I have other Sim League Baseball teams going, of course. Thirteen active seasons going right now, in fact.
One of them is my favorite ongoing league, Cooperstown Historical Replay. This league had a couple seasons going before I joined, but it works very simply and appeals to my old board-game mentality immensely.
The league replays major-league seasons one after another, with each owner drafting a real team and using only the players from that team. It’s as pure a replay as you can get in this sim, but it also somewhat exposes where it can be a little flawed. The hitters tend to feast on the weaker pitching, and the bad teams tend to do really poorly.
But to keep owners motivated even when stuck with a lousy real team, we have a lottery where your chances are based on how close you came to managing your team to a record as good as real life. If you outshine the team’s actual performance, you’re likely to draft in the top few teams for the following season, regardless of how good or bad you were.
We are in 1997 right now, and for the second straight season I’m managing the New York Mets. Just the way it worked out. We are one game from the end of the season, and I’ve managed the Mets to a 90-71 mark and just one game behind the wild card-leading Florida Marlins.
The actual 1997 Mets went 88-74, so I’m on the good side of the ledger. That should get me a top-10 pick for 1998, but right now I’m fighting for that final playoff spot. We’ve won 6 straight to get a chance at forcing a tiebreaker game 163. We’ll have to beat Houston while the Marlins lose to Pittsburgh in the finale for that to happen, but it’s fun to have a chance.
My history in this league is decent enough. I had a great run in somehow managing the Pirates to a World Series title in 1987 and then taking the 1988 Dodgers to the World Series the following season but losing in seven games. As a Dodgers fan, it was special to try to get that team the trophy, since it remains the last time the team won.
I’ve gotten one team to a World Series since, but these Mets aren’t really a championship contender. We’d still have to win a one-game tiebreaker just to get to the division series, and the team is already pretty fatigued trying to get there at all. Had to go for it, though. We’ll soon find out if our season continues for one more game.
