Game Start Times

[JaBurns]

I am playing a historical league starting in 1901, currently in 1903 and just noticed that some the second games of a double header are starting at 7:05 PM. This would be too late to finish before dark during most of season, does anyone know why this is, or have I made a mistake or missed a setting when I started the league?

[RchW]

Originally Posted by JaBurns

I am playing a historical league starting in 1901, currently in 1903 and just noticed that some the second games of a double header are starting at 7:05 PM. This would be too late to finish before dark during most of season, does anyone know why this is, or have I made a mistake or missed a setting when I started the league?

Strictly cosmetic based on schedules if it is just DH that are problematic just edit the start times for DH. Alternatively edit the entire schedule using search/replace.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by JaBurns

I am playing a historical league starting in 1901, currently in 1903 and just noticed that some the second games of a double header are starting at 7:05 PM. This would be too late to finish before dark during most of season, does anyone know why this is, or have I made a mistake or missed a setting when I started the league?

It is not the double headers in the schedule that are the problem; they are properly set for day games. It is the double headers the game schedules because of rain outs. You can edit their times before you play them and they will properly be grouped in the day-game stats.

[joefromchicago]

Questdog is correct: the start time of a make-up game (whether it's part of a double-header or a single game arranged on an off-day) is always 7:05. Maybe that will change in future versions of the game, but right now we're stuck with it.

Taking a quick look at the major league schedules included with OOTP, it appears that the normal game times for the deadball era are either 3:05 or 4:05. I can assure you, however, that nobody ever scheduled anything to start at five minutes after the hour during that time period. That was done much later to accommodate television broadcasts - certainly not a concern for teams in the early 1900s.

Game times during that era were typically 3:00, 3:30, or 4:00. For a long time the Giants started their games at 4:00 - the rationale that I've seen is that the Wall St. banks and brokerage houses ended their day at 3:00, so a 4:00 start allowed the office workers time to go from the southern end of Manhattan to the Polo Grounds on the Harlem River. That may have been good for business, but it resulted in a higher percentage of Giant home games being called on account of darkness. The most famous example was the "Merkle game" in September, 1908.

[JaBurns]

Thanks I was wondering what time games did start at the turn the last century. 3:00 made sense to me to catch the after work crowd. When I noticed the 7:05 start for the second game I knew something was wrong, there would be no way to finish the game in daylight. What time did first game of double headers start in this era?

[joefromchicago]

I'm not entirely sure when the first games of double-headers started. It might very well have been 3:00 as well. Keep in mind that the average length of a game during the deadball era was around 90 minutes or so. A two-hour game would have been long, and a three-hour game would have caused rioting in the stands. Pete Alexander, a notoriously fast worker on the mound, could finish a game in under an hour. So it would have been possible to start the first game at 3:00 and end the second game before nightfall.

In the schedules that I've done for this period, I usually start the first game at noon and the second game at 3:00. That's more of a guess than anything else. Also, I like to keep a three-hour gap between start times, just to make it more likely that the first game won't overlap with the second (not that it matters in terms of the game, but I'm sure some people care about that sort of thing).

Also, in this time period, it wasn't unusual for clubs to agree beforehand to play only seven innings if it looked like a regulation game wouldn't finish before dark, or if one of the teams had a train to catch. I'm not sure when they stopped doing that, but I've seen several newspaper reports from that era that specifically mention that the teams agreed to play seven innings.

[JaBurns]

Thanks very much. I know it doesn't matter in this game I just have a thing for accuracy; learned something, I didn't know that teams could cut games short to catch a train. I had thought that the train would be held for the ball team. Never thought it through I guess, holding a train for a ball team may have caused a riot in the early 1900's.

[joefromchicago]

This is an interesting article from the March 23, 1912 edition of The Sporting Life which bears on the question of start times in general and the NY Giants in particular. It appears that some Giants fans were agitating for earlier start times - either 3:00 or 3:30. Owner John T. Brush favored the 4:00 start time, but decided to let the fans express their preference.



I haven't followed up this story to see how the voting went, but I'm fairly certain that the start times for Giants games remained at 4:00.

[JaBurns]

Thanks I wonder how the first "fan voting" turned out, and if any changes were made to time the games started for the Giants. Attendance stats seem pretty good for early in the 20th century.

[JaBurns]

Is there an easy way to insure that all levels of a league only have day games on the schedule ? It is the same league mentioned above I just noticed the minor leagues have scheduled night games.
A minor detail but I think the schedule times should be correct. ...

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by JaBurns

Is there an easy way to insure that all levels of a league only have day games on the schedule ?...

Not if the schedules are being automatically generated by the AI. You'll need to load schedules that have all day games yourself. There are a couple of ways of doing that.

• You can create your own schedule;
• You can choose one the schedules that comes with the game, or else choose an appropriate schedule in the schedules subforum (you might need to change the start times - you can do that easily with a search-and-replace command);
• If you're satisfied with the schedules that the game is creating, and you just want to change the start times, you can export the game-created schedule, edit the start times in that schedule, and then re-import it.

If you're looking for schedules that are appropriate to the time period, you might want to check my thread on historical minor league schedules - the link is in my signature line.

[JaBurns]

Thank you very much I am going to go to your historical schedules and try to figure out how to import them; I have never used the search and replace option is it easy? I am somewhat a novice when working with global commands I still fear blowing everything up!

[joefromchicago]

Nothing could be simpler. Download the desired schedule. Open it in Notepad (if you're using Windows - if you're on a Mac, I'm sure the process is similar). Go to Edit and then choose Replace (or control-H). There are two boxes: in the "Find What?" box, type the time that you want to replace (e.g. 1905 for games that are scheduled to start at 7:05). Then, in the "Replace With" box, type the time that you want your games to start (e.g. 1500 if you want them to start at 3:00). Then hit the "Replace All" button and you're done!