Double headers and historical schedules

fearofmimes · 04-29-2003, 02:28 AM

The most frustrating aspect of OOTP for me is its lack of support for double headers. I've been working hard on documenting historical schedules to increase the richness of play for a solo fictional league that I run. For the 1932 and 1933 seasons, I ended up taking the published schedules and flattening them to remove all double headers. This has allowed me to retain some of the funky scheduling that occurred, but I could only make the schedules work by breaking the rules against Sunday home games for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh during those seasons.

Double headers were an important part of the game, not only for games rescheduled because of rainouts but also for holidays and to work around limitations on Sunday baseball in some states.

I held off on upgrading to OOTP5 specifically because it did not improve support for double headers. I had to upgrade because my online league switched, so I checked to verify that problems with double headers remained and was disappointed to find out that my suspicions were correct.

I think that double headers could be support without a whole lot of trouble, although it might require a change to the table structure for the schedule.dat file depending on how support for double headers is implemented. However, I have done some cursory research and it appears that there might be enough slack space in the file that double headers could be supported without disturbing the existing layout. I would suggest adding a field for number of games for a particular game entry with 1 being the default and 2 indicating a double header. Another way to indicate double headers would be for the game to detect double headers as two games scheduled for the same time on the same date. This could cause a problem with the schedule editor, however, since there appear to be only 18 slots for game entries on the screen as it is now designed. Of course team schedules and roster pages would need to be updated to take note of double headers as well.

Both the statistical and player fatigue engines would need to accommodate double headers. When I've tried double headers with current versions of OOTP, only one game is counted in standints and player statistics do not tally correctly. In addition, the game would need to take into account how fatigue is noted for games played on the same day. For instance, some players who played the first game (especially catchers, but others as well who have not had a day off for a while) should be noted as tired for the second game. This would also allow for more realistic and statistically accurate handling of pitching staffs, especially when consecutive double headers are played.

Another issue that would need to be addressed for double headers would be the attendance problem. Double headers were good for atttendance, but it does not seem reasonable that a team should get credit for two sets of gate receipts. Perhaps a simple equation for determining attendance for double headers could be to cut the effective ticket price in half for a double header and then allocate the resulting attendance to both games (perhaps zero attendance for the second game that would be played half an hour after the first game). This would model the jump in attendance for the double header that was common, especially in the early years. Of course, a separate model for twi-night or split double headers (more common in the modern era) would be needed to support two sets of gate receipts. These could be indicated by allowing two games between the same teams on a given day but with different start times, with the second game being played no sooner than 30 minutes after the completion of the previous game in the event that first game goes longer than anticipated for scheduling.

A final point suggestion would be that a schedule import feature, as requested by others before, would be a big win. After taking the time to flatten the schedules to remove double headers, I end up spending 3 to 4 hours click-click-clicking in the schedule editor to enter the schedule and check for errors. The import feature could use a simple comma-delimited file as input with the following structure

Date,HomeTeam,Visitor,GameTime,GameCount

Twi-night or split double headers would be indicated by two schedule entries starting at different times for the same matchups.

I hope this can get done soon, perhaps as a patch for OOTP5 instaed of having to wait for the next major version.

Le Grande Orange · 04-29-2003, 05:51 PM

Holy smokes, another schedule junkie like myself in the forum?!? It can't be!!! I thought I was the only one!

Fearofmimes, first let me say that if you need to know the schedule for any MLB season (and I mean any), just ask me. I wanted to be able to use the real, historical schedules in the game so I began a project to gather every MLB season's original schedule. It took me around 9 months of on-and-off research at the library, but I managed to get it done. I've got ALL schedules from 1876-2003, including the third league UA, PL, and FL. I've also got the NA of 1871-1875 (as played mind you), the 1900 AL, and I've even got the 1927-1937 schedules for the International League (though I still have to type them up into text files from the photocopies I have).

So if you've been tracking down MLB schedule info yourself, I can spare you further effort. Maybe we can even compare notes as to what each of us knows/has.

I'm going to keep trying to get a schedule importer of some form done - the third party route isn't working at the moment, as the person who would do it has real life concerns taking up his time. I'll try contacting Markus again now that's he's back from vacation and raise the possibility once more. We did talk a bit about it, but that was awhile ago.

So you've tried doubleheaders in OOTP5 and it only counts one game in the standings and the player stats don't add up right?!

That's strange, as I'm pretty sure in OOTP4 the only problem was that the AI roster management, particularly pitcher usage, was confused by a doubleheader. I don't recall ever hearing about only one game counting in the standings or player stats not adding up correctly. Maybe something that got changed in OOTP5 is causing that.

Your suggestions on the financial side of it are great; I really haven't been concerned with that aspect yet. At this point I just want doubleheaders to work reliably, with no AI weirdness or standings or stats problems. I can live with them not displaying properly on some screens or with the attendance revenues counting them as two games - these problems are minor in comparison to not having doubleheaders at all in my opinon.

It's funny you should post this now - I was about to post in the main forum an update into my latest schedule research. Nothing big, but just the refinement of the info I do have thanks to the fact that in earlier teams often changed the schedule themselves from time to time, adding in games that originally were not on the official published MLB schedules. I'm in the process of trying to track down all these undocumented/unpublished changes; it's a long, involved process, but my perfectionist side just won't let the schedule files I have be anything less than 100% accurate.

Anyway, it's good to know I'm not the only historical schedule minded person around here. It looks as if there are now two MLB schedule experts on this forum instead of only one!

fearofmimes · 04-30-2003, 10:53 AM

I've been tracking your work and waiting for you to post your info somewhere. A clue you provided as to where to find the published schedule information (New York Times beginning to mid-February) helped me to start tracking down schedules on my own.

I've started to work on a bulk-load schedule importer myself for OOTP4. I have not yet determined how easy it might be to migrate it to OOTP5 since I don't plan to start using it heavily until there is double header support. I've got some of the league.dat stuff figured out as well as the basic structure of the schedule.dat file.

I have thought of a couple additional issues that should be fixed with OOTP5 as well to better facilitate realistic scheduling of games. First, OOTP needs to get intelligent about dates. It is ridiculous that we have to fiddle with the "Year Starts On" variable in order to get days to line up with dates. Leap years require me to do some significant editing of news files to get days and dates to line up properly.

In addition, the game schedule should allow specification of the ballpark where the game is to be played. There are numerous examples of seasons where teams used more than one park. Look no further than the Montreal Expos this year with some games played in San Juan. Then there is the Cleveland Indians in the 30s and 40s who played most of their games at League Park but used Cleveland Stadium on Sundays and holidays. In addition, history is scattered with teams who switched to new stadiums during the course of the season, such as the St. Louis Cardinals in 1920 (Robison to Sportsmans), Cleveland Indians in 1932 (League to Cleveland), the Cincinnati Reds in 1970 (Crosley to Riverfront) and the Seattle Mariners a couple years ago (Kingdome to Safeco field). Right now in my solo league, I have to keep a mental not to make sure that I make the switch manually at the right time.

Le Grande Orange · 04-30-2003, 09:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by fearofmimes
I've been tracking your work and waiting for you to post your info somewhere. A clue you provided as to where to find the published schedule information (New York Times beginning to mid-February) helped me to start tracking down schedules on my own.

Yeah, I've been meaning to get it all packaged up and uploaded somewhere, but then I figured since it'd all have to be manually entered not a lot of folks would be that interested. But I don't mind sending all of what I've got to anyone who asks (I've sent them off to a couple of people). So I can e-mail the schedules files I have to you if you'd like.

If you still want to hold microfilm photocopies of some years in your hands yourself, I can at least point you to the exact date to look up in the newspaper. I wrote down all the dates on which I found the schedules, so that would save a bit of time.

Quote:

Originally posted by fearofmimes
First, OOTP needs to get intelligent about dates. It is ridiculous that we have to fiddle with the "Year Starts On" variable in order to get days to line up with dates. Leap years require me to do some significant editing of news files to get days and dates to line up properly.

I'm not really sure how this part of OOTP works, but offhand, it shouldn't be that hard to deal with, if one already knows for each year what day it starts on.

A helpful little thing here is something called the "perpetual calendar" typically printed in information almanacs and references. It lists all the 14 calendar variations used along with a table listing which calendar to use for what year. I printed mine out ages ago, and it's quite helpful. At a glance, for example, I can see that 1933, 1939, 1950, and 1961 all use the exact same calendar. For all of these years, Jan. 1st is a Sunday, April 1st is a Saturday, Sept. 1st is a Friday, etc.

So I would think using this in conjunction with the "Year starts on" button shouldn't be that bad, unless there's another complication to it that I'm missing (which is quite possible).

Quote:

Originally posted by fearofmimes
There are numerous examples of seasons where teams used more than one park... In addition, history is scattered with teams who switched to new stadiums during the course of the season...

I've got a file detailing all of this as well, referenced to the actual hisotrical dates. It currently covers 1901-2003, and includes stadium changes not commonly known (such as the Dodgers playing some games at Roosevelt Stadium in 1956-57, or the Red Sox playing some games at Braves Field in 1929-32).

The only problem is that there are some discrepencies between sources for the Cleveland Stadium/League Park usage from 1936-39. I hope to eventually sort that out.

I'm also going to eventually add 19th Century ballpark info too. The recent overhaul at Retrosheet.org has made it possible to do fairly conveniently, though there is always the possibility of inaccurate data (they have some incorrect park listings for Cleveland games in 1898-99; their listings don't agree with info I found in New York Times accounts of the games. I have to e-mail them about that).

Anyway, at least there are two of us interested in proper, historical schedules. Maybe we can start a "Full doubleheader support now!" petition for OOTP...

fearofmimes · 05-03-2003, 10:59 AM

Okay, I'm making progress on a schedule importer (for OOTP4 first). I would be interested in seeing your stuff to see how easy it would be to use in an automated import process. I've got what is probably the necessary information slurped up from the League.dat and Teams.dat files, so now I'm just working on actually writing to the Schedule.dat file.

I actually have ambitions for something a little more comprehensive than a simple schedule importer/exporter. I think a historical engine could be built using an underlying database that would contain historical city information (metro populations, weather, market data, etc.), ballpark info (capacity, fences, turf, etc.), schedules (published, as played, etc.), and anything else that might be useful for configuring the game environment. Since the database formats aren't so hard to figure out, I can see an automated process whereby prior to starting a season you could just run a program that would update ballpark info, financial info, and the schedule. That would eliminate the hour or two that I spend doing it every season for my solo league.

BleacherBum · 05-03-2003, 12:23 PM

Le Grande Orange, I'd be very interested in those schedle files. I've hit a snag in scheduling my current fictional league, resulting from expansion. I would like to see the progressions of MLB schedules, and possibly use one as a foundation. If you're willing to share them, I'd really appreciate it. What size file are we talking about?

I did some experimenting with translating csv files to schedule.dat (in v4). Might tackle it again for v5, or if you have something to share, fearofmimes, I'd like to try it. Also, did I read correctly that if you actually schedule the same matchup twice on one day (to simulate a double-header), that the game misses one of those results in the standings?

Le Grande Orange · 05-04-2003, 03:45 PM

BleacherBum and fearofmimes, I'll shoot over the zip file containing all the schedules I have. If you normally use a different e-mail address from that associated with your forum profile, just let me know and I'll send it to that one instead. Look for it in the next day or two. It won't be a large file, as all the schedules are in simple text file format.

The actual way the schedule info is typed out may not be the most friendly way to work with for other purposes, but it was the best way in which to translate the info from printed copies to digitial files. It was also the format used by the game "Old Time Baseball", for which I found a few of the schedules available for download.

I can't guarantee each file is perfect, as in checking some I have found the occasional typo, sometimes my fault and sometimes the fault of misprints on the published schedules, but overall it things should be very good.

04-29-2003, 02:28 AM	#1
fearofmimes Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Minneapolis, MN Posts: 31	Double headers and historical schedules The most frustrating aspect of OOTP for me is its lack of support for double headers. I've been working hard on documenting historical schedules to increase the richness of play for a solo fictional league that I run. For the 1932 and 1933 seasons, I ended up taking the published schedules and flattening them to remove all double headers. This has allowed me to retain some of the funky scheduling that occurred, but I could only make the schedules work by breaking the rules against Sunday home games for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh during those seasons. Double headers were an important part of the game, not only for games rescheduled because of rainouts but also for holidays and to work around limitations on Sunday baseball in some states. I held off on upgrading to OOTP5 specifically because it did not improve support for double headers. I had to upgrade because my online league switched, so I checked to verify that problems with double headers remained and was disappointed to find out that my suspicions were correct. I think that double headers could be support without a whole lot of trouble, although it might require a change to the table structure for the schedule.dat file depending on how support for double headers is implemented. However, I have done some cursory research and it appears that there might be enough slack space in the file that double headers could be supported without disturbing the existing layout. I would suggest adding a field for number of games for a particular game entry with 1 being the default and 2 indicating a double header. Another way to indicate double headers would be for the game to detect double headers as two games scheduled for the same time on the same date. This could cause a problem with the schedule editor, however, since there appear to be only 18 slots for game entries on the screen as it is now designed. Of course team schedules and roster pages would need to be updated to take note of double headers as well. Both the statistical and player fatigue engines would need to accommodate double headers. When I've tried double headers with current versions of OOTP, only one game is counted in standints and player statistics do not tally correctly. In addition, the game would need to take into account how fatigue is noted for games played on the same day. For instance, some players who played the first game (especially catchers, but others as well who have not had a day off for a while) should be noted as tired for the second game. This would also allow for more realistic and statistically accurate handling of pitching staffs, especially when consecutive double headers are played. Another issue that would need to be addressed for double headers would be the attendance problem. Double headers were good for atttendance, but it does not seem reasonable that a team should get credit for two sets of gate receipts. Perhaps a simple equation for determining attendance for double headers could be to cut the effective ticket price in half for a double header and then allocate the resulting attendance to both games (perhaps zero attendance for the second game that would be played half an hour after the first game). This would model the jump in attendance for the double header that was common, especially in the early years. Of course, a separate model for twi-night or split double headers (more common in the modern era) would be needed to support two sets of gate receipts. These could be indicated by allowing two games between the same teams on a given day but with different start times, with the second game being played no sooner than 30 minutes after the completion of the previous game in the event that first game goes longer than anticipated for scheduling. A final point suggestion would be that a schedule import feature, as requested by others before, would be a big win. After taking the time to flatten the schedules to remove double headers, I end up spending 3 to 4 hours click-click-clicking in the schedule editor to enter the schedule and check for errors. The import feature could use a simple comma-delimited file as input with the following structure Date,HomeTeam,Visitor,GameTime,GameCount Twi-night or split double headers would be indicated by two schedule entries starting at different times for the same matchups. I hope this can get done soon, perhaps as a patch for OOTP5 instaed of having to wait for the next major version.

04-30-2003, 10:53 AM	#3
fearofmimes Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Minneapolis, MN Posts: 31	Some more ideas I've been tracking your work and waiting for you to post your info somewhere. A clue you provided as to where to find the published schedule information (New York Times beginning to mid-February) helped me to start tracking down schedules on my own. I've started to work on a bulk-load schedule importer myself for OOTP4. I have not yet determined how easy it might be to migrate it to OOTP5 since I don't plan to start using it heavily until there is double header support. I've got some of the league.dat stuff figured out as well as the basic structure of the schedule.dat file. I have thought of a couple additional issues that should be fixed with OOTP5 as well to better facilitate realistic scheduling of games. First, OOTP needs to get intelligent about dates. It is ridiculous that we have to fiddle with the "Year Starts On" variable in order to get days to line up with dates. Leap years require me to do some significant editing of news files to get days and dates to line up properly. In addition, the game schedule should allow specification of the ballpark where the game is to be played. There are numerous examples of seasons where teams used more than one park. Look no further than the Montreal Expos this year with some games played in San Juan. Then there is the Cleveland Indians in the 30s and 40s who played most of their games at League Park but used Cleveland Stadium on Sundays and holidays. In addition, history is scattered with teams who switched to new stadiums during the course of the season, such as the St. Louis Cardinals in 1920 (Robison to Sportsmans), Cleveland Indians in 1932 (League to Cleveland), the Cincinnati Reds in 1970 (Crosley to Riverfront) and the Seattle Mariners a couple years ago (Kingdome to Safeco field). Right now in my solo league, I have to keep a mental not to make sure that I make the switch manually at the right time.

05-03-2003, 10:59 AM	#5
fearofmimes Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Minneapolis, MN Posts: 31	Schedule importer Okay, I'm making progress on a schedule importer (for OOTP4 first). I would be interested in seeing your stuff to see how easy it would be to use in an automated import process. I've got what is probably the necessary information slurped up from the League.dat and Teams.dat files, so now I'm just working on actually writing to the Schedule.dat file. I actually have ambitions for something a little more comprehensive than a simple schedule importer/exporter. I think a historical engine could be built using an underlying database that would contain historical city information (metro populations, weather, market data, etc.), ballpark info (capacity, fences, turf, etc.), schedules (published, as played, etc.), and anything else that might be useful for configuring the game environment. Since the database formats aren't so hard to figure out, I can see an automated process whereby prior to starting a season you could just run a program that would update ballpark info, financial info, and the schedule. That would eliminate the hour or two that I spend doing it every season for my solo league.

05-03-2003, 12:23 PM	#6
BleacherBum All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 672	Le Grande Orange, I'd be very interested in those schedle files. I've hit a snag in scheduling my current fictional league, resulting from expansion. I would like to see the progressions of MLB schedules, and possibly use one as a foundation. If you're willing to share them, I'd really appreciate it. What size file are we talking about? I did some experimenting with translating csv files to schedule.dat (in v4). Might tackle it again for v5, or if you have something to share, fearofmimes, I'd like to try it. Also, did I read correctly that if you actually schedule the same matchup twice on one day (to simulate a double-header), that the game misses one of those results in the standings? __________________ Right Field Sucks!

04-29-2003, 05:51 PM	#2
Le Grande Orange Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Up There Posts: 15,642	Holy smokes, another schedule junkie like myself in the forum?!? It can't be!!! I thought I was the only one! Fearofmimes, first let me say that if you need to know the schedule for any MLB season (and I mean any), just ask me. I wanted to be able to use the real, historical schedules in the game so I began a project to gather every MLB season's original schedule. It took me around 9 months of on-and-off research at the library, but I managed to get it done. I've got ALL schedules from 1876-2003, including the third league UA, PL, and FL. I've also got the NA of 1871-1875 (as played mind you), the 1900 AL, and I've even got the 1927-1937 schedules for the International League (though I still have to type them up into text files from the photocopies I have). So if you've been tracking down MLB schedule info yourself, I can spare you further effort. Maybe we can even compare notes as to what each of us knows/has. I'm going to keep trying to get a schedule importer of some form done - the third party route isn't working at the moment, as the person who would do it has real life concerns taking up his time. I'll try contacting Markus again now that's he's back from vacation and raise the possibility once more. We did talk a bit about it, but that was awhile ago. So you've tried doubleheaders in OOTP5 and it only counts one game in the standings and the player stats don't add up right?! That's strange, as I'm pretty sure in OOTP4 the only problem was that the AI roster management, particularly pitcher usage, was confused by a doubleheader. I don't recall ever hearing about only one game counting in the standings or player stats not adding up correctly. Maybe something that got changed in OOTP5 is causing that. Your suggestions on the financial side of it are great; I really haven't been concerned with that aspect yet. At this point I just want doubleheaders to work reliably, with no AI weirdness or standings or stats problems. I can live with them not displaying properly on some screens or with the attendance revenues counting them as two games - these problems are minor in comparison to not having doubleheaders at all in my opinon. It's funny you should post this now - I was about to post in the main forum an update into my latest schedule research. Nothing big, but just the refinement of the info I do have thanks to the fact that in earlier teams often changed the schedule themselves from time to time, adding in games that originally were not on the official published MLB schedules. I'm in the process of trying to track down all these undocumented/unpublished changes; it's a long, involved process, but my perfectionist side just won't let the schedule files I have be anything less than 100% accurate. Anyway, it's good to know I'm not the only historical schedule minded person around here. It looks as if there are now two MLB schedule experts on this forum instead of only one!

05-04-2003, 03:45 PM	#7
Le Grande Orange Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Up There Posts: 15,642	BleacherBum and fearofmimes, I'll shoot over the zip file containing all the schedules I have. If you normally use a different e-mail address from that associated with your forum profile, just let me know and I'll send it to that one instead. Look for it in the next day or two. It won't be a large file, as all the schedules are in simple text file format. The actual way the schedule info is typed out may not be the most friendly way to work with for other purposes, but it was the best way in which to translate the info from printed copies to digitial files. It was also the format used by the game "Old Time Baseball", for which I found a few of the schedules available for download. I can't guarantee each file is perfect, as in checking some I have found the occasional typo, sometimes my fault and sometimes the fault of misprints on the published schedules, but overall it things should be very good.