I must say your schedules help me greatly doing this. You sure put a lot of works for this, I just make some correction for the 75 one (the 3 Philadelphia teams games don't show correctly, kind of like the BAL/MAR situation in 73. but I know it's a team id problem not a schedule one) and it took me a while.

Thank you for those schedule files fhomess! This is really appreciated

Tonight I've checked the history of my simulation and find there was some some no-hitter games...

National League

07/06/83 George Derby while playing with Buffalo against Chicago (2K-0BB)
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-J...lipboard01.jpg
Retired after the 1883 season

American Association

05/17/84 Ed "Cannonball" Morris while playing with Columbus against Louisville (6K-0BB)
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-G...lipboard02.jpg
always active in 1886

Union Association

10/11/84 Jim McCormick while playing with Cincinnati against Boston (3K-0BB)
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K...lipboard03.jpg
always active in 1886

10/13/84 Charlie Hodnett while playing with St-Louis against St-Paul (6K-0BB, perfect game).
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9...lipboard04.jpg
Retired after the 1885 season

and Joe Start continue to play at 43 years old... now I know why his nickname was "Old Reliable" :ohmy:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-r...lipboard05.jpg
Amazing to see how he was bounded with the teams he played with. He was with New York from day one untill the team disband and he was with Providence from their second seasons untill the team disband too.

This is sure unusual with this period...

Is it true that Detroit bought the Buffalo team at the end of the 1885 season to get Dan Brouthers? That seem really hard to believe that something that "weird" was permitted just to get one player.

They were after four players, including Deacon Jim White, Jack Rowe and Hardy Richardson, who is little remembered today but was valued at least as highly as Brouthers at the time. It wasn't entirely permitted, because it violated an agreement that nobody would try to meddle with the players of the shaky Providence and Buffalo clubs during the season, and it kicked up a big fuss. Eventually a compromise was worked out that let the deal go through, but Detroit had to give up some good players to Philadelphia, which had wanted Richardson and Brouthers.

In the preparation of the 1887 season (wich will take a while to start since I'll take a month of vacation away from my computer soon) I've check the transaction for this year as usual and this one strike me.

1887/02/14

The Boston Beaneaters purchased King Kelly from the Chicago White Stockings for $10,000.

This is quite an impressive ammount of money for the time, but that sound like a waste of money at a time where the players were almost the boss (team jumping, free agency almost every year,...).

Also I see the expression "A team X obtained a player Y who was previously under league control for an ammount Z of money" often, does it means that some players belong to the league and not to a team?

The reserve limit was 14 for the 1887 season, which was enough to keep a team's main players under club control. (The average number of players to appear on a major league roster during the 1887 season was 20.8; the minimum was 16, the maximum 33.)

I hope AES_pres has a chance to post some more statistics before he takes his hiatus.

It could happen, but not under normal circumstances. As LGO says, the reserve rule was generally sufficient to control all valuable players. But if a club dropped out of, its players might become free agents. Even if the departing club sold its men, putting so many on the market could have a destabilizing effect. Therefore, on several occasions the National League itself bought out the departing team and resold the players as it wished.

In the winter of 1885/86, this was the solution to the controversy over Detroit's buyout of Buffalo. The League allowed Detroit to take the four players they wanted, but it acted through a committee to purchase the rest of the Buffalo roster, several current Detroit players and also the roster of Providence, another dropout. Then the committee financed the acquisition by reselling the players to individual teams, but not just any team that would meet the price, because they needed to maintain the balance of power between the clubs, make sure that everybody got something out of the deal and see to it that the new replacement franchises had at least marginally competitive teams.

The entire League had ultimate control: when Boston, which happened to chair the committee, decided they wanted Paul Hines,, the League blocked the move because Hines was a star player and a native of Washington, and was needed by the Washington team that was replacing Providence.

The formal mechanism of these moves isn't always apparent from newspaper accounts, but there's no question about the reality of what was happening, and we do know that the departing teams retained their league membership until all their players were disposed of, simply to act as a repository for their players' reserve rights and keep them from becoming free agents. As a result, although they were of course not on the schedule, one or both of the teams that left after 1885 formally retained league membership even after the 1886 season started.

I can't do anything before I leave as I have a wedding today (not mine...) and I must go in less than 2 hours, so I won't be here this weekend. But I'll be back for one day monday before my month vacation, so I could try to do something.

I was thinking of posting seasons recap, maybe here or on a new blog. More chances that it will be the second option as I know already the "how to" since I already have a film blog on Blogger and I can post more pictures.

I let you know here.

I just started it tonight :D
For those interested the link is in my signature.

I've decided to restart because some errors were present on my first try (mostly scheduling error).

I sure hope to read some comments as this is my way to learn about the history of this great sport.

Thanks, this is just the sort of thing I was looking for! I don't know much about baseball, but just bought the game today and have now been sidetracked into reading about its early history...

You may be interested in harold seymours the early years baseball book written years ago based on his doctoral dissertation from cornell university. One of the best history books of the early game and a good used paper back copy will only run u a few bucks online