Putting Historical Player in Modern League

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Is there a way I could get a young Ken Griffey Jr. on to a team to start 2015?

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Never mind. Figured it out.

[Rookie250]

How did you do it?

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Rookie250

How did you do it?

I would imagine that he would answer thusly:

As commissioner (Manager Team Control Settings), you go to your League Menu, Transactions, Find a Player, MLB Player List. You should see the Available Actions drop down menu arrow on the upper right (first screen print). Pull that menu down and select Import Historical Player(s).

Here is where it gets tricky. The window that opens up is labeled "Select Master.csv or historical_database.odb file from database." You have to navigate using the Up button and clicking on folders until you get to where your game has installed the /stats folder which contains these files.

It could be a LONG trip because, by default, this window opens up in the folder where the game's executable files are located (for me, C:\Program Files (x86)\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP Baseball 16), not where the game has installed your league files (for me, C:\Users\Bruce\Documents\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP Baseball 16).

To get to where I needed to be (which is, in full, C:\Users\Bruce\Documents\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP Baseball 16\stats), I had to go Up three times to the C:/ level, then choose /Users and navigate my way down to my /Documents folder in my user profile followed by a few more folder clicks to /Out of the Park Developments, /OOTP Baseball 16, and then /stats (sorry if you use a Mac; I don't know the equivalents in that system but the need to navigate is probably the same).

Once you get there (see second screen print), you can see both files are in that /stats folder. I guess it does not matter which file you select, but I usually use Master.csv. Click that and then Confirm.

Here's another tricky spot. You need to know the player's Historical Player ID (third screen print). Fortunately, Baseball Reference provides that; for example, Ken Griffey, Jr. is "griffke02" - you can see that in the URL as highlighted in the fourth screen print. OOTPB (that is, the historical database that comes with it) uses the same player ID's for this purpose.

Enter the player ID and choose which year of his career that you want to import him as, for ratings purposes. (You need to read up on the rest of those options in that window - too much to talk about here). His entire real career history will be imported, including his awards as I was surprised to see, but of course he will have no stats yet in your own league.

The fifth screen print shows that I was successful in importing Ken Griffey Jr. into my game. I imported him as of 1999 when he was 29 and possibly at the peak of his career. I immediately deleted him, though, because I don't want that monster dominating my league and my team! My league is still in 1922 and given Griffey Jr.'s skills in 1999, the man would destroy everything in his path!

[EDIT] I mentioned that my league is in 1922. That is why you see Griffey's birthdate in 1892 instead of 1969. That is by design, of course. The game imports his real MLB history and other facts about him, but you would not want to see a guy born in 1969 playing in 1922, would you?