Historical Expansion Gone Bad...Very Bad

[Jtward9]

So the city of Buffalo was in the mix for expansion back in the late 1980's. I thought I would preempt Florida and Colorado and do a manual expansion of Buffalo and Las Vegas (because I was too lazy to look up who another west coast team would be viable) Anyway, I put myself on Challenge Mode and away I went. I was able to trade for Griffey Jr. and got a hometown kid by the name of Orel Hershiser, perhaps you've heard of him and didn't know his hometown was Buffalo? So the season ends with me going 71-91. Nothing great but I felt I was in great shape to improve by 10 or so games in 1993. I was all set to work on my protection list when I couldn't find my team. It is in the database and the players are still on it but it has vanished. Since I am on Challenge Mode I can't do anything with the league structure.
Does anyone know how to get my team back or at least start over again to keep my team? I want the game to do all the expansion set up for the 1993 and 1998 expansions, but if I have to do them manually I guess I'll have to.
Thanks for any help!

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Jtward9

So the city of Buffalo was in the mix for expansion back in the late 1980's. I thought I would preempt Florida and Colorado and do a manual expansion of Buffalo and Las Vegas (because I was too lazy to look up who another west coast team would be viable) Anyway, I put myself on Challenge Mode and away I went. I was able to trade for Griffey Jr. and got a hometown kid by the name of Orel Hershiser, perhaps you've heard of him and didn't know his hometown was Buffalo? So the season ends with me going 71-91. Nothing great but I felt I was in great shape to improve by 10 or so games in 1993. I was all set to work on my protection list when I couldn't find my team. It is in the database and the players are still on it but it has vanished. Since I am on Challenge Mode I can't do anything with the league structure.
Does anyone know how to get my team back or at least start over again to keep my team? I want the game to do all the expansion set up for the 1993 and 1998 expansions, but if I have to do them manually I guess I'll have to.
Thanks for any help!

Please check Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Historical > Historical Progressing Settings, specifically the "Automatically expand league" box. If that box is checked, your game is doing things exactly as it should.

In other words, it will introduce the Angels and Senators in the 1960/1961 offseason, the Colt .45s and the Mets in the 1961/1962 offseason, the Royals, Expos, Padres, and Pilots in the 1968/1969 offseason, the Mariners and Blue Jays in the 1976/1977 offseason, the Rockies and Marlins in the 1992/1993 offseason, and the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays in the 1997/1998 offseason. It will not deviate from this no matter what you do, and it will always reset to the number and location of teams that were historically present in the year you are about to play. This will happen on the first day after the postseason (1st day of the offseason), which sounds like what happened in your case.

You have to uncheck that box (if Challenge Mode allows you to do so). You've already said you can't do anything with the league structure due to Challenge Mode, so I think you are out of luck in this case. If I'm reading your post correctly, when you set up the Buffalo club, you were not in Challenge Mode and then you turned it on once they were part of the league. If that box is checked they have disappeared, and that is as it should be (unfortunately).