I started a historical resim in 1901 where players join at their normal times, but I didn't take over a team. I removed the MLB color line in 1920 and basically simmed all the way through. I expanded when I felt like it, moved teams in an alternate history fashion and we're currently at 30 teams and the year is 1997.
Here's the way I've evolved history thus far:
https://imgur.com/a/45JhKrV
(Normally, I'll write stuff out but that's a lot to write...)
With some minor exceptions, I've mostly let players careers exist unabated leading to some interesting outcomes. The other thing is, I eventually added foreign leagues because it's one of my favorite OOTP features, but the foreign players aren't real. I imagine them as facsimiles of what could've happened had Asian & Cuban players started coming to MLB earlier.
I'll probably spend a bit of time recapping what's happened before I get into the story at present. I'm considering taking over a franchise while there are still real players that I recognize in-game, as I intend to keep simming well into a fictional reality.
A recent story:
Quote:
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1996: Buffalo Red Sox won their first-ever World Series title. 11 post-season appearances before they finally got the job done. Boston ended up being uninterested in replacing creaky Fenway Park, so they moved 6 hours away to Buffalo where a gleaming ballpark awaited them. In this universe, finances aren't regionally controlled so think of it like the NFL where it doesn't matter where a team plays.
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The other thing is, we've had a decent amount of franchise movement and probably more to come. Much like the NBA where teams can abandon bigger markets for smaller ones, you might see inexplicable franchise moves impending because I like the storyline and usually because I can find a diverse set of uniforms to go with them. I also want to balance the geography of our majors, because right now there's too many teams in Eastern time zone, except apparently according to
real life, my fictional universe has one more team in the west and central than MLB.
The Seattle Pilots were a 1968 expansion franchise. They've won 3 AL West titles, have made 6 post-season appearances in history but have never won a pennant or a World Series. In this storyline, the success of Vancouver (who have dominated the 90s) and more recently, Portland who moved from Texas in 1991 (Portland previously had an expansion team, the Stags, who moved to Carolina that year to become the 2nd incarnation of the Carolina Twins) have just broken through and also won a World Series in just 8 years (and only 6 in PDX.)
Mariners ownership -- they changed names in 1977 -- are dealing with city leadership who refuse to build them a stadium and they're exploring other options.
The Baltimore Orioles were a 1961 expansion franchise who have made just 3 post-season appearances. They've never won a division title, nor a pennant or World Series. Family ownership have been trying to sell for years, but to no avail.
So far, my trend has been to either resurrect IRL franchises in new (or existing) markets, but I'm considering alternatives as we get closer to the future.