The PLAAY Baseball Time Line
There's been a lot of interest and enthusiasm about our recent PLAAY Space stream setting out a time line for our fictional baseball universe! I'm so encouraged by this. I won't re-hash the entire back story here (if you're reading this you've probably already watched the video) (If not, here it is...)
...but I did want to share the PDF of the “History of PLAAY Baseball” time-line sequence I created for the show. I have been amazed at the number of people who've commented on this!
This stream--indeed, the whole thought process of a fictional baseball time line-sprung from a conversation I had last year with PLAAY gamer Larry Merithew about a possible Baseball America Hall of Fame, which Larry suggested might be a part of the league's 10th anniversary season (in 2022).
That conversation expanded to encompass all three fictional baseball entities in the PLAAY universe: the 1940s Century League (which was released when the game came out in 2013, been around over ten years now, has never been updated), Baseball America (also inaugurated in 2013, with yearly updates), and our one-off pseudo-fictional 1961 Continental League, which features REAL players who would have been available to populate rosters of a 1961 Continental League, IF the league HAD played.
The thought germinated, what if we could weave all THREE of these leagues into a single fictional baseball story line?
Virtually all of the feedback I've gotten has been positive. I did get an e-mail from Jason Mockler, who has eagerly participated in several of the PLAAY fictional sports entities over the years. He loves the idea of a vintage Baseball America but has already established his own team identities. He was concerned that we'd be discontinuing the "generic" season updates of Baseball America, the standard black-and-white presentation, team numbers instead of names, etc., in favor of established team identities and logos going forward. Jason was relieved when I assured him that we'd be continuing with the standard cards for future Baseball America seasons. I should have mentioned this in the stream, doh! It's possible we will also offer the vintage seasons in both team-generic and team-specific formats, like we did with the 2023 edition of Baseball America (and plan to do with the 2024 cards). Stay tuned...
At the end of the aforementioned stream, we conducted a quick viewer's poll to gauge the appeal of several possible first season releases for as we consider build out our baseball history. The clear winner was the 1974 season--based on our time line, this would have been the first season of the merged Continental and Century Leagues. It will include twelve clubs (seven from the original Continental League and five from the Century League) which can be divided into two conferences or three divisions, whichever you prefer.
This points toward something I mentioned in the stream, namely that there are lots of reasons to love the idea of building out a vintage/classic fictional history. One of them is the flexibility it allows gamers. You can set up your project however it works best for you. From a game company perspective, there are other reasons to love the idea. As time has passed and the number of small press baseball board games has burgeoned, we've found it increasingly difficult to get more than a handful of people really excited about a new vintage real-life baseball season. Part of that is because of the large number of baseball board games and a follow-up glut of card sets to support those games. All of the classic seasons (i.e, 1968, 1964, 1977) have already been carded and played, and played again, by multiple multiple baseball board games.
But vintage fictional has a much broader appeal-it's uniquely "old" and "new" at the same time. While the story is set fifty years ago, nobody's actually experienced the 1974 Continental League season to know how it's supposed to turn out! That's for YOU, the gamer, to determine on your own game table! It's like discovering a secret door into a time machine that transports you back to the '70s to an undiscovered world of professional baseball. I feel like there's strong appeal in this approach.
To me, the key thing to all this working properly is the presence of authenticity. In other words, we want the 1974 Continental League to "feel" like 1970s big league baseball. The goal is for the game and cards to generate a sense of going back in time to a specific era of baseball. How do we do that?
Well, a couple of things...
• The Look of the cards. I think helps, if possible, that the cards look like they came from the 1970s. We have a lot of resources at our disposal for this, and we intend to put them to work.
• Statistical similarities. I think the numbers generated should jibe with the numbers generated in 1970s big league baseball. An easy solution would be to use the real-life stats and just change the names. Too easy. There should be differences, some maybe subtle, some maybe not. In any given year, you will see differences between the AL and NL--why not the CL?
• Authentic name set. This is an area where fictional can get tripped up, using the wrong names. I remember reading an article about this names expert--(there was a technical title for the science of surnames, "civic etymology" or something similar, I don't remember). Anyway, this person's claim to fame was to be able to know how old you were simply based on your first name. The fact is that certain names are indicators of specific time periods. There were very few major leaguers named "Justin" back before 1960, and many named "Ralph." Obviously, it's reversed now. The same holds true for last names--certain names don't show up before or after certain year markers. It's important to get this right, and the data is out there, courtesy of the US Census Bureau. For example...
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/names1940s.html
• Realistic player career progression. This is more difficult than it seems, I think. You want to be able to encompass the universe of career possibilities, and it's a big universe. Many players are going to have a career ascent and descent that's going to be fairly steady, but could span a relatively few or many years. Then there are the "flash in the pan" guys who light it up for a season then--disappear! The guys who have unremarkable but very long careers, with no real ascent. Players who start strong, fall off for whatever reason (injury, emotion) but then have a big comeback--momentary, or prolonged.
The other aspect of this is team tenure. Back in the day, it wasn't unusual for a player to spend his entire career with a single club. These days, that rarely happens. Realistically dispersing players from team to team isn't a problem for a one-off season, but as the history expands to multiple seasons it will become important.
• Supporting materials. This is where team logos, stadiums, uniform ideas, bits of faux-historical data (i.e., "...has hit more home runs in an Emeralds uniform than anyone else") can all help build gravitas for a fictional league. Time consuming, but I think worth it.
Anyway, these are just a few thoughts. Realistically, the entire history of PLAAY baseball, or even a majority of it, isn't likely to be carded for posterity. Rather, I think we can aim for representing general eras, over time. For those who are interested, I'm toying with the idea of holding a fictional league creation tutorial at this year's PLAAY convention, where we'd go over some of these things in detail and perhaps even have a laboratory where we could create a specific season somewhere in the PLAAY baseball time line. Or, at least lay down the ground work for it. Let me know if you're interested! Or any other comments you might have, please reach out!