The American Pastime - Baseball's Alternate History

[legendsport]

I'm starting a new dynasty - The American Pastime (TAP) - that will eventually become an online league after I build up some history.

The main concept behind TAP is simple: replay baseball history with real players in a real-world universe where the leagues, teams and ballparks are all fictional. This will allow us to go in directions that MLB did not go, while keeping the familiar names and personalities from MLB's history.

I'll be running the league itself on my website, so much, if not all of the content you see here will be duplicated there, but thought it would be interesting to post here too. This way, anyone who has interest can follow along without having to visit my site.

As I do not want anything to be predetermined, I have come up with some methodology to handle some of the work to setup the initial league outline. Step one will be described in the next post.

I hope you follow along as we take baseball history in a new direction!

[legendsport]

This is the first in a series of posts that will describe the setup and launch of The American Pastime, the new OOTP 15 league that will place historical players in a fictional, though historically plausible, universe that will evolve over time into an alternate history of Major League Baseball.

The initial "league" will be the Federal Association of Professional Baseball Players (better known as the Federal Association).

The first order of business: determining the initial franchise locations for the 1871 season.

The pool of potential cities includes any U.S. city fitting the following criteria:
*Population of at least 20,000 according to the 1870 census
*Located no further south than Richmond, VA nor further west than St. Louis, MO

These criteria were reached based on having a large enough population to support a fledgling professional franchise and also being in the most densely populated, and most rail-connected portions of the country to accommodate the necessary rail travel for teams to reach their opponents. This leaves out large cities such as San Francisco and New Orleans which more than meet the population requirements but are too far from the other cities for contemporary transportation in the 1870s to have made it plausible for them to participate in the league.

The methodology of determining the cities is based on using the lottery results from several states' daily lotteries. The three-digits numbers produced will determine which cities earn the "starting nod" for TAP.

The states used:
New York (Win 4, last three digits)
New Jersey (Pick 3)
Massachusetts (Numbers Game, last 3 digits)
Pennsylvania (Daily Number)
Ohio (Pick 3)
Kentucky (Pick 3)
Michigan (Daily 3)
Indiana (Daily 3)
Illinois (My 3)

Those are nine states and nine cities will be chosen. In cases of "ties" the next earliest lottery drawing from the second state (using list above) will be used instead.

The cities' chances are based on population with the largest city (New York) having a 16.3% chance and a slew of small cities having a 0.4% chance apiece.

This chart details the cities and their chances:

New York city, NY *................	001	163
Philadelphia city, PA..............	164	280
Brooklyn city, NY *................	281	349
St. Louis city, MO.................	350	403
Chicago city, IL...................	404	455
Baltimore city, MD.................	456	501
Boston city, MA *..................	502	544
Cincinnati city, OH................	545	581
Buffalo city, NY...................	582	601
Washington city, DC *..............	602	620
Newark city, NJ....................	621	638
Louisville city, KY................	639	655
Cleveland city, OH.................	656	671
Pittsburgh city, PA *..............	672	686
Jersey City city, NJ...............	687	700
Detroit city, MI...................	701	714
Milwaukee city, WI.................	715	726
Albany city, NY....................	727	738
Providence city, RI *..............	739	750
Rochester city, NY.................	751	761
Allegheny city, PA *...............	762	770
Richmond city, VA..................	771	779
New Haven city, CT.................	780	788
Indianapolis city, IN..............	789	796
Troy city, NY......................	797	804
Syracuse city, NY..................	805	811
Worcester city, MA.................	812	818
Lowell city, MA....................	819	825
Memphis city, TN...................	826	832
Cambridge city, MA.................	833	839
Hartford city, CT..................	840	845
Scranton city, PA..................	846	851
Reading city, PA...................	852	857
Paterson city, NJ..................	858	863
Kansas City city, MO...............	864	869
Toledo city, OH....................	870	874
Portland city, ME..................	875	879
Columbus city, OH..................	880	884
Wilmington city, DE................	885	889
Dayton city, OH....................	890	894
Lawrence city, MA..................	895	899
Utica city, NY.....................	900	904
Charlestown city, MA *.............	905	909
Lynn city, MA......................	910	914
Fall River city, MA................	915	919
Springfield city, MA...............	920	924
Nashville city, TN.................	925	928
Covington city, KY.................	929	932
Salem city, MA.....................	933	936
Quincy city, IL....................	937	940
Manchester city, NH................	941	944
Harrisburg city, PA................	945	948
Trenton city, NJ...................	949	952
Peoria city, IL....................	953	956
Evansville city, IN................	957	960
New Bedford city, MA...............	961	964
Oswego city, NY....................	965	968
Elizabeth city, NJ.................	969	972
North Providence town, RI *........	973	976
Hoboken city, NJ...................	977	980
Lancaster city, PA.................	981	984
Poughkeepsie city, NY..............	985	988
Camden city, NJ....................	989	992
Davenport city, IA.................	993	996
St. Paul city, MN..................	997	000

The winning cities were as follows:

1 (NY Lottery): 703 = Detroit
2 (NJ): 491 = Baltimore
3 (Mass.) 829 = Memphis
4 (Penn.): 182 = Philadelphia
5 (Ohio): 708 = Detroit
6 (Kentucky): 511 = Boston
7 (Michigan): 885 = Wilmington DE
8 (Indiana): 835 = Cambridge MA
9 (Illinois): 268 = Philadelphia

Since Detroit and Philadelphia were drawn twice each, secondary results for Ohio (Detroit) and Illinois (Philly) were used resulting in 619 for Ohio = Washington DC and 803 for Illinois = Troy NY

Both New York & Chicago missed out on getting an initial franchise. This is a situation that is likely to not last very long as franchise survivability is tied to city size and several of the cities that did earn an initial team will probably not be able to keep them long unless they perform very well on the field.

Several cities with small chances earned a nod with Memphis, Wilmington, Cambridge and Troy all having between 5 & 8% chances of getting in.

From a geographical standpoint, the league is skewed to the east (which could set up an interesting second league in the West at some future date) with Detroit & Memphis being the greatest outliers. The Troy-Cambridge-Boston group forms a nice northeast block while the Philadelphia-Wilmington-Baltimore-Washington group forms a nice block to the south of the northeastern block.

[paul.m.w.]

Sounds fun!

[legendsport]

This really should have been part 1, but I posted this on my site's forum for the potential GM participants and the info is pertinent here as well.

Here are some overarching concepts for the league:

1. The goal will always be what I'll call "historic plausability" for the fictional portions of the league. Some obvious manifestations of this would be keeping the teams in cities that could reasonably have been expected to support a professional baseball team in the 1870s. Other extensions of this are things like team "nicknames" which historically, clubs in this era didn't officially have, but which newspapers of the time (and fans) bestowed on them.
2. Facegen - Thanks to the Facegen project there are .fg files for nearly every player to play in a big league game and obviously I would like to use them in the league. The complication here is simply creating the uniforms for the fictional teams.
3. 3D Ballparks - One of the more "eye-candyish" features of OOTP 15 is the 3D ballpark. They're complex to create and though I would *love* to have them, it's probably something that will come down the road and not at launch, just due to the time constraints involved in building them.
4. Owners - I would like to use historical figures as much as possible. I will utilize Google to try to find 19th century financial mogul-types who may be good fits as owners for our clubs. Some actual baseball team owners will creep in - I'm sure Charlie Comiskey deserves a place among the ownership types in the early 20th century.
5. Finances - we're not going to do anything wacky like having free agency before it historically occurred - it wouldn't have happened any more than integration would have (more on that below). So we'll use Reserve Clause Era type finances.
6. Player Procurement - this one requires a bit of thinking. With finances on, we could try allowing the teams to sign rookies as free agents or we could go with a simple draft which, while not historically accurate, would ensure a level and balanced chance for every team to grab rookies each year.
7. Integration - In an ideal world baseball would never have been segregated. I see two ways to go with this issue because I don't want to stray too far off the beaten path of the actual integration timeline. The first way would be to have a Negro Leagues with a similar setup once we hit the 20th century (say 1920-ish). That could be complicated because of the relative scarcity of reliable NeL stats on which to base these guys - because they need to be real players with real stats on which to base their ratings. The other, and more likely scenario, is that we integrate around the same date as MLB did historically - but the actual year and the player who breaks the color barrier can be more "up for grabs"
8. World War II - this is down the road obviously, but something to consider is how to handle the players leaving for WWII (and WWI for that matter). We will model this somehow, the mechanics need to be worked out and the historical data is there if we choose to hew to the actual roster of players who missed time for military service.
9. Expansion - The league is going to be organic, so we're not necessarily tied to the two-league, 16-team format that MLB carried for 60 years. I'm not sure how far outside the box I want to go as far as adding teams. It's unlikely we'd expand until after WWII as the historical forces that caused expansion didn't take shape until the 1950s anyway.
10. Relocation - This is similar to #10 except I am more willing to go outside the box here (no MLB teams relocated between 1903 & the early 50s - that's not something we necessarily have to be tied into). The caveat is that it needs to be historically plausible and depending on the size of our league, there may not be enough "open" cities to support relocation until air travel takes hold in the 50s.

Those are the main issues as far as the overall framework is going to be.

[legendsport]

The next step is setting up is determining initial nicknames for the clubs. In keeping with the era, I wanted to assign nicknames based on possible club names for the cities involved. I looked at the history of Cambridge, MA for instance and found that there was a big glass-making industry in the city in the 1870s. That led me to name the Cambridge club the "Glaziers"

I did the same for each of the nine initial club locations, trying to find nicknames that were not used by that city's professional baseball team historically (where applicable) and could be considered fitting for that city in the 1870s.

Here's a recap of the process for each city:
Baltimore - a reading of the city's history led me in the direction of a railroad theme. The first commercial RR, the B&O started in the city, so this seemed a fitting nickname that didn't fall into the familiar "Crabs, Marylands, etc" category. The winner here: the Engineer Club of Baltimore (Engineers)

Boston - Some obvious nicknames jump to mind (Patriots, Minutemen, etc) outside the boundaries of the traditional Bean-related themes. In the end I went with the Brahmin Club based on the nickname for the Boston "aristocracy" of the late 19th century, thus dubbing the team the Boston Brahmins. As a further nod to this theme, the team owner will be Ivers Whitney Adams, who was a member of the famous Adams family (the two President family, not the Cousin It variety - that's Addams, but I digress). I.W. Adams was the actual founder of the Boston Base Ball club, which lives on today as the Atlanta Braves.

Cambridge - as mentioned above, the Glazier Athletic Club of Cambridge is the official moniker of the club that the team's supporters refer to as the Cambridge Glaziers.

Detroit - at this point in time Detroit was not yet the Motor City. I would have liked to call the club the Wolverines - George Custer led the Michigan brigade in the Civil War and referred to them as Wolverines (leading to the usage of the nickname by the University of Michigan in later years). Alas, there was a Detroit Wolverines in the NL, so that would violate my own rule. In the end I landed on the Woodwards in honor of the man who laid out the plan for the city following a big fire in 1805 - Justice Augustus Woodward - whose plan led to a coordinate system that birthed Detroit's "Eight Mile Road" by designating all points in the city originating from Campus Martius Park at the intersection of Michigan and Woodward Avenues.

Memphis - this was an interesting one because the city had several yellow-fever epidemics in the 1870s (the first in 1873) that caused it to lose its city charter in 1879. So Memphis is likely to be the most temporary of locations in the fledgling league. Obvious nickname choices would play on the city's being named for the ancient capital of Egypt (Egyptians, Pharaohs, etc). I decided to go with something more river-based due to the city's location on the Mississippi and went with the relatively unoriginal "River Citys" based on the actual 1871 Cleveland Forest Citys team and one of the actual nicknames of Memphis itself.

Philadelphia - While I was bummed about New York missing out on the initial launch, happily Philly got in because this city was a big hotbed for early baseball and to have it missing would have been a shame. Anyway, there were plenty of options here, even without being able to use Quakers, Athletics, etc. In the end I went with something honoring the city's place in the history of the U.S., and called it the Independence Club. The team will be referred to as the Independents. I wanted to use Centennials, but there was an actual NA team with that name in 1875. Bah.

Troy - This city was always a bit of a mystery to me as it seemed too small to be a major league city, but actually had two major league teams (one in the NA and then another later in the NL). Troy was actually a thriving city in the late 19th century thanks to it being situated where the Hudson River meets the Erie Canal. It was also big in the textile industry. Wanting to avoid classical references based on the city's name (the NL team was the Trojans after all), I kept it simple and went with the Hudsons. Along with Memphis, this is one of the least likely cities to stick around for more than a few seasons.

Washington - The nation's capital that along with Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia forms the southern end of a four-city cluster in the initial setup. The choices here were fairly obvious, even with names like Senators and Nationals being eliminated from contention. I ended up going with Columbias.

Wilmington - The last of the nine cities, and like Troy and Memphis, a location not expected to remain in the league long, Wilmington was a Civil War boom town that by 1868 was the nation's leading producer of iron ships and gunpowder and was second in leather and carriages. So something with a military bent seemed appropriate but in the end I went a little less militant and chose Tanners in honor of the leather industry.

[darnoff]

Sounds great Legendsport... I'll be following.


I'm also rooting for Memphis and Wilmington, and hoping to see Buffalo get a team soon!

[joefromchicago]

Very interesting set-up. I'll be following along.

[paul.m.w.]

Go Memphis !

[legendsport]

Glad to see that some are following - thanks for the support!

[legendsport]

How do we determine which teams fold, how we trace team history/ownership for eventual human management, and other matters pertaining to league evolution in the 19th century.

When I was going over the concept for this in my head, I wanted to make sure that I had an outline to take the league through the 19th century as quickly and efficiently as possible while allowing enough time to enjoy this unique time in baseball history and building a backstory for the eventual online league to emerge from this foundation.

Looking at actual baseball history helped a bit in determining how we'd start and give a basic framework for how we'd proceed.

While not wanting to be tied to actual history, I did recognize that the somewhat "wild west" style of early baseball was only to be expected - this was a brand-new concept: an organized circuit of clubs comprised entirely of athletes who are paid for their performance. It was only natural that there would be both hiccups along the way and also no shortage of individual and entities "trying to horn in" once the concept proved to be potentially lucrative.

As the NA evolved out of the amateur clubs of the 1850s and 60s, so too our Federal Association of Professional Base Ball Players (FAPBP) will emerge as the first professional baseball league. And like the NA, it will have its trials and tribulations and eventually, its successor (or possibly successors).

Since the TAP universe is meant to be organic, I wanted to have some way of determining which teams "make it" and which do not. The first step in this was figuring out some criteria for success. The most basic, and probably most important, was money. Since a team has to pay its players, a team that makes no money and can not pay its players won't remain a team for long (this has been proven again and again over the years). Luckily OOTP does track finances, even in the reserve clause era, so that information will help. Another part of this is team market - the larger the market, the better the chance a team has to succeed as its potential fan base is that much larger - you need a smaller percentage of population to visit your park to fill it and make money. Obviously there are a lot more people in Philadelphia than in Troy - so the percentage of Philadelphians who need to attend a game and allow the team to be financially successful is smaller than the percentage of Trojans(?) who would have to head to the ballpark in Troy for that team to make money.

OK, so that's the first issue - the question is how do we find the answer?

Team Survivability

What I landed on was giving each team a percentage score each season. The higher your percentage score, the better your chances of sticking around. The components going into the percentage score will be attendance, financial profit/loss, market size and owner. If the guy with the deep pockets isn't willing to reach into those pockets, your team may be written off as a bad risk. These guys were out to make a profit and could be very cutthroat where money was concerned.

Therefore each club, at the end of the year, will get 0-25 points in each of the four areas: attendance, profit, market, and owner. The owner's ratings are randomly set by OOTP - I don't plan on editing them. So if a team gets a stingy owner, that's going to hurt. Market is simply based on the size of the city the team plays in and is relative to the average sizes of the other cities in the league. So a small city in a league of small cities will be fine. A small city playing in a league with a bunch of medium and large cities is going to score low. The other metrics will come out of the game and are easy to track.

The clubs total score will be added up and a state lottery will be used to determine whether the team survives or not. Each team will use a different state lottery, so everyone's "magic number" will be different.

League Size Changes

I will also use state lottery numbers to determine if the league expands (contraction will be handled by the team survivability check). Smaller leagues will have a greater chance of adding a club (or multiple clubs), larger ones will be less likely. When we get to the 20th century this process will change as I envision league size remaining mostly static (at least at the major league level).

So let's say that at the end of 1871 two teams fold from the FAPBP leaving seven carryovers to 1872. The "sweet spot" for league size will be eight (at least until we get to the expansion era), so the league will have a slightly larger chance of adding at least one team. I'll have to work up a chart but it would be something like this:

No Expansion: 25%
1 Team Expansion: 50%
2 Team Expansion: 15%
3 Team Expansion: 7%
4 Team Expansion: 3%

Using a state's pick3 type lottery each choice would get a range of numbers (like 001-250 for no expansion, 251-750 for 1 team, and so on).

When a league does expand, the city choice lottery will be run to determine which city gets a team. At some point I will have to give larger cities like New York and Chicago that are without teams, better chances so the chart will almost certainly change (as it will also change based on city population changes).

Tracking Team "Ownership" for eventual Online League GMs

For those human GMs who sign up, each will be given a slot number that will equate to the teams currently playing. So Baltimore may be slot 1 in 1871 - whoever gets slot 1 will "own" Baltimore for online league purposes should that team make it to the 20th century. If it doesn't, its slot will be moved to another new team whenever a new team is added. So it is possible that some human GMs will be without a team in some years, but as this is the "pre-play" period that has no real impact as the human GMs aren't managing the teams, they're just following the league's evolution.

Teams do have the potential to move to a new city - though that will not occur until sometime in the 1880s as teams were much more likely to simply fold up than to move. When I decide that a team may move, we'll use the lottery system to determine where that move occurs.

The eventual demise of the FAPBP and the rise of rival leagues

Like the NA, the FAPBP is a "player's league" with the players essentially being co-owners of the club. This didn't work historically, and it won't work forever in TAP either. So each season after the third year the "health" of the league will also be checked with the percentage chance of the league folding rising each year until it reaches 100% in 1880. At that point the ideal of player-ownership will be proven faulty and the power will shift to the "magnates" - those financial powers who had the wherewithal and desire to own and run baseball clubs. This will also give birth to the first true "league" - whose name I won't reveal yet.

Once that "National League-style" league has been launched it will give rise to potential challengers in the style of the historical American Association, Union Association and eventually Players League and American League. Each year after the "League" is established, the chance of a rival will increase - by 1885 there is a 100% chance the rival league will emerge. Chances of a third league will also exist once the second league arrives but the third league's chances of survival will be slim - though there may be the potential for the third league to supplant the second league (as there will also be a chance for the second league to "kill off" the first league). War isn't pretty, but it can be interesting.

Conclusion

The goal is to have a relatively stable two-league alignment by the time 1901 rolls around. It doesn't have to be 1901 - it could be earlier, and it could be later. It also doesn't have to be a brand-new second league challenging a 19th century survivor - if two leagues manage to survive the 1890s, those will be the two who will go into the 20th century as the top leagues and play the first World Series sometime in the first decade of the 20th century.

[joefromchicago]

Unless you're really wedded to the notion of using state lottery numbers, it would probably be easier to use one of the many random number generators on the web. This one would probably fit your needs:

Random Number Generator

[legendsport]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

Unless you're really wedded to the notion of using state lottery numbers, it would probably be easier to use one of the many random number generators on the web. This one would probably fit your needs:

Random Number Generator

I've used the various random # generators (mostly random.org) - the reason I am using state lottery numbers is that it's completely transparent. That's not a big deal right now, but this is going to eventually be an online league and at that point having something publicly viewable helps reassure everyone that things are on the level.

I trust myself - but that doesn't mean everyone else will.

[No Pepper]

I always love your leagues and their setups. I'll be following along for sure. Although your premise is to stay with a somewhat organic evolution, the fact that New York and Chicago have no teams scream to me an independent city league in each.

[legendsport]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

I always love your leagues and their setups. I'll be following along for sure. Although your premise is to stay with a somewhat organic evolution, the fact that New York and Chicago have no teams scream to me an independent city league in each.

Thanks! I've been brainstorming myself at ways to get NY & Chicago involved. The Great Fire gives me a bit of time for Chicago, but having New York not have a team can be an issue.

The good news is that both those cities have a fairly large chance at any new teams that may come along - and once they have teams it'll be difficult for them to lose 'em (but not impossible).

[darnoff]

bump... just because I'm excited to see this. I check for updates regularly

[Carlton]

Troy is the Collar City

Back in the day, you had a shirt and a removable collar, the latter were made in Troy, so it was a pretty big Tri City area (Albany-Troy-Schenectady)

Also, Haymakers is the more well known nickname

[legendsport]

Originally Posted by darnoff

bump... just because I'm excited to see this. I check for updates regularly

Had a hard drive crash that wiped out all the custom unis, logos, etc that I had made. Put a real damper on my spirits. I've started rebuilding and hope to get the players drafted soon so the first season can get underway.

Thanks for following!

[legendsport]

Originally Posted by Carlton

Troy is the Collar City

Back in the day, you had a shirt and a removable collar, the latter were made in Troy, so it was a pretty big Tri City area (Albany-Troy-Schenectady)

Also, Haymakers is the more well known nickname

Yep the original home of Arrow Collars/Shirts.

I decided to go with a more geographical nickname, that's why I went with Hudsons.

[legendsport]

It's been a long time, but I finally have launched The American Pastime. Since it'll eventually be an online league, I have added it to my website, so it has a home for its HTML reports, a forum dedicated to it and a homepage where I have laid out the rules and will post "annual" update articles as I progress.

1871 is completed - one note is that I changed things a bit because I wanted to ensure that New York, Philadelphia and Chicago all were represented in the initial group of teams. The recap of that season can be found here.

For anyone wanting to take a gander at the HTML reports, you can get there via the menu on the league website OR just click here.

The initial nine member clubs of the Union of Professional Base Ball Players turned out to be:
Baltimore - nickname Engineers
Boston - nickname Brahmins
Chicago - nickname Lake Citys
Detroit - nickname Woodwards
Memphis - nickname River Citys
New York - nickname Imperials (Empire City Club)
Philadelphia - nickname Independents (Independence Club)
Washington - nickname Columbias
Wilmington - nickname Tanners

This post is going to be a bit lengthy, as I want to include the information I posted on the TAP forum on my site for you guys here at OOTP, and it covers a series of posts I made there today. So brace yourself, here goes....


The 1871 recap is done and is posted on the league's homepage. In a nutshell, three teams had very good seasons (New York, Wilmington & Baltimore); Washington had a good season, Philadelphia, Boston & Detroit were of varying degrees mediocre and Chicago & Memphis struggled.

Based on that, plus financial factors and the Great Chicago Fire (which destroyed most of the city - including the park and all the equipment of the Chicago club), here are the likelihoods of each team's folding:

1871        	WIN	ATTEND	FINANCE	% FOR FOLD
BALTIMORE	-15	-28	-11	-54
BOSTON        	 7	 -8	 -1	 -2
CHICAGO	         16	  6	  2	 24
DETROIT	          8	 22	  4	 34
MEMPHIS	         28	  5	  2	 35
NEW YORK	-21	-13	 -1	-35
PHILADELPHIA	  6	 18	  2	 26
WASHINGTON	 -5	  0	 -2	 -7
WILMINGTON	-19	 -2	 -6	-27

Note that the Chicago Fire adds a +50 to Chicago's likelihood of folding, giving them an ominous score of +74.

What this means is that Chicago's likelihood of folding is 74%, followed by Memphis (35%), Detroit (34%), Philadelphia (26%). Teams with negative scores are guaranteed survivors.

---------------------

IL Resuls: 1045 - Chicago FOLDS
MI Results: 2009 - Detroit FOLDS
TN Results: 7151 - Memphis SURVIVES
PA Results: 1490 - Philadelphia FOLDS

Surprisingly (to me) - Memphis somehow comes out unscathed. They'll need to improve as they get half of their 35% chance from this year added to next year's score when we do the health check after 1872. In addition, a Yellow Fever outbreak in Memphis in 1873 will give them a penalty similar to Chicago's this season (25% added to their chance of folding).

I've decided NOT to do the relocation check for the Union teams*. I'll revisit once we hit the first club-based league.

* - Note for OOTP Dynasty readers: I have a rule in place for a 5% "save" chance at relocation instead of folding

-------------------

With three teams folding after 1871, there are six member clubs left in the UPBBP.

With 151 players available, that would *technically* mean we'd stick at 6 teams. However, I'm going to bend my own rules here because:
1) There were actually 11 teams in the 1872 NA
2) Team rosters were still really small

So we will have four teams join the fold for 1872 to put a 10-team league in place.

Based on random chance, the lucky cities are:
NY Lottery # of 840 - gives a team to.... Hartford
NJ Lottery # of 441 - gives at team to.... St. Louis**
CT Lottery # of 032 - gives a team to... Brooklyn
RI Lottery # of 781 - gives a team to... Troy, NY!

** Chicago was actually drawn, but because of the fire, I will give Chicago a guaranteed team in 1874 - as happened historically. If St. Louis folds in 1873 they will instead relocate to Chicago.

I'm happy that Troy got in as it was a location for real clubs in this era when the city was a major hub on the Erie Canal/Hudson and the home of a pretty large textile industry.

The new clubs nicknames:
Hartford Colts (the Colt Firearms company was founded in Hartford)
St. Louis Bluebirds (The Eastern Bluebird is the state bird of Missouri, can be shortened to Blues if the team survives, and it's a nice contrast to the whole Cardinals thing...)
Brooklyn Kings (Kings County Base Ball Club)
Troy Hudsons (Hudson Base Ball Club of Troy)

This means the lineup for 1872 consists of:
Baltimore Engineers
Boston Brahmins
Memphis River Citys
New York Imperials
Washington Columbias
Wilmington Tanners
Hartford Colts
St. Louis Bluebirds
Brooklyn Kings
Troy Hudsons

[jdono927]

Will the players enter the game when they actually played or will it be Random Eras?