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OOTP 15 - Historical Simulations Discuss historical simulations and their results in this forum.

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Old 02-23-2015, 09:37 PM   #1
dynaboyj
Major Leagues
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Baltimore
Posts: 307
Draftless 1871-on sim

I'm currently running and observing an MLB historical sim from 1871-on. I disabled the draft from the very beginning, meaning that players sign to teams as free agents, and free agency from contracts has been in the league since about 1910 on. For most of the game I've simmed and the background and didn't pay attention, but I'm currently completely fascinated by it.

It's obvious that a draft levels the playing field for all the teams in any sport, as it should be, but it's kind of fascinating to look at what happens when that leveling is removed. Like European soccer leagues, some teams have maintained dominance of their league, or at least division, for insanely long periods of time because they have the most money.

For some reason that uberdominant team dependent on money, the Manchester United or real-life Yankees of the baseball world, is the Oakland Athletics in this game. It's currently the offseason of 1985, and since divisional play began in 1969 they have won the AL West every year except that year and 1984. They finished with 110+ wins every year from 1975-1981, and won the World Series every year during that period except 1978 and 1981.

But that's not the best part. The best part is that, by following this sim intently, I have come to absolutely loathe them like any good money-harboring team should be loathed. The main reason is that like all those real teams they continuously, continuously sign the best players for a few years at a time who are eager to move away from a less successful team. This evil tactic has made me root for the Yankees in what was for about half a decade their annual AL Pennant matchup--the Yankees won just as many games and blew their division out of the water just as much, but at least they had a tendency to keep their players longer, it felt, and also hadn't won a Series since 1901 while the A's have had continued success through the century. It's crazy how a video game can develop its own trends from this kind of thing. In this world I like the New York Yankees and hate the Oakland Athletics, a team who while now declining rapidly and having not been champions since 1980, have still signed in this offseason before the new year alone Rickey Henderson, Tony Brewer (who played 24 games in real life but has been consistently good for the Angels, one of the A's biggest challengers), and Don Mattingly for a combined 18 years and almost $20 million.
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Old 03-02-2015, 04:25 PM   #2
Anthropoid
Minors (Rookie Ball)
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 29
The ultimate irony of it all: It is my understanding that, in the original rules or charter written by the NY Knickerbockers, it was expressly forbidden for players of the game of baseball to ever earn money from playing!

It is fascinating what happens when "art" or "past-time" become insanely profitable, then grotesquely profitably, and finally astronomically-insanely profitable, as seems to have happened to so many sports--and not just the "professional" ones; the slaves . . . erm . . I mean athletes who play for big college teams or the "amateurs" who compete in the olympics make a helluva lot of money for someone in the short-term and possibly even for themselves in the long-term).

I can recall an incident that was one of my last viewings of sports. It might have been ten years ago, though perhaps only 6. It was the summer olympics, and I was watching the women's swimming. I cannot for the life of me remember the event and only have a fuzzy recollection that the athlete in question was an Australian mid-distance swimmer.

She managed to win, which either put her into position to win the Gold or else she won it right there. The scores of camera men and editors and all the technical staff involved in turning this "amateur" event, which presumably is primarily intended to be a prime display of good sportsmanship and athletic prowess, were on their game that day. In the split-seconds after the race ended the footage was perfectly on time to show the reaction of the athletes, who had all reached the end of their lap within less than one second of one another, and who were all gazing up in the same general direction at the display that would tell them who had won (given their times were so close they had to be measured with radar gun or something in order to split it down to the hundredths of a second).

The winner was in the middle of the frame and you could just make out the top two-thirds of the face of one of the "losers" in the foreground and the full face (though less in focus) of several "losers" in the background.

The display of sickening unsportsmanlike disposition, if not behavior that followed in the next few miliseconds after all of the athletes realized the outcome of the race left me cold, hollow and nauseous.

All of the losers looked absolutely crushed, as if they were the victims of severe PTSD. The winner? did she look happy, elated, joyous, ebullient? I wouldn't call it that. Combative, domineering, vicious, arrogant, that would be more my description of the expression on her face and the quality of the thrashing and splashing she engaged in.

Seems to me that bad sportsmanship is so deeply ingrained in the world today, we don't even know what good sportsmanship looks like anymore?

Apologies if a bit OT, but your post made me think of all that.

ADDIT: I don't think this is the race I am talking about. And actually Phelps only shows a slight _glimmer_ of the nastiness and unsportsmanlike disposition to which I refer. But if you take that reaction Phelps has immediately, and leave out the more sociable and brotherly behavior he shows a few seconds later you have the nauseating ethos I'm talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KLy-NnTD2o

Last edited by Anthropoid; 03-02-2015 at 04:43 PM.
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