The improvements for OOTP26 all sound great, the Drive for the Pennant being extended to historic seasons is very welcome, but the game still lacks authenticity wrt past seasons, particularly from the deadball era (let alone the 19th century). The problems here are obvious, and it is mainly all about the play by play narrative/commentary.
For one, there were no radio broadcasts of games until the 1930s, so how can you simulate pbp description that does not try to emulate a ‘radio style’ pbp?
Moreover, even if you are willing to grant the fiction of pre-1930s radio and that pbp style, the language used to describe baseball games, the events and players, has changed significantly over time. Yet OOTP’s pbp description is the same regardless of the season, and that detracts a lot from the ‘look and feel’ for users when playing past seasons. The basic solution is also plain enough: have era-based pbp, perhaps varying it by decade. And definitely use historic newspaper accounts of games for the language in pre-radio years pbp.
But there is yet another ‘realistic baseball history’ challenge: the kinds of in-game events that are common today, like the so-called ‘checked swing’ appeal plays (by home plate ump to base ump) on called balls, simply did not occur prior to the 1960s, and were not at all common until the 1970s-80s (I dare you to watch or listen to a World Series game from even the 1960s and find a single appeal! (MLB did not even add the checked swing appeal option as a ‘comment’ to rule 8.02c until the mud-1950s I think.)
Related to this, the number of umpires officiating a regular season mlb game has changed over time, from one to two (by 1912) to three (common by 1933) and finally the four we find today. Consequently, the game events and of course their description in the pbp need to take this into account (e.g., would love to see the two-umpires situation in the deadball era be captured by the pbp!).
The ability to play past seasons with historically realistic statistical results is one of OOTP’s special virtues, but until the game has historically realistic pbp the year experience of past season play is seriously compromised.
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