[AZTarHeel]

This is my hope in setting all this up:

I'm fascinated with the minor league baseball history of my home state, North Carolina.

I want to bring that to life in a 64-team baseball universe where every franchise has some basis in NC history. My ideal situation would be to create five different leagues operating simultaneously:

* An eight-team, statewide league for the largest markets (Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, etc.). These franchises would have the biggest budgets and stadiums, have the top players, etc.
* Four other regional leagues with teams from medium, small and even tiny markets (recreating the old Tobacco State League and the mill-town minor leagues from the 1930s, 40s, 50s).

I don't want it to be majors and minors. I want each league to stand on its own, crown their own champions, be a "major" league - though with different reputations and different calibers of players due to market size and financial differences.

At the end of the season -- or maybe right in the middle -- I want to run a 64-team tournament. SINGLE ELIMINATION until the semis, then best of three. The Old North State Championship, if you will. Everyone has a chance, even the Snow Hill "Billies" or Leaksville-Draper-Spray "Triplets," who play in front of 700 fans on a good night (whereas Charlotte and Raleigh may draw 20,000-25,000, while Rocky Mount and Hickory draw 10,000-15,000).

I want all the teams to draw from the same pool of players if possible. I like the idea of superstars maybe getting drafted by the tiny market squads and cutting their teeth there for 4-5 years before free agency calls them to the bigger markets... Maybe aging superstars take minimum salaries to finish out their careers with the little teams as well.

My thought was to start right after WWII -- 1945 or so.

I know this will take awhile to get set up. I want to do the financials as best I can and not have teams with wonky numbers screwing everything up. In some ways I don't want parity. I want dynasties across each of the markets.

I would love to have a simple system where I can just input for each franchise what their payroll numbers will be each year (or decade) and not have to fool with ticket prices and media deals or math! Charlotte = $1.5 million per season ... Rocky Mount: $800K ... Snow Hill $350K etc.

I will post results as I test this out ... so far, my first seven-year test run with a 16-team setup produced some seriously inflated budgets for the smaller market teams.

But as far as W-L records, it seemed about right. The larger market squads fared best -- except for one magical season when the North Wilkesboro Racers upset the favorites to win the end-of-season tournament...

Once I get things set up in an acceptable way (if I ever do), I want to create a GM/coach, start with one of the smallest franchises (Snow Hill? the Elkin Blanketeers? Mount Airy Graniteers?) and see what kind of damage we can do across the state, hunting championships and glory...