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Old 09-10-2019, 06:58 PM   #1
Hrycaj
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19th Century Fictional Players

This may be common knowledge to some, but I thought I would share just in case. For people that like to create 19th century fictional leagues the issue I have always had is the unbalanced schedules. Teams starting a season and then not finishing it. Odd numbers of games for each team. The community has made some amazing stuff that you can download in the mods section but I always seem to have a wacky configuration that doesn't quite fit. I also find creating my own schedules from scratch to be tedious to the point where I lose interest quickly. So I took a different approach.

Create a 162 game schedule so it runs from April to October. Then simply go into the schedule editor and delete games. Simple as that. I find deleting games to be much quicker and easier than creating them. It gives me those crazy unbalanced schedules that last over the course of the summer. Pretty simple solution to something that has been bugging me for a while. Maybe this helps someone out there.
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Old 09-10-2019, 09:45 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by Hrycaj View Post
This may be common knowledge to some, but I thought I would share just in case. For people that like to create 19th century fictional leagues the issue I have always had is the unbalanced schedules.
Let me get this straight: you want those kinds of schedules? If so, there are a few things you can do to recreate them. First, you can simply use the as-played schedules that are in the OOTP schedules folder. Unfortunately, the game's as-played schedules for the nineteenth century only cover the National League. The American Association has been left out for some reason.

The method that I use is to reschedule rain-outs manually. This gives me the option of not making up a rain-out, as was a common practice in that era, especially late in the season when the pennant race had already been decided (the other main cause of teams not playing out a full schedule was the need to make up tie games - but those aren't possible in OOTP). If you're going to use this approach, I also recommend installing my "It's Usually Sunny in Philadelphia" mod (link in my sig line).
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Old 09-10-2019, 10:57 PM   #3
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Let me get this straight: you want those kinds of schedules? If so, there are a few things you can do to recreate them. First, you can simply use the as-played schedules that are in the OOTP schedules folder. Unfortunately, the game's as-played schedules for the nineteenth century only cover the National League. The American Association has been left out for some reason.

The method that I use is to reschedule rain-outs manually. This gives me the option of not making up a rain-out, as was a common practice in that era, especially late in the season when the pennant race had already been decided (the other main cause of teams not playing out a full schedule was the need to make up tie games - but those aren't possible in OOTP). If you're going to use this approach, I also recommend installing my "It's Usually Sunny in Philadelphia" mod (link in my sig line).
Ha! Ha! Yes I do! I mean isn't that chaos what 19th century baseball was all about? Teams folded mid-season, refused to play out schedules etc. I love that stuff. (I can't be the only one). You are one of the experts here so let me ask you this. Whenever I select a short schedule. Say 32 games as an example. All the games are played in a single month for the most part. My season is done by May. I want those games spread out over the course of a season like it was done in that era. So how can I accomplish that without either creating my own schedule by hand or by employing the method I described here?
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Old 09-11-2019, 12:11 AM   #4
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Whenever I select a short schedule. Say 32 games as an example. All the games are played in a single month for the most part. My season is done by May. I want those games spread out over the course of a season like it was done in that era. So how can I accomplish that without either creating my own schedule by hand or by employing the method I described here?
First of all: don't use the in-game scheduler. In fact, that's my advice for anyone who wants a schedule. Just don't use it. As you note, you only end up with unsatisfactory schedules.

Instead, I would suggest going into the schedules sub-forum and finding a historical schedule that most closely matches what you want. A short schedule like 32 games is kinda' tough - even the National Association usually played more games than that. But you can modify one of the shorter schedules to your liking. Or you could always post a request in the sub-forum - the modders there could probably turn around a short schedule like that in a jiffy.
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Old 09-11-2019, 07:06 AM   #5
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First of all: don't use the in-game scheduler. In fact, that's my advice for anyone who wants a schedule. Just don't use it. As you note, you only end up with unsatisfactory schedules.

Instead, I would suggest going into the schedules sub-forum and finding a historical schedule that most closely matches what you want. A short schedule like 32 games is kinda' tough - even the National Association usually played more games than that. But you can modify one of the shorter schedules to your liking. Or you could always post a request in the sub-forum - the modders there could probably turn around a short schedule like that in a jiffy.
What is wrong with using the in game scheduler? It will not ruin your game. It is those unsatisfactory (as you call it) schedules that I am looking for. If I wanted OOTP to fit in a perfect little box I would absolutely use a schedule that has all been created by someone. I know where they are and I pointed that out in my original post. You have done some great stuff for the community, and I have used a number of your stuff over the years, but I feel like you went a bit "elitist" here.
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Old 09-11-2019, 08:42 AM   #6
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What is wrong with using the in game scheduler? It will not ruin your game. It is those unsatisfactory (as you call it) schedules that I am looking for. If I wanted OOTP to fit in a perfect little box I would absolutely use a schedule that has all been created by someone. I know where they are and I pointed that out in my original post. You have done some great stuff for the community, and I have used a number of your stuff over the years, but I feel like you went a bit "elitist" here.
The schedules are unsatisfactory because, as you mentioned, you end up playing all of your games in one month. Even you agree that that's unsatisfactory, so I'm not sure why you're defending the in-game scheduler. And the scheduler doesn't even do what you want it to do: make schedules that are uneven. Ask the scheduler to make a 32-game schedule and it will make a schedule where every team plays 32 games. Then you're left with the same problem you started with initially: if you want teams to play a different number of games, you need to make changes to the schedule.

You have an unusual, perhaps unique, request that the scheduler simply can't accommodate. On the other hand, there are literally hundreds of excellent schedules that have been posted to the sub-forum, and a crew of outstanding modders who are happy to fulfill requests like yours. Those resources are accessible to everyone, not just a select few. I don't think it's elitist to suggest that you use a better alternative when it's readily available.
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Old 09-11-2019, 04:25 PM   #7
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The schedules are unsatisfactory because, as you mentioned, you end up playing all of your games in one month. Even you agree that that's unsatisfactory, so I'm not sure why you're defending the in-game scheduler. And the scheduler doesn't even do what you want it to do: make schedules that are uneven. Ask the scheduler to make a 32-game schedule and it will make a schedule where every team plays 32 games. Then you're left with the same problem you started with initially: if you want teams to play a different number of games, you need to make changes to the schedule.

You have an unusual, perhaps unique, request that the scheduler simply can't accommodate. On the other hand, there are literally hundreds of excellent schedules that have been posted to the sub-forum, and a crew of outstanding modders who are happy to fulfill requests like yours. Those resources are accessible to everyone, not just a select few. I don't think it's elitist to suggest that you use a better alternative when it's readily available.
I feel like we are misunderstanding each other here. I agree the in-game scheduler will not give me unique schedules. Which is why I suggested making it create a longer schedule that covers the months you want the season to last and then go back and delete the games you do not want played. I feel that is easier than actually creating an unbalanced unique schedule by hand.

To ask a modder to create a totally unique schedule with a bunch of different variables is a big ask in my opinion. I relate it to the people on the graphics forum that ask for home/away/alt jerseys for a 30 team league. Furthermore, why would a modder really want to create a schedule that would not benefit more than a few users? The schedules that are in the mod section right now are fabulous if you are running a save that finishes with everyone playing the same amount of games. Clearly that isn't what I'm doing in this scenario.

All I was doing was pointing out a simple way to do it yourself if someone was looking to do such a thing since I still do not understand an alternative way of doing it? Maybe that is where I'm misunderstanding your comments.
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Old 09-11-2019, 09:48 PM   #8
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I feel like we are misunderstanding each other here. I agree the in-game scheduler will not give me unique schedules. Which is why I suggested making it create a longer schedule that covers the months you want the season to last and then go back and delete the games you do not want played. I feel that is easier than actually creating an unbalanced unique schedule by hand.
Well, you're asking for something that might be impossible, so you have to be satisfied with second-best options. You're right that there's probably no one else out there who would want to make the kinds of schedules you want, so you're left to make them yourself by carving them out of longer schedules.

You mentioned cutting down a 162-game schedule into a 32-game schedule, which is why I suggested going into the historical schedules or asking for a modded schedule instead. It would seem to me much easier to whittle down, say, a 42-game schedule (supposing you had an 8-team league) than dismembering a 162-game schedule. A 6-month, 42-game schedule would be easy to make - heck, even I could probably make one of those - and you could then use it to fashion all sorts of variations. It wouldn't be much of an ask to have one of the modders make that kind of schedule.
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Old 09-13-2019, 04:09 PM   #9
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To me, it doesn't seem too hard to use the schedule editor to create the kind of schedule you want. Whereas I've normally started my fictional leagues in 1946, I've decided now to start one in 1904, and, as such, have to deal with many of the quirky elements of baseball at that time (albeit not quite as many as you do having a 19th century league).

I'm starting an alternate world where baseball evolves on the west coast, so only four teams to start, making the schedule kind of easy to do. I let OOTP create a schedule, ran the schedule report, deleted the schedule, then created it on the timeline I wanted (in my case, playing a five game series every Tues-Sat only). To replicate that some teams, even in 1904, didn't finish with the same # of games (principally due to rainouts that were not rescheduled), I've cancelled the rescheduled games or just outright deleted a couple of games here and there.

One other option you could do, especially if you're playing more mid-19th century ball (prior to 1871), is simple create the games as you go.

Anyway, the idea is great, and you don't have to use the league schedule auto-creator nor start editing the .xml file to accomplish this.
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Old 09-13-2019, 04:37 PM   #10
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BTW, how many teams do you have in your league? I might be willing to create some of these schedules for you ... or even try and recreate the actual RL schedules if they can be found. In many cases the final standings are found, but the schedules not so much.
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Old 09-13-2019, 08:10 PM   #11
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BTW, how many teams do you have in your league? I might be willing to create some of these schedules for you ... or even try and recreate the actual RL schedules if they can be found. In many cases the final standings are found, but the schedules not so much.
It varies on my mood. I like a lot of volatility. Teams moving/contracting/adding in. I use random.org and have toyed with my own formulas to see if teams stay active in a league at any given time. I also like to start leagues in the 1850's or before which makes it totally unique since the real life landscape was nowhere near where I make it fictionally.

I appreciate the offer from yourself and Joe when it comes to making schedules for me. That is very kind of you guys. However, I do know how to make them. I have made a bunch of unique ones over the years. I just find the interface to be boring to work with. "Select Team A from drop down, Select team b from drop down. Change date, repeat, repeat, repeat. For me, and maybe because I have created schedules over the years and have been burnt out on it, tried something new. Kind of looked at it from a backwards perspective. That is where the deletion idea came from. It was much quicker and easier for me to delete games off of a schedule then add them in. So I thought I would share. You do bring up a good point about adding games as I go which I have done, it totally works. I just don't like the look of a totally blank schedule. Personal preference there.

As for the schedules. Joe's link in a previous post here takes you to a great resource of already completed schedules. They have a ton of options and are really cool. Taking one of those and editing it down as he suggests is probably a more efficient way to go. I was never claiming that what I was suggesting was the best or only option either. Just another one.

Also, you can easily find original schedules dating back to 1871 if you wanted to run a historically accurate schedule. Baseball-reference has them all I believe. One way to do it is go to their seasons tab and pick a season. Click on a team, then go to schedules and results tab and they have dates, results and in some cases attendance figures. Once again, not sure if that is the most efficient way to view them but it works. I will say this. I'm pretty sure all of the these schedules have already been created by modders so I would absolutely just use those if I was doing something like that.
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Old 09-13-2019, 11:41 PM   #12
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Well, I don't know what I'll do with this information or whether anyone would ever want it, but following this and some other historical threads caused me to spend some time looking at one historical league just because.

I picked the California League of 1880.

The San Francisco Examiner, which I have access to online via Newspapers.com, was a great resource to trace the history of this league. A few days of the newspaper are missing, and so I'm missing some information as the other San Francisco papers didn't really report on this professional league at the time. What's really cool is that The Examiner included game play-by-plays and box scores for most of the games. Perhaps worthy to edit the pages over at BR Bullpen.

But, as I did some work, I thought you might like to read the story...

The league originally started with four teams, all based in San Francisco:
* The Athletic Club
* The Bay City Club
* The Knickerbocker Club
* The San Francisco Club

An early article even describes the uniforms of the clubs: various shades of gray or white jerseys with the following color scheme for stockings, belts, and trim:
* Athletics - green
* Bay City - blue
* Knickerbocker - red
* San Francisco - brown

The league was to play 60 games in total, but unbalanced. Rather than 15 games per team, the intent was:
* Athletic - 16 games
* Bay City - 14 games
* Knickerbocker and San Francisco - 15 games

The league was to play its games on Saturdays at the Oakland Base Ball Grounds and Sundays at the Recreation Grounds (one game each day). The season was to commence on Sunday, March 14 (which it did) and complete on Sunday, October 10 (which it did not...at least not as originally intended..read on!)

Games went as planned on the first two weekends, with the Athletics and Knickerbockers being the stronger half of the league. The weather impacted the Saturday game in Oakland between the Athletic and Knickerbocker clubs, postponing it to the end of the season (it was never replayed). The Sunday game was played, leaving the league standings to look like this headed into the fourth week:



The next Saturday, San Francisco was to face Bay City at the Oakland Grounds. But the San Francisco club failed to show up. The reason? Suffering from inadequate financial backing, the San Francisco club suggested that two of the players seek better competition from another club and ended up making deals with the Atlantic club leaving the San Francisco club unable to field a team for their contest. Not fielding a team for a scheduled game was a violation of the League's constitution, and the San Francisco club was ousted later that week.

But what of the Athletic club? They were scheduled to face the Knickerbocker club at Recreation Grounds in San Francisco for the Sunday game and had every intention of doing so--with their two new players plucked from the now-defunct San Francisco club. The Knickerbocker club was not amused, and threatened to also not show up should the Athletics insist on including the defectors in their lineup. Incidentally, using these two players in the Sunday game was also against the League's constitution, which mandated a 10-day waiting period before players release from a team could play on a team in the league. Yet, had the Athletic club included the players in question in their lineup and caused the Knickerbockers to not field a team, it was the Knickerbockers who were facing expulsion from the league (at least per the article in The Examiner). Why, I cannot say.

In any event, it did not happen. The Athletic club yielded to the Knickerbocker club's protest and the game went on as planned, with the Knickerbockers beating the Athletics 6 to 1.

The League decided to reorganize its season, and essentially start over with the three remaining clubs. All games played with the San Francisco club were removed from the standings, and the schedule was reorganized to allow each of the surviving teams to play 18 games each to decide the champion.

And so, the league continued until late June, where the standings looked like this:


But at the end of the month, the Bay City club decided to withdraw from the California League to join the Pacific League, leaving the Knickerbocker and Athletic clubs as the only members.

Rather than reorganize again (or fold), the league invited another organization, the California club, to join the league and take the Bay City club's place on the schedule. The league reset the standings, and after a one-week delay, play resumed.

Only one more game was played at the Oakland Grounds. Sparse attendance and other factors caused the league to experiment with hosting both Saturday and Sunday games at Recreation Grounds for the next month (all remaining games ended up being played there). The league also decided to experiment with having neutral parties umpire its games (previously a player of the club not playing that day would be the umpire).

With the shift in venue and officiating settled, the Athletic and Knickerbocker clubs continued their battle for dominance, while the California club languished not being strong enough to seriously compete with the other clubs. So poor was the California club, that the requested that a late August game between them and the Knickerbockers be postponed to allow their catcher to heal from an injury and to give them time to improve the quality of their roster. The request was granted, but the game was never made up. By the time the league ended in mid-October, the Californias had only managed to win a single game (against 10 losses). 17 games had been played in this latest series, with the final standings as follows:


While the articles in The Examiner do not state why the League champion was to be decided in a playoff, I can speculate that turmoil with the league's membership and schedule demanded it. When the standings were reset after the departure of the Bay City team, the Knickerbocker club was the clear leader; the Athletics lead in the most recent series was precarious, being only 1/2 game with one extra game played. Clearly the California club wasn't a contender, and so, a five game series was planned to determine once and for all who was the California League champion.

Interesting, all five games of the series was played, even when one team had already secured three victories. All games were played on Sundays, at Recreation Grounds.

The Knickerbockers won the first game, 5 to 0.
The Athletics won the next three games, 7 to 0, 5 to 4, and 8 to 5, respectively.
The Knickerbockers won the fifth game, 15 to 6

With the final series concluded, the Athletics were named the 1880 California League champion with an overall record of 20-16, not counting two victories against the San Francisco club, and included the victories in the final playoff series. The Knickerbockers finished with a better record, at 24-10 but without the trophy.

The league survived to play the 1881 season, anchored by the Athletic and Knickerbocker clubs. They were joined by the Reno club, planned to play once a week at Recreation Grounds starting March 27th and concluding October 16th, and adopted a provision that "no player belonging to any club in the League be allowed to play with another club in the League for sixty days from the date of his resignation, unless he is released before the 1st day of July, 1881".

The league wasn't much more competitive in 1881 than it had been in 1880. The Knickerbocker and Athletic clubs dominated, and the Reno club lost. By late June, the former teams had records of 6-3 and 6-4, respectively, while the Renos were 2-7.

Unfortunately, the reporting of the league in The Examiner is more hit-and-miss for the 1881 season, and without further research I can't conclude what happened to the league. By July the League's teams were playing other teams -- an "new" California League had sprouted up in Oakland -- also a three-team league, with the California club, the Mystic club (also of San Francisco) and the Oakland club as members. What became of the California League that is the subject of this research is unclear beyond that it failed to complete its 1881 season.
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