be valuable and with more useful players waiting in the minors. 5. Having my star player pitch the last game of the season with a Wildcard round impending just because I felt he deserved a chance to continue his streak of 20 win seasons... I of course lost the Wildcard and probably would have won if he could have pitched twice in it. 6. Having favourite players play in positions/spots when they are clearly not the best suited but whom I had become attached to and could not bring myself to "demote" them out of it.

10-01-2002, 08:03 PM	#29
slackmeisterPA Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 275	Yes and Yes. But now, with Wallman and Cato's history utilities, I tried starting a league and just commishing it. I am only 4 years in, but already I am having a lot of fun. Up next is expansion!

10-02-2002, 01:55 AM	#31
Delgadodawg All Star Reserve Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Vancouver Posts: 800	Yes and Yes...I am in the 11th year of my Canadian Fictional League

10-02-2002, 03:48 PM	#32
Drood Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 425	Another Canadian league. COOL! I just reached the 20 year mark with mine (all simmed. Played a couple of the all star games). Alas, due to a screw up (which in my fictional world I've put down to the league being bought out or something) I lost the HTML output from 1950-1955, so my league's stats don't stat properly until 1956. Then in 1960 there was the "great cleansing" where the hall of records burnt down and the record book was reset (real reason: I screwed up the league totals and wound up with a stupid number of HR's). So the league, despite being 20 years old, only has 14 years or so of recorded history, and only ten years of records. Would use Cato's util, but it seems way complicated to me compared to Wallman's DB util. The extra work with Cato's util doesn't seem worth it to me. Since 1960 I've kept ALL box scores. My league output is taking up a ludicrous amount of harddisk space these days One thing I have started doing to maintain my interest is an idea I stole from someone on here. (Don't remember which league now.) Anyway, he has a thing called "Sons of Jon" where he creates players and then follows their progress. I've started doing this, creating 2-3 new players every couple of years. So far only one has gone onto great things, but it's fun to see how they do. I have about 10 players currently, and after the retirement of the friends I put in at the start of the league, and the great Billy Wommack, it's nice to have other players to get behind. (Since the legends from the very first season are all retired now.)

10-02-2002, 04:54 PM	#33
chinaski Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: end of the bar Posts: 296	I just had my 8 year solo career league go down the tubes to a corrupted league file. no backup either Im really having a hard time starting a new league now, i was actually heart broken when i found out the league was lost. I was oddly attached to alot of my 'players'. weird.

10-03-2002, 03:36 AM	#34
Drood Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 425	I don't use the in-game backup feature. I just zip up the league directory every couple of years. I've now got 21 years of history in my league. I'd be depressed if I lost it all!

10-03-2002, 11:27 AM	#35
TC Dale Global Moderator Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 4,982	I do as well. Right now I am really having a go round with the Cincinnati team. The only thing I do different to make it harder....is I delete all free agents after the amateur draft, all star game..... and then every other year after the World Series. It makes it harder to move up, due to the lack of FA's, but I find it more interesting to try and fight my way clear to the top. Needless to say, I am like others when I get used to a player that I had in another simulation. If I see him available I try and get him. Even if it is his last year of playing. He always had good stats for OF and so what if he couldnt hit, he could play defense I enjoy that. I find that sometimes I wont trade someone because of the memories......and then find that I hampered the growth of the minor leaguers because of it. Ever find yourself adding said player to the HOF because their stats didnt show it, but they were YOUR HOF because they came thru when you needed them in the lean years? I have. Yogi

10-03-2002, 04:26 PM	#36
Drood Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 425	Not added anyone to the HOF, but I was hoping that my star, Billy Wommack, would not retire before he reached the HOF mark. He made it, but if he had retired before he had, I think I'd have had to induct him myself.