When you’re a college undergrad who mostly takes independent studies, who only works about 10 hours a week over the Internet, and who lives in a very small town, it’s important to have a mindless outlet where you can spend several hours a week just vegging out.
For me, that outlet is MVP Baseball: 2004, for PS2. Tonight, during one of my vegging stints, I finally finished one whole season of virtual baseball. And I’m happy to announce that my team, the San Francisco Giants, are World Series Champs.
Now, I don’t want you to be confused. My S.F. Giants do not resemble the real life San Francisco Giants. The only thing they have in common is their stadium. The rest is totally different. I started my season with a fantasy draft, so players who in real life play on one team end up playing for entirely different teams in my little virtual league.
Furthermore, because of getting bonus points here and there, my virtual league also includes some classic players. For example, my championship season really kicked into full gear when I traded Randy Johnson for Babe Ruth. I leave it to my virtual World Series ring to decide whether I made the right move.
After you finish one season, the next season doesn’t just start again from zero. Instead, the things that happened over the course of the first season affect the next one. For example, I had Rickey Henderson on my team, and Rickey came in handy when I’d be down by a run and needed some speed on the basepaths. Rickey stole a bunch of bases for me and scored on a lot of sacrifice fly balls. Rickey did everything I asked Rickey to do. But Rickey is old, and after the World Series, Rickey announced Rickey’s retirement. So now I don’t have Rickey.
There’s a whole off-season game to this thing too. Not only do I have to go through a draft, but I have to re-sign some of my players, release others, negotiate contracts for the rookies, and see if there are any trades I need to make. Even further, because I won the World Series and earned myself some new bonus points, I had to select which classic player was going to join the league this season.
And I have to do all of this for the Major League team, and also for my AAA and AA teams. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass. You can let the computer do the whole thing, which I tried to do, but the computer screwed everything up and I only had two players return to my team for the second season. Thankfully, with a quick hit of the reset button, I was back at the beginning of the off-season.
After some moves, I now have my starting lineup entering into Spring Training. I know some of you folks out there are big baseball fans (which, weirdly, I am not), so I thought I’d share that lineup with you.
My starting pitchers (in order of rotation):
- Whitey Ford
- Cy Young
- Pedro Martinez
- Adam Eaton
- Ron Villone
My relief pitchers:
- Casey Fossum
- Jeriome Robertson
- Mike DeJean
- Jesus Colome
- Ray King
- Colby Lewis
- J.C. Romero
- Jeff Nelson
- Keith Foulke (on the trading block)
My defensive alignment:
- C: Scott Jurgenson, who is a created player. He batted .324 last season, with 22 HRs.
- 1B: Mike Sweeney
- 2B: Donald Calarli, who is a created player. He’s very quick, but he gets hurt on what seems to be every eighth double-play collision. He only played a total of 129 games last season. His average last season was .330, and he knocked in 19 HRs.
- SS: Alex Rodriguez
- 3B: Vinny Castilla (on the trading block)
- LF: Manny Ramirez
- CF: Kyle Calarli, who is also a created player. He won the MVP last season. Just a coincidence, I swear :-). His average was .292, but he had 55 HRs and won a Golden Glove too.
- RF: Babe Ruth
My bench players are:
- 3B: Sean Burroughs
- SS: Jimmy Rollins
The biggest difference between last season and this season is the addition of Pedro, Whitey, and Cy in my rotation. Pitching was my weak spot last season. I don’t intend it to be this one.
4 Comments
The time it would take to not only play a whole seasoon a nd palyoffs but to create 3 players and have a draft that includes all time players is unfathomable. That is months of playtime. No wonder the fluid imagination homepage was the same for what seemed like a year.
good job buddy-good job buddy
Also are you kidding with those relief pitchers?
I bought the game off a friend two summers ago. This is the first season I’ve gotten all the way through. So, yeah, it takes time, something like 15 days worth of time, but that 15 days is stretched across two years.
And the Fluid Imagination homepage was the same ’cause none of you fuckers would write anything.
And waddaya mean about the relief pitchers?
Those pitchers suck ass.
162 game season? If so and assuming that you do not go down 1-2-3 in many innings a typical game would take anywhere from 15 minutes to a half an hour.(and that is flying)lets say 20 minutes. thats about 3 games an hour so you can finish a season in about 54 hours. Now add in creating players an your draft and you are talking over 60 hours. And that is on low end.
The most I have done is franchise with madden and gone from 2003 until 2010. That was from the day madden 2003 came out until the day 2004 came out. That was a long time of wasted life right there.
They’re pretty good for what I need them to do. I mean, I got Whitey Ford, Cy Young, and Pedro Martinez as my starters for three games of the rotation, and when you combine them with my top-rated hitting (Callahan, A-Rod, Babe, and Manny), my relief guys are usually just punching the clock.
Of course, Foulke personally lost me about 10 games last season, but that’s why he’s on the trading block. I’m thinking about changing his name to Byung Yung Kim.
A single game takes between 30-40 minutes. But out of the 162 game season, I probably simmulated (let the computer play my game) about 25% of them. I’ll often skip a bunch of homestands because I like to play in all the different parks. And if the team I’m supposed to be playing is low in the standings, I’ll usually play the first game in a 3-game series and then manage the other two (which means the game takes about three minutes).
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a lot of videogame playing time. But I’m in college. What else am I supposed to do?