Soviet Baseball League

[bjorgenson]

So, I've been running this alternate history game where baseball got voted in after the 1936 summer games (where it actually was a demonstration sport), meaning that after WWII, a lot of countries had reason to put state funding into baseball programs. As a result, by the mid 50's, the biggest, most professional baseball leagues in the world are those in the US, Japan, Cuba, Mexico.... and the Soviet Union. I'm still playing OOTP 15, so I'm not able to do international tournaments, but this save will probably be the reason I finally splash for the new version, as I've got MLB happily trundling along with the real, historic players, while my Soviet League is full of MLB quality fictional players - it'd make a fun WBC style tournament. Anyway - here's the league logo and the first team, the Alma-Ata Kosmonavty (Cosmonauts). I apologize if my Russian translations are terrible, I'll admit to using Google Translate for all of it. All the logos for the league are adapted from old Soviet propaganda posters.

Soviet Baseball League Logo


Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR) Primary Logo


Secondary Logo


Cap


Jersey

[ashantewarrier]

Soviet baseball league comrade? Fake news.


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[bjorgenson]

Baku (Azeri SSR) Buril'shchiki (Drillers)

[Izz]

Very cool

[bjorgenson]

Moscow Rabochiye (Workers)

[chey]

This is unbelievably cool.

In-game, do you use English or Russian team names?

[bjorgenson]

Originally Posted by chey

This is unbelievably cool.

In-game, do you use English or Russian team names?

Thanks, man! Yeah, Russian names in game, just gives it more of a local flair. Next up, Minsk (Byelorussian SSR) Traktor:

[bjorgenson]

The Leningrad Dockery (Dock workers)

[darkcloud4579]

What a concept! Excellent job!

[chey]

Did you make original teams for Cuba and Mexico as well, or just turn the existing ones into major leagues?

[bjorgenson]

Originally Posted by chey

Did you make original teams for Cuba and Mexico as well, or just turn the existing ones into major leagues?

Real teams - I'm slowly building up a library of retro logos and uniforms for foreign leagues.

[bjorgenson]

Stalingrad Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) - This is one actually a recolor of a Chicago Cubs program cover from the 50's.

This is fantastic!

[bjorgenson]

The pride of the Baltic, the Rīgas Jūrnieki (Riga Sailors, Latvian SSR):









EDIT: and another thing you'll need
EDIT TO THE EDIT: Turns out, that didn't work in 18 - let's try that again :-)

[Curve Ball Dave]

In Soviet Union, baseball throws you.

[Ty Cobb]

Love your work! Quick tidbit: Many if not most of the locals refer to Alma-Ata as Almaty. My wife grew up there. A beautiful setting at the base of the mountains with a smog cloud unfortunately thicker than LA's by far.

[CONN CHRIS]

Will Victor Starffin home home to mother Russia from the Nippon league to finish his career?

[Leo_The_Lip]

I like all these. However, the 'Tractor Works' really made tanks and other armored vehicles. Also you should add 'Dynamo' for electric generation and 'Torpedo'. I think those were both real teams from the era when the Soviets tried to pretend that their professional athletes were amateurs in the armed forces.

[bjorgenson]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

I like all these. However, the 'Tractor Works' really made tanks and other armored vehicles. Also you should add 'Dynamo' for electric generation and 'Torpedo'. I think those were both real teams from the era when the Soviets tried to pretend that their professional athletes were amateurs in the armed forces.

Well... the Minsk Tractor Works was more famous for tanks during the wars, but it WAS primarily a tractor manufacturing plant - see link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_Tractor_Works

The team they sponsored in the Belarusian soccer league even had little tractors on their logo.

As far as Dinamo/Torpedo/Spartak/Lokomotiv - I might. You're quite right, almost all Soviet sport took place in the context of those city athletic clubs that were linked to all-union industries or governmental entities, like the military or the secret police. When I started this, though, I thought I'd kinda shy away from that and do something a little less historically accurate but a little more fun... I'm starting to run out of ideas though, so I might circle back! Since those athletic clubs have logos that appear on all their teams, regardless of sport, it would certainly make the next couple logos simpler!

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

Will Victor Starffin home home to mother Russia from the Nippon league to finish his career?

That's an interesting thought...

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

Love your work! Quick tidbit: Many if not most of the locals refer to Alma-Ata as Almaty. My wife grew up there. A beautiful setting at the base of the mountains with a smog cloud unfortunately thicker than LA's by far.

Thanks! Yup, and actually they officially changed the name in the 90's. But all the team names have the official Soviet era designations, even though most people didn't really call Leningrad anything other then St. Petersburg, Stalingrad was really Volgograd, etc. Alma-Ata was the official Soviet designation for the town, even though Almaty was the name most people used.

EDIT: Ok, I did actually have one spot for a team that I hadn't quite settled on (starting with a 10 team league), so I'm going to use Leo's suggestion and add a Moscow Dynamo team. The other two are the Kyiv Flayery (Kiev Flyers) and Sverdlovsk Shaktery (Yekaterinburg Miners). I'm totally swamped at work right now, but I'll be working on getting those three, as well as quickstart league, up soon.

[thorpegiovanni]

Beautiful! Great work!