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Originally Posted by Big Train
The problem with this is that there are not enough off-days for OOTP purposes ... I think each team needs an off-day every 6 or 7 games to replicate this accurately.
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It should be noted that Tiger Fan used as his base an MLB schedule from the 1930's, but since the MLB schedules during the 16 team era exhibited some variation in their construction this means some aspects of them thus won't be reflected.
From 1901-1902, the AL schedule ran some two weeks shorter than did the NL's. In 1903 the two leagues then began cooperating more in their schedules, and both ran within 1-2 days of the other's.
From 1904-1918, the schedules were usually around 177-179 days long (25 weeks and 2-4 days).
After a one year reduction to 140 games in 1919, in 1920 the season went back to 154 games. But the calendar length had been cut back to 173-174 days (24 weeks and 5-6 days).
In 1930, the calendar length was cut again, down to 167-168 days (23 weeks and 6 days, or 24 weeks exactly), which is where it basically stayed up to 1958.
The only other major change in the MLB schedules happened in 1936, where the number of intersectional trips (that is, the number of times eastern clubs took trips west to play western clubs, and the number of times western clubs took trips east to play eastern clubs) was changed. Previously, the number of trips had been three. This meant, for example,that three times during the season Brooklyn would travel west to play a series against each of the western clubs (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis) on that road trip. The result of this was some fairly long road trips.
In 1936, the number of intersectional trips was increased to four. Now Brooklyn would make four separate road trips on which it would play a series against each western club. The result of this change was to reduce the typical length of a road trip.
Another part of the scheduling during the pre-1934 period involved the fact that a number of teams were not allowed to play Sunday home games. This meant one less day per week a team could host games, which of course contributed to the occurrence of 1-game series as well as tending to make the schedules take longer to play out.
Anyway, what I'd suggest is if you're extending Tiger Fan's schedule is to leave Sunday as open dates for the eastern clubs and Mondays as open dates for western clubs during each week. This would reasonably mimic the situation as it existed for many years in MLB, plus it gives you the one off day per week you are looking for. Alternatively, you could take a real MLB schedule of approximately the right calendar length and modify as needed. I'd suggest the 1912 or 1913 seasons as good candidates.