OOTP 2020 VIRTUAL ORIOLES SEASON

[DrungoHazewood]

38 minutes ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

My grandfather went to Terrapin Park/Oriole Park to watch baseball games before it burned down in 1944.

https://deadballbaseball.com/?p=1805

That's awesome.  That was a big part of Oriole history and largely forgotten.  Huge amounts of history were lost, including much of the NL Orioles trophies and archives, when it burned down.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

42 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

That's awesome.  That was a big part of Oriole history and largely forgotten.  Huge amounts of history were lost, including much of the NL Orioles trophies and archives, when it burned down.

My grandfather talked about how good the minor league Baltimore Orioles were. My grandfather was only good enough to play high school ball, but his school won the city championship his junior or senior year. Better than me, I can't hit curveball so I never got past JV. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

My grandfather talked about how good the minor league Baltimore Orioles were. My grandfather was only good enough to play high school ball, but his school won the city championship his junior or senior year. Better than me, I can't hit curveball so I never got past JV. 

The 1920s Orioles had the highest winning percentage of any decade of Orioles baseball.

[now]

On 3/24/2020 at 9:11 PM, Tony-OH said:

I did not make that trade either!  Maybe one day I'll write it all up. It was fun and pretty cool how it worked out.

Hey Tony, in the What-if dept., what about resigning Markakis and Cruz after 2014 to extend the window for real... Did you try that, or take the opposite course and rebuild for real, sooner than 2018? (Thus either way, avoiding that unspeakable alternate timeline that we witnessed in 2016)?

[weams]

 

[Frobby]

On 3/30/2020 at 12:59 PM, BRobinsonfan said:

I know Strat-O-Matic had a bigger following - and I even tried Strat-O-Matic at one point - but by then APBA was in my blood... everything else was a poor simulation after that.  

Played both, liked APBA better.    I also played a game that used a spinner instead of dice.    Each player had a multi-colored disk that fit over the spinner.    If it was a high average hitter, a larger percentage of the circumference would be whatever color represented a single, etc.    Can’t remember the name but for some reason I associate the game with Lefty O’Doul.

Edit: It was All-Star Baseball:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3157/all-star-baseball

“Designed by former major league player Ethan Allen and introduced in 1941, All-Star Baseball became one of the most popular sports games of all time. The game is essentially a batting simulation of major league baseball, built around a spinner and player disks that are divided into sections in such a manner that a hitter has the probabilty of reproducing his real-life statistics in such important categories as home runs, triples, doubles, singles, walks, and strikeouts. In general, the game follows the basic rules of major league baseball. Teams are created from the player disks supplied with the game (often a mix of current players and all-time greats such as Babe Ruth) and from player disks for other seasons published separately. The team at bats places the appropriate player disk on the spinner, spins, and reads off the resulting number. The game does not attempt to realistically simulate pitching and defense. Thus a hitter's result from a time at bat is not affected by the opposing pitcher or the defensive prowess of the fielder to whom the ball may be hit, although the player in the field on some play outcomes is required to spin a second spinner to determine the advancement of base runners and other certain details. Results of each play are recorded on the field using plastic pegs for the base runners, while runs and outs are tallied on a rotating scoreboard. Cumulative runs scored are tallied on paper score sheets. Strategy discs are included that enable plays like sacrifice flies, stealing bases, bunting, hit and run, etc. The team with the most runs after nine innings (or extra innings, if needed) is the winner.

[Tony-OH]

On 3/31/2020 at 2:35 AM, now said:

Hey Tony, in the What-if dept., what about resigning Markakis and Cruz after 2014 to extend the window for real... Did you try that, or take the opposite course and rebuild for real, sooner than 2018? (Thus either way, avoiding that unspeakable alternate timeline that we witnessed in 2016)?

In interesting scenario. It also would be interesting to see if they would have resigned Andrew Miller. Maybe I'll run through that when I get a chance.

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

In interesting scenario. It also would be interesting to see if they would have resigned Andrew Miller. Maybe I'll run through that when I get a chance.

Watch Cruz decline like 99% of his peer group did.

[Moose Milligan]

Officially addicted to OOTP.  It is crack.

One gripe:  Double plays don't get broken up by slides this often.  It's ridiculous.

[Tony-OH]

9 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Officially addicted to OOTP.  It is crack.

One gripe:  Double plays don't get broken up by slides this often.  It's ridiculous.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of plays at the plate are skipped, especially if the runner is out. 

[Pheasants]

Tony, Are you keeping a stat sheet anywhere we can look.  I was thinking this would not be very interesting since it just used old stats.  We couldn't see if Davis really got better, etc., but I may get hooked.

[DrungoHazewood]

On 3/28/2020 at 12:15 PM, DrungoHazewood said:

I mentioned somewhere that OOTP21 has a new 3D ballpark creator.  One of my dreams has always been to accurately model Union Park, the home of the 1890s Orioles.  There have been many issues with that, mainly that there are very, very few photographs of the inside of the park.  The common one is linked here, from the big late-September 1898 pennant race deciding game with Boston. 

Luckily, a site called Deadballbaseball has a Sanborn fire insurance map of the area around the park, complete with stands and fences.  From that and the photograph (you can just make out the LF foul pole, which helps anchor all the other measurements) I was able to use some calipers and drafting tools to determine the fence distances.  Green Cathedrals listed the LF line as 300', RF as 350'.  My little drawing matched that very closely. 

As far as I know, nobody ever has had complete dimensions of the place, at least not in 100+ years.  But now we know:

RF: 350'
Angle just past RF: 390'
Straightaway RC: 371'
CF: 398'
Bend in deep LC: 415'
Z bend in straightaway LF: 387/395'
Deepest part of the LF bleachers: 365'
LF line: 300'
Home to the backstop: 46'

 

I know this is pretty obscure, but as someone who's studied the NL Orioles for many years this is a big thing.  Now I just need to get the stadium generator to work in OOTP and I can have some games in a park that was torn down in 1904.

Today there's a story on baseballhistorydaily.com discussing a very long home run hit by Joe Jackson at the Polo Grounds, claiming it was the longest ever.  But they go on to say that Dan Brouthers and the members of the old 1800s Orioles immediately disputed this claim, saying that a ball hit by Brouthers at Union Park was much further. 

Quote

Brouthers said of his home run:

“I remember distinctly hitting a ball over the right field fence at Baltimore…This hit was a line drive clearing the fence by about 15 feet…I have talked to groundskeeper Murphy regarding this matter, and he says the fence was fully 500 feet from the home plate.”

But know, or at least strongly suspect, that the RF fence at Union Park was nothing like 500'.  It was more like 350' down the line and 390' in deepest right.  My measurements would have to be off by so much the rest of the park doesn't make any sense for RF to be close to 500'.

I guess that doesn't matter so much because Brouthers and others claimed that the ball didn't stop rolling until it hit something on Guilford Avenue almost 1500 feet away.  I think Guilford is what was then N. Calvert on the map above.  It seems unlikely that a) a ball could roll unimpeded to N. Calvert St. and that b) that distance doesn't look like 1500'.

[DrungoHazewood]

Anyway, that may or may not be the same home run that some claimed rolled onto a cart, which had it's contents dumped onto a ship in the Harbor, which then took it all the way to China.  That's the home run that inspired someone to paint "Here" on the fence at Union Park, which was echoed in the HERE flag marking the point where Frank Robinson's home run left Memorial Stadium.

[NCRaven]

Thanks!  Good stuff.

[Frobby]

5 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Anyway, that may or may not be the same home run that some claimed rolled onto a cart, which had it's contents dumped onto a ship in the Harbor, which then took it all the way to China.  That's the home run that inspired someone to paint "Here" on the fence at Union Park, which was echoed in the HERE flag marking the point where Frank Robinson's home run left Memorial Stadium.

Thanks, I never knew that background to Frank’s “here” sign at Memorial Stadium.