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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2016 13:38:02 GMT -5
Question - when you were introduced and fell in love with baseball, which team or player was the spark?
Growing up in Cleveland, it was the Indians for me. In particular, I began watching televised sports in 1980 with the Tribe and Olympics that year. If you know 1980 Indians baseball, Super Joe Charboneau was the player I rooted the hardest. The 1980 AL Rookie of Year lost relevance the following year and was out of baseball in short order. But, for that magical summer, he was and remains close to my heart.
The Tribe went on to have great success in the late 90s before I moved away in 1999. Jacobs Field (after the old Municipal Stadium, the Jake was a baseball Cathedral) and attending the '95 and '97 World Series were the pinnacle for me personally.
When I turned 16 the first place I wanted to drive was the ballpark. I called up the ticket office to find out if they had any tickets to today's game? "Sure, we have 70,000 or so seats available, come on down" was the answer. I was naive to the issues of running a franchise that lost 100 games a year on a regular basis (at the time).
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Post by Peter - Boston Red Sox on Dec 28, 2016 14:48:51 GMT -5
I started watching the Cubbies in 1988 when my family moved from Tennessee back home to Indiana. We lived about 3 hours from Chicago and the Cubs were on TV every Sunday afternoon. After we got home from church I would flip on the TV and watch the Cubs. I wasn't really a baseball fan until that summer we moved back home. I was hooked after those lazy Sunday afternoon games. My favorite player to watch was first baseman Mark Grace but I loved watching Ryno and The Hawk too. I sent a baseball card that year to SP Rick Sutcliffe and got an autographed photo back. Been a Cubbie fan every since. They have broken my heart many times since then but watching them win it all in 2016 made up for it all! Looking forward to 2017 and hoping these kids can win it again.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2016 15:01:31 GMT -5
I started watching the Cubbies in 1988 when my family moved from Tennessee back home to Indiana. We lived about 3 hours from Chicago and the Cubs were on TV every Sunday afternoon. After we got home from church I would flip on the TV and watch the Cubs. I wasn't really a baseball fan until that summer we moved back home. I was hooked after those lazy Sunday afternoon games. My favorite player to watch was first baseman Mark Grace but I loved watching Ryno and The Hawk too. I sent a baseball card that year to SP Rick Sutcliffe and got an autographed photo back. Been a Cubbie fan every since. They have broken my heart many times since then but watching them win it all in 2016 made up for it all! Looking forward to 2017 and hoping these kids can win it again. Its funny, once we got cable I was able to watch the Braves, Cubs and Mets on a regular basis. Funny that 2 of the 3 have beaten the Indians for Championships. Where in Indiana? After Cleveland I spent 15 years or so in Indianapolis and Noblesville Indiana.
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Post by Sean..Mariners GM on Dec 28, 2016 15:14:39 GMT -5
Growing up in central PA (Born in 1971) I was a huge football fan and didn't really care for baseball because it was boring to me. My dad took me to my first Pirates game in '78 or '79 and I really enjoyed it. I loved Dave Parker and Kent Tekulve. By this time I was a huge Seahawk fan (Jim Zorn to Steve Largent and those awesome unis!) and didn't realize the Mariners had a team. When I found out I started to follow them. They were bad...I didn't really have a favorite player but those unis were cool with the trident on the hat and the use of it for the "M" in Mariners. When ESPN started to get more popular I was able to see highlights and get to know the players. My first favorite players were "Mr. Mariner" Alvin Davis and Jim "Hound Dog" Presley.
Fast forward to '89 and Junior. My all-time favorite player along with Steve Largent. By this time I was a rabid Seahawk fan (still am but a lot more calm now because I saw them win a Super Bowl in my lifetime) but was becoming more and more enthralled with the M's.
I joined the army in 1994 and was fortunate enough to be moved to Washington state in 1997. I remember the first time going into Seattle. My ex-wife and I had to catch a bus from central Washington because her car broke down traveling the passes on I-90 through the Cascades to get to my duty station in Tacoma. I saw the lights of the city and the Space Needle through the bus window and bawled my eyes out. I couldn't believe I was in the city of my favorite teams.
I saw both teams in the Kingdome (Seahawk season tickets in 1997) and the Mariners in Safeco (Season tickets in 2007). Never had the chance to go to Qwest Field before I was transferred because I was a dumb ass but, my plan is to get there in the next couple of years.
My pinnacle was seeing Steve Largent catching a touchdown pass at Three Rivers Stadium in 1986 (Damn Steelers won 13-9) and seeing the 1998 Mariners Season opener. Junior, Edgar and Buhner all hit home runs and the Big Unit pitching but Bobby Ayala of course blew the game, lost 10-9 to the Indians (Although he didn't take the loss everybody blamed him because it was Bobby Ayala).
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Post by Peter - Boston Red Sox on Dec 28, 2016 15:21:04 GMT -5
I started watching the Cubbies in 1988 when my family moved from Tennessee back home to Indiana. We lived about 3 hours from Chicago and the Cubs were on TV every Sunday afternoon. After we got home from church I would flip on the TV and watch the Cubs. I wasn't really a baseball fan until that summer we moved back home. I was hooked after those lazy Sunday afternoon games. My favorite player to watch was first baseman Mark Grace but I loved watching Ryno and The Hawk too. I sent a baseball card that year to SP Rick Sutcliffe and got an autographed photo back. Been a Cubbie fan every since. They have broken my heart many times since then but watching them win it all in 2016 made up for it all! Looking forward to 2017 and hoping these kids can win it again. Its funny, once we got cable I was able to watch the Braves, Cubs and Mets on a regular basis. Funny that 2 of the 3 have beaten the Indians for Championships. Where in Indiana? After Cleveland I spent 15 years or so in Indianapolis and Noblesville Indiana. I grew up in Fort Wayne. Northeast corner of the state.
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Post by Peter - Boston Red Sox on Dec 28, 2016 15:27:07 GMT -5
Growing up in central PA (Born in 1971) I was a huge football fan and didn't really care for baseball because it was boring to me. My dad took me to my first Pirates game in '78 or '79 and I really enjoyed it. I loved Dave Parker and Kent Tekulve. By this time I was a huge Seahawk fan (Jim Zorn to Steve Largent and those awesome unis!) and didn't realize the Mariners had a team. When I found out I started to follow them. They were bad...I didn't really have a favorite player but those unis were cool with the trident on the hat and the use of it for the "M" in Mariners. When ESPN started to get more popular I was able to see highlights and get to know the players. My first favorite players were "Mr. Mariner" Alvin Davis and Jim "Hound Dog" Presley. Fast forward to '89 and Junior. My all-time favorite player along with Steve Largent. By this time I was a rabid Seahawk fan (still am but a lot more calm now because I saw them win a Super Bowl in my lifetime) but was becoming more and more enthralled with the M's. I joined the army in 1994 and was fortunate enough to be moved to Washington state in 1997. I remember the first time going into Seattle. My ex-wife and I had to catch a bus from central Washington because her car broke down traveling the passes on I-90 through the Cascades to get to my duty station in Tacoma. I saw the lights of the city and the Space Needle through the bus window and bawled my eyes out. I couldn't believe I was in the city of my favorite teams. I saw both teams in the Kingdome (Seahawk season tickets in 1997) and the Mariners in Safeco (Season tickets in 2007). Never had the chance to go to Qwest Field before I was transferred because I was a dumb ass but, my plan is to get there in the next couple of years. My pinnacle was seeing Steve Largent catching a touchdown pass at Three Rivers Stadium in 1986 (Damn Steelers won 13-9) and seeing the 1998 Mariners Season opener. Junior, Edgar and Buhner all hit home runs and the Big Unit pitching but Bobby Ayala of course blew the game, lost 10-9 to the Indians (Although he didn't take the loss everybody blamed him because it was Bobby Ayala). The Mariners had some good players during the late 1990s. Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner and Jr. I always admired Ichiro. To me he was the definition of professional. Never got to see him play because they were on the west coast but I usually checked the box scores to see how he did. Loved how he played the game. Stealing bases (very underrated in the modern game & in the OOTP world) and getting hits. My OOTP team has led or been near the top in steals but I have not translated speed on the basepaths into wins sadly.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Dec 28, 2016 15:46:34 GMT -5
Great topic.
I originally found baseball very boring, slow-moving and had, because I live in Canada, no real connection to the sport aside from briefly playing some hardball when very young. I wasn't all that good and it was just a diversion in the hockey off-season!
Playing was never the problem, for me, with really any sport - watching, an entirely different matter. I could relay a similar story about basketball. Loved playing for years, have little time to watch it now (unless the Raptors go all the way, then I might watch the last series of the season).
Sorry to perpetuate the stereotype, but as a youngster I was engrossed with all things hockey, which only really leaves a couple of months in the summer for......enjoying summer (remember...Canadian). Hockey was it!
At the risk of dating myself, for me things changed with ever-increasing success of the Montreal Expos. Although it took some time for me to come around as a fan, living nowhere near Montreal - in fact the other side of the country really - there were some good players through Montreal and I vividly recall "Blue Monday," when they got oh, so close (and before the Jays started to have more of an effect). Carter, Staub, Cromartie, Dawson, Raines, BOTH Martinez (Pedro and Dennis), even the broadcast crew of Dave Van Horne "El Presidente, El Perfecto" and Duke Snider were all magical.
When the Jays caught on, I became a real fan of the sport. I totally remember their back to back World Series victories, again cheering from afar. Literally an entire country celebrated...twice! I've even been to a couple of Jays games (and only a couple). And most will know alot of the Jays as their success is more recent, Alomar, Carter, Halladay, Morris, Henderson, Martinez, Whitt, Steib and many, many others I am leaving out.
At the other end of the spectrum, both the strike (when the Expos were surging - what could have been) and the Expos then leaving for Washington were complete downers!
Thus, my pursuit of a league that actually features the Montreal Expos stopped right here! Missed them by weeks when I first joined PBL, happily took on the challenge of the Angels in the meantime, and will do everything I can to bring the Expos back to prominence (if only fictionally).
Should the Expos ever actually return - and here's hoping WHEN that happens the powers that be actually keep the EXPOS name IF NOT RETURNING TO THE ORIGINAL LOGO AND UNI - I think it would be monumental for baseball in Canada. Someday?!?!
In the meantime, perfectly happy cheering for the Jays, through the thick, thin and now hopefully thick again!
Oh, and playing OOTP online too! It really does add to my enjoyment of baseball in a huge way!
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Post by Luc_AZdbacks on Dec 29, 2016 2:17:18 GMT -5
I think I'm probably a bit younger than the average GM here. I grew up on the west coast of Canada, and pretty much loved playing baseball from a young age. From the age of around 4, I would play catch with my dad pretty much everyday in the summer, and given their games were always on TV, I watched pretty much all the Jays games that I could.
I knew all the players numbers, stats and batting stances by heart from those '99-03 Jays teams. Went to my first game in Seattle in 01 (oblivious at the time of the Mariners historic season going on), and I think Carlos Delgado had to be my favourite player at that time growing up. Watching him hit was a lot of fun, and even at that age it was easy to see that he was an outstanding hitter.
Playing baseball was always my focus however, and as my own baseball ramped up especially in high school, I wasn't able to watch much of the MLB. Due to my proximity to Seattle, already being a big Seahawks fan, and my growing disdain for several Jays players, I eventually converted to being a Mariners fan.
I now study Statistics at university, and use every project opportunity to do something involving sabermetrics and baseball statistics!
Sean -- I hope you get the chance to get to Seattle sometime for a Hawks game. I've been fortunate enough to get to 12 games now over the years at CenturyLink/Qwest, and it's something that you need to experience at least once.
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Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on Dec 29, 2016 6:40:19 GMT -5
I've never really been in love with Baseball as a sport. I mean, I played tee-ball as a kid (which was awesome) and I grew up as a fan of the Minnesota Twins, and they won a World Series when I was 8, and Kirby Puckett was awesome. I knew the names of Kent Hrbeck, Gary Gaetti, etc before I knew much anything else about sports. But it never really stuck; didn't help that I was overseas when I was 8 What really did it for me were four things: 1) When I was six-seven my father sat me down and showed me his super-simple baseball simulation game that he'd designed. It just used a deck of playing cards for its RNG, and batters only had four binary attributes (ability to hit curveball, fastball, average and power) and pitchers only had two (curveball (which was binary) and fastball (which was trinary - you could either have no good fastball, a workable one, or what he called a #2 fastball - those pitchers were monsters)). In retrospect it was hilariously simplified but it was a baseball sim game that I could play on my own at age six and track stats for and develop leagues for. It opened my eyes. 2) When I lived overseas my father introduced me to an upgraded version of his game that was built off of a Bill James book he'd bought. He used real players and generated probabilities using the book and had a fancy calculator do a 1-1000 RNG. Too cumbersome for me (since it was his calculator) but it did suggest a higher-level sim. 3) Moneyball blew my mind. It basically defined baseball GMing as an intellectual pursuit built around accurate assessments, clarity of vision and patience for the model. I've always been driven by trying to find the right answers to things, to find the Truth, if that doesn't sound super-pretentious. GMing seemed like a pursuit of Truth (ie, the better you can identify and build around value, the better an understanding of the Truth of the game you have) that was actually rewarded by success or failure depending on how you did. Good times! 4) I'd played a few versions of OOTP recreationally, but I never found it too challenging against the computer. One year my best friend Ben suggested that we join an online OOTP league together. And the rest is history. Long story short, I don't give a fig for real baseball. I respect it's players and history, but it is no more significant to me than the PBL is, less so probably. But baseball as a competitive intellectual pursuit? Love it. Always have
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Post by Mac_Yankees GM on Dec 29, 2016 12:41:12 GMT -5
Growing up in the 70's I was a big RedSox fan and my favorite player was Carl Yastrzemski. But my love for baseball was really cemented when I got this for Christmas- It only had 6 teams and I would always play as the Oakland A's with Vida Blue, Joe Rudi, Sal Bando, Gene Tenace,etc... That was the start of my love of baseball simulation games. Later I bought- I remember replaying the entire 1978 RedSox season. Unfortunately for me the Ron Guidry card was unbelievable and I could never beat him. Then I bought this game- Pursue The Pennant was about as realistic a table top game could get with all the ballparks in the box. Prior to finding OOTP I played Diamond Mind baseball for many years. Me and a good friend used to draft teams every year and play about a 60 game season, getting together a couple of times a month to play 5-6 games a night. I suppose I have actually come to prefer the computer brand of baseball to actual baseball. No labor or drug scandals here. Anyway that's my story.
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Post by Ryan_NatsGM on Dec 29, 2016 13:35:16 GMT -5
I've been a sports omnivore since before I can remember. I'm told the sports page is one of the first things I started to read when I learned how. Baseball isn't necessarily my favorite sport (I rarely watch a non-Cubs regular season game for any length of time), but it's up there.
My first vague baseball memory is Ryne Sandberg's last game (though I'm not sure if it was his first or second retirement). The Cubs were pretty bad in the 90s so I've probably blocked most of it out until 1998. I remember finding out about Wood's 20 K game on SportsCenter (back when that was everyone's primary source for sports news), and watching Sosa hit 20 HRs in June to crash the Griffey-McGwire home run race. They snuck into the playoffs that year in Game 163, and while they weren't really a threat to win it all, they were the first team I really paid attention to.
As far as the statistical/simulation side of things, I remember playing the MLB Showdown card game back in the early 2000s. It was geared towards the 12-and-up crowd, and extremely simplistic compared to what others have mentioned in this thread, but it got me started on baseball gaming. Like others, Moneyball really changed my outlook on things, and sometimes I wish I would've read it a few years sooner and tried to make a career out of sports statistics. Alas, my inner desire to be a GM is now filled by OOTP.
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Post by Arizona_PBL on Dec 29, 2016 13:36:18 GMT -5
I grew up in central NY. My mom was from Providence area and HATED the Yankees, so of course I too hated the Evil Empire. So I grew up rooting for the Royals who were in the 1980s the Yankees' nemesis. George Brett was my favorite player growing up and still remember watching the pine tar game and hating the Yankees even more for making an issue over the amount of pine tar on his bat.
After graduating college I moved to CT and started to watch Red Sox games since I got NESN on cable. So now (many years later) I follow the Red Sox more than any other team, but was very happy for the Royals and their recent WS win.
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Post by earlweaver on Dec 29, 2016 15:48:15 GMT -5
I grew up in Toronto, and rooted for the Jays all my life. Tony Fernandez is my all time favourite player. George Bell, Dave Stieb, Tom Henke.... The Blue Jays of the 80's is just chalk full of talent and heroes to me.
I've been to numerous games at the old Exhibition statium. The general admission benches are something i would hate today, but as a kid, they were pretty cool.
Im a die hard today, who loves nothing more then to sit down in my chair and watch a Jays game from start to finish.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Dec 29, 2016 16:15:21 GMT -5
Following on John's post, and tied into my Expos above, here's the other classic call that every Canadian has seen multiple times, if not when it actually happened. Personally I think it tops (or at least sits comfortably alongside) the Dave Van Horne "El Presidente..." above. "Touch 'em All Joe......." from the late Tom Cheek! Then, and only then IMHO, would I move on to the much more recent "bat flip!" I'm good with the Expos for another half dozen years now, but if the Jays ever opened up too...... I might be a bit conflicted!
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Post by Sean_RedsGM on Dec 29, 2016 19:48:23 GMT -5
My earliest baseball memories come from watching Chicago Cubs games with my Great Grandmother when I was 5 or 6 years old. By that time, my grand parents on both sides of my family had brainwashed my sister and I into memorizing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and it was pretty much a guarantee than when we saw them we would have to sing the song. I can remember players like Sandberg, Dawson, Dunston and Grace as guys I used to root for while watching but at that time I really didn't have a team.
My family is pretty much split down the middle between Cards and Cubs fans.
I really started actively watching baseball in '96 when Tony LaRussa was hired as the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. LaRussa made big news by starting Royce Clayton over future HOF SS Ozzie Smith. This was a big deal in our family because everyone loved Ozzie. The move worked and the Cardinals headed to the post season that year for the first time. They almost went to the World Series but lost to Atlanta in Game 7 of the NLCS. From then on, I was hooked. In '98 I was lucky enough to see McGwire hit homerun #65 and have homerun #66 taken away by a missed call from an umpire at Milwaukee County Stadium. In the early 2000's, the Cardinals were fun to watch. They played good defense, pitched well and hit a lot of homeruns. Guys like Edmonds, Rolen, Renteria, Pujols were all in their "prime" and arguably were part of some of the best regular season teams in MLB history...but we all know the postseason is what really matters. In 2004, they finally made it to the World Series only to as many of you already know got swept by the Red Sox but for nearly 16 seasons they've been a threat to make to the postseason. Chris Carpenter really had a breakout year in 2004 and quickly became one of my favorite pitchers to watch. 2006 came and many people wrote the Cardinals off because they had one of the lowest win totals by a playoff team in MLB history. Many overlooked though that the projected Opening Day lineup never played together until Game 1 of the NLDS. The rest was history and I got to enjoy watching my favorite team win a title! I've been fortunate enough to go to many playoff games over the past 6 years and even let Ryan come with to see the Cubs beat the Cardinals last year a playoff game. I've seen some pretty amazing feats at games I've been to and that's really why I love the game.
Ryan and I have been best friends since we were really little and started off playing Nintendo with Tecmo Bowl. Ryan had Madden on the computer and we used to play "franchise" mode before it was franchise mode. We would sim every game and that was really my first experience ever playing a sports simulation game. Like Ryan said, MLB Showdown was pretty fun too. I'm really glad that I finally convinced him to try OOTP, I know that in time he'll put together a competitive team in DC!
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