Draft Day, 1871: OOTP 17 Takes Us Back To What Never Was, But Should Have Been

Introduction: The OTBB guys wanted me to write something about Out Of The Park baseball, a computer baseball simulation game that you can find here. If its rating were a Statcast Stat, OOTP would be whatever the highest Statcast stat there is. So the game is *********^1 awesome and I recommend it to anyone who wants to feel like they should be a GM or just wants to make their own baseball worlds. 

Second Note: Realizing how much I could talk about this game, I decided to split this post up into parts. As a Draft Day Special, here is my experience on my own draft day for my historical baseball simulation on January 1^st, 1871.

DRAFT DAY

Old-timey piano music plays, but not any old-timey music, way old timey-music plays. Like ‘it might be on the sheet music monks used’ type of old-timey music.

It is a cold day on January 1, 1871. Or possibly it’s night. The game doesn’t give you a time. And it is an historic generic hour as the general managers of the newfound Major League Baseball are hosting the inaugural MLB draft in…well, somewhere in America I guess. It doesn’t say where. And luckily and amazingly, I am there. Me: the 21-year-old, Lebanon-born general manager of the Boston Red Stockings (Go Stocks), even though Major League Baseball, Lebanon, and I were all formed in the twentieth century.

I get an e-mail. Yes folks, that’s right, I receive an e-mail in 1871. It says, “The Draft is About to Begin.” I very futuristicly delete the e-mail and head to the draft to electronically select a team of players who thankfully survived the very recent Civil War.

For my OOTP simulation I decided to use randomly imported players from all eras following the historical outline of MLB’s expansion. In non-boring terms, it means players can be imported from any year but the general history of MLB is followed. So the Mets will start on time in ninety years when I am the 111-year-old Red Sox GM, but I do have the option, right now, to draft Sid Fernandez with the number two pick, an option I won’t take, because I’m not stupid, but it’s there nonetheless.

Right now there are only eight teams to choose from and these teams think it’s cooler to call themselves “Stockings” instead of “Sox.” Undoubtedly the coolest thing society today has to offer is the “-ox” suffix in baseball team names, so this is a real loss.

The Draft

The Chicago White Stockings (remember, these teams used to be boring about the way they spelled socks) select with their first overall pick no other than the greatest non-Sid Fernandez player in baseball history, Babe Ruth, a mere 24 years before he was actually born in 1895.

I have the second pick. Should I take Troy Tulowitzki, born in 1844 in Santa Clara, California even though I’m pretty sure California isn’t a state yet? (It’s not). Also, where specifically was this Troy Tulowitzki born, just on a hill by some Native Americans?

Frustratingly, for the first few seasons at least, the game doesn’t import players in their first year in professional baseball. This was a real bummer because 1871’s Ricky Henderson was the 41 year old version. My game would never get the chance to see the greatness of Ricky in his prime.

But no more asides, it is time to start the Boston Red Stockings franchise.

Who will be the face of our franchise, our star, who will be the painted on our stadium walls with charcoal because photography hasn’t been invented yet and charcoal paintings sound like the best way to do this?

Should I take a pitcher who has enough control to not throw the eight balls it takes to award a walk as per the rules in 1871?

Should I take King Kelly, who the scouts say is ranked with five stars but whom I also looked up online was one of the premiere players in the nineteenth century inspiring a song called, “Slide Kelly Slide?” Will this song still be popular? The old timey music plays louder and more horrifying! Will my friends and family back home in Lebanon still accept me when I return from my general managing career in America? I sit there, reading my e-mail of the Top Ten Players of 1871 –  the e-mail I got in 1871.

I decide to pick a player born two years after his Venezualan home was founded in 1845, power-hitting third baseman Miguel Cabrera. What’s nice about the random imports is that it makes it seem like segregation never existed in baseball because I can start playing with everyone right at the beginning of the game.

I had an OOTP 16 simulation where I played with players that were added based on the actual first year they played, but I forgot to uncheck ‘Add Fictional Players’, so then all of these made up players were added to the game and were playing and I did not want that. But since the random player generator uses player last names from all of baseball, many of the last names were of Hispanic descent and I can tell you I felt very weird in a 1870s league selectively picking out all of the foreign-sounding names and completely deleting them from MLB history forever. It was just like what happened in real baseball. We are always doomed to repeat history.

Here is who I picked in order of their selection: Miguel Cabrera, Curtis Granderson, Spud Davis, Joe Sewell, Gene Woodling, Hank Robinson, Tuck Turner, Jose Oquendo, Boog Powell, Mack Allison, Scott Podsednik, Ken Griffey Sr, Rich Amaral, Al Gionfriddo, Fred Norman, Grady Sizemore, Eddie Mayo, Jim Piersall, Charlie Greene, Henry Bladwin, Mike Bortotti, Jim Rivera, Anoan Richardson, Ed Delahanty, Brett Tomko, Jason Johnson and Dennis Cook.

Maybe you recognize Ken Griffey’s dad, Ken Griffey. Wait, in this game Ken Griffey Jr. could have been randomly imported before his dad. If they played alongside each other, would they be like, “Um, we look exactly alike.” Weird.

In my next update, we’ll discuss the time Babe Ruth lead the league with three home runs, how it felt to sim through the Mexican American War, and how bad my team actually was.

-Jason NoLastNameForLegalReasons