Female players

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Charley575

My last comment on this.
I think part of the reason women don't play baseball professionally is because they are discouraged from doing so at a young age. Boys play baseball, while girls are shuffled off to softball. It's a travesty. Let girls play baseball at high school and college levels. Dump that softball crap. Softball is for 40 year old guys with beer bellies. It's a dumb-down bastardized version of a great game. Even if women don't mix into men's pro leagues, I know I'd buy a ticket to a professional women's league game. Baseball is baseball, and it's a great game for everybody.

The softball is for 40 year old guys with beer bellies statement was ignorant when you said it last year.

[Statsman1]

We can set up a completely fictional baseball universe with virtually...

• as many teams as you want, anywhere on Earth you want to put them
• any rules you want
• any financial set up you want
• any league characteristics you want
• billions of combinations of almost anything

...but suggest that women should be part of that list of combinations, and things go completely off the rails because "it'll never happen" or "it's just wrong"? Everything else can be fictional, made up, and complete fantasy, but having women in the game is somehow illogical and senseless?

Nearly 100% of everything we, as OOTP players, create in this game will never actually happen, and THIS is what people decide shouldn't be possible? I can put a team in the Arctic Circle, pay my star pitcher $1 billion dollars, have players never, ever get injured, any number of "never in real life" situations, but I shouldn't have a "Jessica Maria 'Kate' Upton" playing 3B because "that would never happen in real life"???

I don't get it. The fact that THIS creates such a divide completely mystifies me, it's as mysterious as why a discussion of "stats only" vs "anything else' creates such virulent hostility.

And softball, slo-pitch, call it what you want - those are for people who love the game of baseball but can't play that exact game - when I can't swing a bat any more, that's when I give it up. Until then, if there's a bat, a ball and someone's keeping score, I want to play.

[BBGiovanni]

Another year, another tedious thread. I acknowledge and respect the explanation that "it's too hard now". Just put me down for "make it an option someday". In a fictional world like mine where Mr. Spalding and Victorian mores did not force women to play softball instead of baseball, by now, perhaps in a wartime period, someone might have played in Class D ball. Or more.

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Show me a professional league where the players were woman and played the game according to the official baseball rules. The AAGPBL fails that test because it never played by the official baseball rules. (The pitching distance, base path distance, and ball size all varied from that specified in the official rules.)

Pacific Association: Kelsie Whitmore, Stacie Piagno: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoma_Stompers

Kansai Independent League, Golden Baseball League, North American Baseball League, Arizona Winter League: Eri Yoshida

Negro American League: Toni Stone, Connie Morgan, Peanut Johnson

Once they're down the rathole of including podunck indy leagues, the great moral imperative loses its force.

Whether or not the game engine can be adjusted to include it is another question, and I understand the realities thereof.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Statsman1

We can set up a completely fictional baseball universe with virtually...

• as many teams as you want, anywhere on Earth you want to put them
• any rules you want
• any financial set up you want
• any league characteristics you want
• billions of combinations of almost anything

...but suggest that women should be part of that list of combinations, and things go completely off the rails because "it'll never happen" or "it's just wrong"? Everything else can be fictional, made up, and complete fantasy, but having women in the game is somehow illogical and senseless?

Nearly 100% of everything we, as OOTP players, create in this game will never actually happen, and THIS is what people decide shouldn't be possible? I can put a team in the Arctic Circle, pay my star pitcher $1 billion dollars, have players never, ever get injured, any number of "never in real life" situations, but I shouldn't have a "Jessica Maria 'Kate' Upton" playing 3B because "that would never happen in real life"???

I don't get it. The fact that THIS creates such a divide completely mystifies me, it's as mysterious as why a discussion of "stats only" vs "anything else' creates such virulent hostility.

And softball, slo-pitch, call it what you want - those are for people who love the game of baseball but can't play that exact game - when I can't swing a bat any more, that's when I give it up. Until then, if there's a bat, a ball and someone's keeping score, I want to play.

Or for the umpteenth time it could be because the developer said it was too much work to change the code. You know what I don't get? How this explanation from the developers goes over so many people's heads? What is there not to understand?

The concern comes from coding time taken away from other things. Concern DOES NOT come from wanting to add females but from using coding time to change pronouns.

Still waiting... So I ask again for someone to simply justify the time it would take to code?
.... Bueller?,...... Bueller?,..... Bueller?


And for the umpteenth time you can create your women's league if you can use your imagination and change "he" to "she" when you are reading a news story. Where else does gender even come up in the game? You do realize that nowhere on the current player card is gender identified, right? Only as a pronoun in a news story does it come up.

Is anyone really arguing they want real baseball plays that don't occur in OOTP to take a backburner to pronouns in a news story? That could be just one casualty, what else has to be left out or not improved for, yes you heard me right, pronouns in a news story?

Use the fertile imagination that allows you to create a league on Mars where home runs fly 5,000 ft and direct it towards imagining your are reading "she" in a news article.

[TheMaus2]

Yes, Sweed, but imagining that you are eating spaghetti isn't the same as actually eating it.

[David Watts]

Two things I found out today talking to a friend of mine. There is a 6 team professional women's softball league. He said CBS Sports broadcast some of the games last season. Second, in 2015 women's baseball was part of the Pan American games for the first time. I never knew this. Pretty cool.

[Statsman1]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Or for the umpteenth time it could be because the developer said it was too much work to change the code. You know what I don't get? How this explanation from the developers goes over so many people's heads? What is there not to understand?

The concern comes from coding time taken away from other things. Concern DOES NOT come from wanting to add females but from using coding time to change pronouns.

Still waiting... So I ask again for someone to simply justify the time it would take to code?
.... Bueller?,...... Bueller?,..... Bueller?


And for the umpteenth time you can create your women's league if you can use your imagination and change "he" to "she" when you are reading a news story. Where else does gender even come up in the game? You do realize that nowhere on the current player card is gender identified, right? Only as a pronoun in a news story does it come up.

Is anyone really arguing they want real baseball plays that don't occur in OOTP to take a backburner to pronouns in a news story? That could be just one casualty, what else has to be left out or not improved for, yes you heard me right, pronouns in a news story?

Use the fertile imagination that allows you to create a league on Mars where home runs fly 5,000 ft and direct it towards imagining your are reading "she" in a news article.

Actually, my point was more "Why did a question about making the necessary changes to incorporate female players turn into a debate about the realism of having women in OOTP?"

If you read my post, all I'm saying is that it's ALL fiction, so the argument supporting the absence of women in OOTP because no women play pro baseball is complete nonsense.

The argument supporting no women in OOTP until such a time as all the pronoun-related logic can be fixed, without taking away from other features being supported, well, I can get behind that, if it's critical to the overall acceptance of the feature having all the gender-based pronouns behaving correctly.

You are right, Sweed, you can have women in OOTP today if you can deal with the pronoun issues and you want to do a slew of editing. But I wasn't arguing against it. I was merely expressing my wonderment about why the idea of having females in OOTP at all sets off both sides of the argument so strongly. If it's my game and I play it my way, and I want to have female players, I can have that, and nobody can tell me I can't - but I have to earn it, through editing, and live with the stuff I can't change (pronouns).

But the changes to the code / game required to make that aspect of the game as real as every other aspect (as far as that can go, in a fictional universe) are too much to ask for, at this time. I get it, but that wasn't my point.

Plus, I wanted to show my support for any bat-and-ball game, be it baseball, fastball, slo-pitch, softball, fast-pitch, stickball, rounders, three pitch or cricket.

[thorpegiovanni]

Expanding to females should come along at the same time OOTP expands the world in general. It's about customization, and I simply don't buy that "nobody would play it". I would, I know people who would, a lot of us here would. Cricket and softball would also be wonderful additions, because "imagining" still isn't having it. I could increase the modifiers by 10 to produce cricket-like scores, but it still isn't the same. Whether a female ever makes it to the big leagues or not, the option should be highly regarded in a game like OOTP. Personally, I'd rather see this within the next few years than perhaps, improved 3d or other cosmetic differences to polish.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by TheMaus2

Yes, Sweed, but imagining that you are eating spaghetti isn't the same as actually eating it.

Still waiting... So I ask again for someone to simply justify the time it would take to code?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Charley575

My last comment on this.
I think part of the reason women don't play baseball professionally is because they are discouraged from doing so at a young age.

This strikes me as a variant of the "social construct" argument. I am mostly unconvinced. At least until such time solid evidence is provided for the claim.

I suspect innate differences in interests plays a larger role. Most women aren't interested in sports in the same way most men aren't interested in romance novels.

Originally Posted by Statsman1

We can set up a completely fictional baseball universe with virtually...

• as many teams as you want, anywhere on Earth you want to put them

Sure. But the locations are still cosmetic to a good degree. There's no travel time between far-flung geographical locations, for example.

Originally Posted by Statsman1

any rules you want

Actually, only the rules OOTP includes. Which is some, but plenty of other real-life rules are not included. Want to recreate the inactive roster aspect of some leagues? You can't, except by workaround. Want a doubleheader to be two 7-inning games? You can't at all.

Originally Posted by Statsman1

any financial set up you want

The financial engine needs A LOT more work. It's not nearly as realistic and flexible as it could be. Market sizes in the game, for example, bear no resemblance whatsoever to the economic capacity of a given city/town to support a ball club. Heck, you can't even have the classic two-for-one doubleheader in OOTP due to limitations in the financial engine.

Originally Posted by Statsman1

any league characteristics you want

By default all leagues in OOTP are clones in one degree or another of the major leagues. The distinctions and differences between the majors and minors are not recreated; and many of such cannot be recreated at all in the game at present.

Originally Posted by Statsman1

billions of combinations of almost anything

Not in playoff formats. Not in realistic financial scenarios. Not in past transaction rule environments. No tie games, so you can't properly recreate the KBO or *** or AFL. And so on.

Originally Posted by Statsman1

...but suggest that women should be part of that list of combinations, and things go completely off the rails because "it'll never happen" or "it's just wrong"? Everything else can be fictional, made up, and complete fantasy, but having women in the game is somehow illogical and senseless?

Reiterating:

It's a question of priorities. I can think of a number of aspects of real-world baseball OOTP still does not as yet authentically recreate; I would like to see those addressed. Then there are purely fictional things that could be done, such as a truly customizable playoff system.

Women-only leagues seems far down the list, especially since it's mostly a cosmetic issue (player images, names, and pronouns; all but the last can be gotten around right now, albeit with some work on the part of the user).

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by thorpegiovanni

Expanding to females should come along at the same time OOTP expands the world in general. It's about customization ... Personally, I'd rather see this within the next few years than perhaps, improved 3d or other cosmetic differences to polish.

How about we eschew cosmetic stuff altogether until more substantive matters are tackled? Financial model, majors vs. minors differences, more transaction rules environments (which translate into more ways a user can challenge themselves as GM), etc.

[TheMaus2]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Still waiting... So I ask again for someone to simply justify the time it would take to code?

About the time it would take to code... It's not impossible, just get a few unpaid interns/volunteers to work on it.

[Statsman1]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Reiterating:

It's a question of priorities. I can think of a number of aspects of real-world baseball OOTP still does not as yet authentically recreate; I would like to see those addressed. Then there are purely fictional things that could be done, such as a truly customizable playoff system.

Women-only leagues seems far down the list, especially since it's mostly a cosmetic issue (player images, names, and pronouns; all but the last can be gotten around right now, albeit with some work on the part of the user).

Hey LGO - you make complete sense but again - my point here is NOT to validate that coding the changes required to make females a functioning part of OOTP is necessary right now, ever, or in OOTP19, or should be done before, during or after changing anything else!

It was only to highlight that since the game is ENTIRELY fiction, the US vs THEM mentality over whether or not women SHOULD be part of the OOTP world mystifies me.

I don't care WHAT issue gets worked on next, or ever, and how issues are prioritized by the OOTP crew. Not one bit. Yes, there are things that I wish were different, and worked better (*ahem* trading *ahem*) but I won't presume to tell people that the things I would change first are more important than things THEY would change first.

The overall construction would be more like real-life if some of the things you pointed out were fixed / changed to be more like their actual real-life counterparts, I agree with you there 100%. The baseball rules, world geography, local economies - all of what goes INTO governing the worlds WE create - are what they are, and OOTP tries to model the real-life ones, and doesn't get all of them right. That's one point, and you are correct in your assessments. However, the outcomes - the results, the stats, the league evolutions, and the participants themselves - are ALL created within those rules, and are COMPLETE fiction - so putting women into the game doesn't violate any OOTP realism, because the game-playing itself CAN'T get any less real.

For that reason, it makes no sense, at all, for someone to argue that "women shouldn't be part of OOTP because they're not in real-life MLB."

But as to when OOTP decides to do the work to do it, and do it correctly? I don't care. They get to it when they get to it.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Statsman1

Actually, my point was more "Why did a question about making the necessary changes to incorporate female players turn into a debate about the realism of having women in OOTP?"
.

Because someone throws out a line like this...

It's only a matter of time before it has to be changed to mirror active MLB.

Don't you think there will be debate? The line screams for an answer. To be quiet is to agree.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by TheMaus2

About the time it would take to code... It's not impossible, just get a few unpaid interns/volunteers to work on it.

Line 'em up and get them tickets to Germany. I'll thank you for volunteering and save Markus the time.

[Spritze]

So, What's a woman anyways. I've heard of them but I'm not sure they hang out at the comic book store I frequent nor play video games in my basement.

[Number4]

Originally Posted by Spritze

So, What's a woman anyways. I've heard of them but I'm not sure they hang out at the comic book store I frequent nor play video games in my basement.

They're similar to men, but with lower hitting, pitching, fielding and speed ceilings. Because of that, scouts don't value them and they don't even make the draft pool.

[Hammercraft]

Originally Posted by Statsman1

I don't get it. The fact that THIS creates such a divide completely mystifies me, it's as mysterious as why a discussion of "stats only" vs "anything else' creates such virulent hostility.

The reason is one that people won't readily admit. There aren't just 750 guys good enough, there are millions of guys. History - and MLB history - is replete with stories of guys who labored through hardship and refused to bend to any challenge and fought their way to the pinnacle of their ambitions. Sure there are some athletic freaks, but for every Mike Trout there's a dozen David Ecksteins and Craig Counsells. Up until baseball decided that you needed to throw 95 to be a pitcher, the real difference between a MLB player and you or me was two things: The sum of the work we put into it, and who we knew.

And for some people that breaks the dream. They would rather believe that people are born with all the skill they would ever need, all the athleticism they could ever acquire, and then they can't blame themselves for their failure to achieve. And once they can blame their own genetics and heritage, it gets easy to blame others for theirs and to doubt them.

And the 'who you know' part also has an effect. Prince Fielder and Cal Ripken and others went to work with their dads and have been around clubhouses since they were kids There's a difference between 'bring your daughter to work day' and hanging out with the guys absorbing a lifetime of knowledge about the game and assimilating the culture.

At the end of the day, nobody will ever force you to integrate female players into your OOTP league (until they actually show up in MLB we assume), and nothing will stop you from modifying your box scores and editing players and using custom player images to turn your ballpark heroes into heroines. But this seems to be the only player characteristic that some people feel obligated to protest.

It's no longer fashionable to protest the Negro Leagues because it's discriminatory, but protesting the AAGPBL as a historical league seems to be fine. The rules were slightly different for the women's league - the ball size and field dimensions - but there are differences in the Nippon League in ball size and field dimensions also (and they even allow games to end in a tie) and they are an easy option from the start screen, right under MLB in the New Standard Game selection.

So the argument against it is because (1) it isn't a required feature because there are currently no female players in MLB, (2) it isn't supported strongly enough by the OOTP player community at this time, and (3) it's a lot of work for the developers to do as a casual feature. Please don't try to argue against the possibility of female players in baseball, it will happen someday regardless of how you feel about it.

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by David Watts

The softball is for 40 year old guys with beer bellies statement was ignorant when you said it last year.

I stand by it. It's a dumb-down boring version of baseball. It's what people who don't know baseball think baseball is.

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

This strikes me as a variant of the "social construct" argument. I am mostly unconvinced. At least until such time solid evidence is provided for the claim.

I suspect innate differences in interests plays a larger role. Most women aren't interested in sports in the same way most men aren't interested in romance novels.

That's a silly argument since women who are playing organized softball have already made a decision to participate in sports. The difference is women understand, rightly or wrongly, there is little opportunity to make a living as a professional softball/baseball player after college. If there was an opportunity, the interest would be there. However, women don't seem to have the option to play organized baseball at high school and collegiate levels. Softball is the only option for them, and softball sucks.