 Mar 21, 1997   20s DECADE TEAMS

Hi!

This file contains a zip file - 20S.ZIP - a league constructed from
Strat-O-Matic career historical disks and representing the franchises 
from the 1920s.  You must own a copy of the career disks from SOM or
these teams will not work (if you own individual decade disks instead
of the whole set, you will need the 1900, 1910, and 1920 disks).
To install, unzip this file in the ROSTERS subdirectory of your game,
in the Windows version you will then have to use the duplicate league
function from the league menu to copy the .LEG files into your game.
The league has been given year number 2000 so it won't be confused with
actual season disks (but the schedule is dated 2005 to make the days
of the week match the original schedule, which is from 1927).  This is
part of an ongoing project to do all the decades, as of this writing
the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s are completed and released.  Everything
has been rated here for full maximum play with ballparks and the whole
bit, so go for it.

Some notes:

*> This has been designed to play as a scenario game as well as be 
historically representative.  Every team is intricately balanced to
achieve realism and competitiveness and at the same time present human
managers with options and decisions.  Each team has an actual
won-loss record (which is their actual prorated W/L for the decade),
which also works as a par for any team you may want to manage.  As a
human, you should try to stay within 3%-5% of the playing time
limits; the computer isn't quite so noble about this.  If you use
the default ratings and limits it should be quite a challenge to 
reach par no matter what team you take.  You'll find these teams
extremely balanced, to the point where if a team was .500 for the
decade but won a couple of pennants, their results will be more
volatile and they will have more chance to win the pennant than a
team that played .500 consistently.

*> The default ballpark backdrops are set to the actual ballpark the
team used.  If you do not own the old time ballparks disk, you may
want to edit some of the teams unless you want to play all your
games in Yankee Stadium.

*> SOM for some unknown reason insists on changing the 25 man rosters
every time you restart a season - and makes some really bad choices.
The default minor leaguers are at the bottom of the rosters and I
also included text files listing them within the zip file.  Anyone
who knows a fix for this I'd sure like to know it.  Anyway, keep in
mind as you change everyone back that the Cardinals and Yankees have
a 16/9 hitter/pitcher roster while all the other teams here have a
15/10 split.

*> Now the fun part (for me) - what is here.  All of these rosters
have been made with the historical versions of the career disk
players.  In the future I will be putting these out in normalized
versions for inter-era play, but for now this set is not really 
statistically compatible with the other decade team sets, but will
simulate 1920s playing styles rather well.  The criteria I used to
make the rosters is very complicated so I won't bore you with it too
much (suffice it to say I will be glad to answer any questions about
who and what is where if you ask) but here are some main points.

I tried to include every player who had any sort of a career in 
this decade, unless they were more properly assigned to the 30s or 10s.
Team histories don't always line up nicely with the decade breaks, 
so some shifting around was done to group players who should be 
together and make teams recognizable.  There is only one of each 
player here, but if you have any of the other decade team disks 
there are some players who are in multiple decades, i.e. I didn't try 
to decide if Ty Cobb was a 10s or 20s player.  I was pretty picky
about this, so someone had to have a significant career to be in two 
decades (somewhat less so if he was a pitcher or catcher, I guess).  
Most of the time players were assigned to the teams they appeared with 
the most, but there was also a heavy bias toward putting a player with 
the first team that he had a significant season with; if there was any 
doubt, the team that broke him in got the break.  Roster situations 
were also considered in deciding where people belonged, but for the 
most part these rosters fell together a lot better than I had ever 
hoped starting out.  

After the rosters were made, all of the ratings were tweaked and  
adjusted and I got rid of all the obscure position ratings under the
basic theory there were plenty of real position players here and I
didn't want the computer to think Jimmie Foxx was a CF.  Players 
who were in multiple decades had their ratings adjusted for that point
in their careers, so for example, Red Faber here is a relief pitcher
whereas in the 20s set he will be a big starter.  In a few cases, player
result tables were adjusted to heighten realism.  If a player's
performance was changed, for example, Cobb's stolen base rates (he
wasn't stealing 70 a year in this decade), then his stats on the card
have been adjusted.  Other players were changed to achieve better
accuracy within the context of their league, but it was really amazing
how little I had to do this, which is testimony to the great job SOM
did with these career disks.  

*> I've spent a lot of time on this and I could have spent a lot more.  
If you find anything you think is an error, or especially if you think 
anyone who should be here is missing, please let me know.  My Compuserve 
address is 75542,3210 and I can be e-mailed there -
                        75542,3210@compuserve.com.
I also monitor the CIS sport sims forum pretty regularly and you can
post to me there as well.  And, oh yes, I also want to know how things 
turned out if you make it through any replays - please send me your 
stats, I'm keeping a database of replay outcomes and someday I'll post 
the results.

Enjoy.


                                                        - JJ Patton



PS*> The boring stuff.  Please keep in mind that within the context
of these cards legally belonging to SOM, all ratings and rosters
here are mine, and if you redistribute this file (and please do) you
must do so with all the files contained herein unaltered in any
material way, including this text file, and at no charge of any kind.


