|
The reason this isn't possible is because at least until 1985 (when Pete Rose ended his playing career) teams routinely employed a player-manager. This was much more prevalent during the early days and by the late '60s into the early '70s player-managers were very few. Frank Robinson and Pete Rose are the last two big names to manage the game from the field.
Thus, one can see why importing managers wouldn't be feasible, unless you managed to keep the players with the teams they managed during their playing days and then have them retired when they managed teams they didn't play for.
It could be something that could show up in a few years. Since the Lahman database (and I'm assuming Gambo's) have a field in the manager table denoting whether or not he was a player-manager, then perhaps it could be coded to ignore such managers. And the game could check to see if the player is still active and either a) retire him or b) ignore him. I'd prefer option a since it would add a new twist to the game (ex. Frank Robinson retires from Oakland (AL) to take a job as manager of Cleveland (AL))
For ignored managers (the player-managers) the game could then decide to use the most talented player as the field manager.
It would add more twists to the game, that's for sure, but it would have to be something for another year or two to give Markus and Co. time to code it and all.
|