Baseball's New Beginning 1970
Major League baseball had gone through some very hard times in the 60’s fighting with their players over money. The league's owners had total control of the money and they were not sharing it with the players. Well things came to a head in 1966 when players walked off the field in every city in the old Major League. It took 3 years of (haggling) negotiation but finally an agreement was made between the new National Baseball Association (NBA) and the NBAPA (Players Association). Baseball would be brought back and there would be 24 teams including 2 in Canada. The league was starting fresh with new ideas and new beginnings and a 10-year CBA negotiated with the players.
Thus the NBA was born….
The league held an initial player “draft” that based on the information available, was pretty random in nature. The Seattle Tridents had a front office staff in place, but on February 28th, 1970 Tridents owner Aaron Williams cleaned house and fired his general manager. It appears that Williams and his former GM got into a huge argument about what the club's priority should be. Williams, while having understanding patience and a controlling fiscal personality, wanted the club future to include EXTREME WINNING! The former GM didn’t see it that way saying it could take years to build a successful winning organization. The two nearly came to blows and Williams fired the GM.
That is when Williams came to me. I had been in charge of the organizations AAA team in Tacoma, the erstwhile Tacoma Tugs of the Pacific Coast League. Williams came down to my office in Tacoma, talked with Tacoma owner Clay Huntington and brought me up to Seattle. We were just days away from spring training and I had to get familiar quickly with the Tridents players on hand. Williams let me know that we had plenty of room in the budget and if I wanted to attempt to sign up to 3 players during March, I could do that. Williams let me know that he understood this was a first season and we had so little to go on, but that he still expected a 500 season this year. Seems reasonable from a man that wants “extreme winning”.
It was time to sit down and set what sort of hand the Tridents had been dealt.
OOC - This will be a long term (hopefully) solo project and one of the first solo games I have played in the last 3+ years (OOTP 22 was probably the last time). I have been very involved in the Figment Baseball League the last I guess 5+ years, I have lost track of time, but I love the stats only aspect of that league. I have taken that challenge to this solo league, and it will be a stats only solo league. That should make it more challenging in the long run.
As mentioned the league held a random draft but there are some free agents available. The Tridents look pretty lousy on the pitching side at least in the quick reading of some scouting reports. Guess we will see what we have in spring training, but I suspect I will be seeing what I can find in the free agent market.
I purposefully limited myself to just 5 signings during the spring and I might make a few trades, but I really don’t know what I have yet. So we'll take it easy on that front.
Also I am not adjusting the salaries nor the “service times” on the players on rosters. So while the league was shut down, whatever service time appeared for players was part of the negotiation between the owners and the players union. I could have set all service time to zero since this is a start up league, but decided that it would be more fun (or frustration) if we had free agency from the get go and not just 25 players making the minimum for 6 years.