Commissioner League? LOL

What If Sports is inferior to SOM all time greats in many ways. Very weird that you could have three Ty Cobb's from the same year playing LF CF and RF for you, and two man pitching staff of Pud Galvin. Not very realistic and it was prone to abuses because of that. SOM is better because you can see the player cards and determine the probability of various outcomes.

My favorite Sim started out as Bill James Classic Baseball, they would mail you a weeks worth of box scores from the simulation results. This was in the early 90s. That became Stats Inc. Classic Baseball, an online version of the same game. They used a players career stats and I think it was based on the middle peak of the career. By far the most realistic, including the risk of long term injury for batters and especially pitchers, not great if you lose a star player for 30 games, but at least if you know that you tried to have a functional bench to draw from. Unfortunately Stats got out of the baseball Sim business, and a couple of years later a very similar online game debuted, called Diamond Mind online. Even though I had a few teams, for whatever reason I haven't gravitated to that one yet, even though I think I'd like it better than this. In my opinion, career simulation games are a better way to enjoy assembling a roster of all time great players than single years like we do here.

While not a fan of the pricing, I do like that they now offer this. It is a great way to get my 12 year old and his baseball team playing 365 without having to get them involved in advanced leagues.

Diamond Mind Baseball, the PC game by Tom Tippett, was my first introduction to historical baseball simulation games. When I got an email about the online version I gave that a try for a couple of years. Just for your information, the message board community over there has a very dim view of the merits of Strat O Matic, most consider the career approach infinitely superior to single seasons, unless you are trying to simulate a complete season from the past. I don't have an opinion either way, both games are fun and interesting in their own way.

I didnt play Stratomatic growing up. I played Statis Pro Baseball which was very fun to play (and gave good pitchers more controll over the outcome). The 1982 Brewers were a great team to play. Then one day my brother and I bumped into a guy we knew from gaming conventions. We played this game called Diplomacy and he helped to run it at the convention. He told us that a guy he knew from the convention was running a computer gaming league and would we be interested? The guy he knew was Russell Sipe (actually we knew him a little from the Diplomacy tiurnaments) who published Computer Gaming World. Our first team had Julio Franco (his rookie season!)and I believe the game was Computer Baseball and we would draft a team and play out a full season. About 4 years later we switched to Earl Weaver Baseball. We playtested the game for David Dombrower. He showed up and we met him. I kind of get a kick out of reading the Wikipedia article on Earl Weaver where it indicates a great review of the game by Computer Gaming World...also that Russell Sipe used to be in the Southern Baptiat Ministry. I didnt know that!

But it was a fun game, the graphics were great. I dont think that a game has been developed since then where you could simulate a season and watch the results in an entertaining fashion. (I am not sure how great the simulation was--we had Roger Clemens' great 1986 season and he was mediocre for us). You can have a good simulation like Strat or Dianond Mine...or an arcade game with decent graphics...but not both. We switched over to Diamind Mine after Earl Weaver was unsupported and that game put no effort into graphics and was tedious really to play out a game. I feel there is a niche there that could still be tapped: simulate a whole season while still being able to make managerial decisions during the game without relying on AI and having decent graphics to make it enjoyable to play each game.

I was kind of tangentially involved in running the team as I went through college, law school and the first few years of my legal career. Show up for the draft and play occasionally, while my brother mostly ran the team.The league stopped around 20 years ago...and then I discovered Strat about 6 years ago.

I dont think that a game has been developed since then where you could simulate a season and watch the results in an entertaining fashion. (I am not sure how great the simulation was--we had Roger Clemens' great 1986 season and he was mediocre for us).

That's a really cool story! I think your thought above has been true for some time. Either it was a decent simulation that was not very stimulating, or it was a pretty facade with poor simulation. One could surmise it was a limitation of client-level home PC computing capability. Except maybe those folks that had the dim view of SOM that hollywood referred to!

There is no longer an excuse, now that a Raspberry Pi can run Mathematica on two 4K displays and an SD card

The earlier recollections from others were cool too. We all seem to have been searching for the Holy Grail of sports simulation entertainment.

Oh and bk's point is a good one too--the idea of introducing new younger players in a more controlled environment. After all, you pay your own money--why not. As long as it is clearly labeled as such. I have a problem with folks doing that in a league that states no multi-team ownership, yet they try to run up records or whatever. That's just silly.

Thanks for your post, Freeman. Loved the story, and like you I played quite a bit of Earl Weaver back in the day, with a couple buddies. The game allowed you to build rosters, so we drafted all-star caliber teams and would sit shoulder to shoulder in front of the PC and play. We were playing the '87 season and I had George Bell on my team. Bell was a monster that year, mvp in the AL, 47 homers and a .308 BA. I remember getting so frustrated because the game had a "pitch around" option and Bell would strike out almost every time my opponent would invoke it.

I also appreciate everybody talking about other games. There are lots of platforms and they all have their pros and cons. I bought OOTP last year and played with it for a bit but it didn't grab me. Now, I'm curious to check out Diamond Mind.

The greatest strength of 365, to me, is the fact you can get through 162 in 8 weeks, which gives users plenty of opportunities to build teams and try strategies. For those who get frustrated by Hal's management moves or other distortions in the 365 game engine, I recommend taking a look at Dynasty League Baseball Online. DLBO's strength is the ability to manage your team in game vs. other players in real time in a cloud resident application. It's also a computerized version of a C&D board game, originally called Pursue the Pennant. The underlying game is very cool, similar to Strat in structure but with some nice innovations.

I haven't dug in to MLB The Show at all, but I've checked out some YouTube clips and reviews. The graphics are beyond great, visually, it's just about the same as watching baseball on TV. I think there might be a stats only mode, which takes out the arcade skill element, but I don't know. And I'm afraid if I bought a PS4 I might never get any work done at all!