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To answer your questions more specifically...
If you start in 1980 (or any year between 1901 and 2007/8) you will get the correct teams with the correct players. You will not get the proper lineups, as the AI will determine that for themselves.
Expansion will happen if you remember to use the proper settings on when creating your league. It's up to you if it happens or not. Same thing with bringing in historical players (and why wouldn't A-Rod be a Mariner? That's who drafted him and he debuted with, after all).
I'm not sure on the debut dates with Lahman, but you'll have guys entering the Amateur Draft at about the proper time for them to be making their real life debuts. It won't be perfect, but it'll be close.
You can play a specific season, decade, century, whatever. Up to you. You can play with all historical players and teams, some historical players, no historical players, real teams and fake players, fake teams and real players, .etc, .etc
You can decide if you want guys to perform as close to real life as possible (auto-recalc setting every year), with a little difference (auto-recalc for 3 years), more of a difference (auto-recalc for 5 years) or let the game engine take over and potentially have huge differences in performance (no recalc).
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