Happy June, y'all!
Quick update, oh my jesus christ I accidentally got myself into a pickle. I'm in the middle of writing the 1898 season report, but I genuinely have very little willingness t keep going at the pace I'm going at. I've done 8 1/2 teams and I've written just over 3000 words. I have no clue what y'all would be willing to read. Note that I haven't yet written up on the championship series, and it seems like that's a really prominent thing to do for these things, just wondering if I should do a write-up on just one game in the series or all 6. Please let me know down below so I can take it all into consideration. (P.S. @DotaC I am working on a slightly different Cleveland set to make it fit the era more)

Steelman wrote:

H-Town1141 wrote:

Happy June, y'all!
Quick update, oh my jesus christ I accidentally got myself into a pickle. I'm in the middle of writing the 1898 season report, but I genuinely have very little willingness t keep going at the pace I'm going at. I've done 8 1/2 teams and I've written just over 3000 words. I have no clue what y'all would be willing to read. Note that I haven't yet written up on the championship series, and it seems like that's a really prominent thing to do for these things, just wondering if I should do a write-up on just one game in the series or all 6. Please let me know down below so I can take it all into consideration. (P.S. @DotaC I am working on a slightly different Cleveland set to make it fit the era more)

My .02 cents, it's 1890-whatever and you have a LOT of history to move forward with, so I'd keep the recaps succinct and just touch on some storylines and characters that pique your interest and maintain some simplicity. Us fans usually like playoff brackets and a quick write up about the championship series but don't feel obligated to have to write a ton about it. I personally for my series did more in-depth game-by-game write ups but I heard from other people that they thought it was too much. So do whatever feels good and will give you ample time for lots of expansion and teams changing their looks in the early 1900's.

TL;DR, simplify and keep going. The good stuff will rise to the surface. Good luck!

I wish I asked this before I ended up writing everything out
Thank you for the feedback, and I will be sure to take that into account when going through this simulation. Hope y'all enjoy this essay I wrote:

1898 Season:
 
                1898 was the year of the pitcher. For reasons that no one can really explain, pitchers enjoyed dominance unseen in professional baseball up to that point, with multiple pitchers hitting a sub-2.00 ERA mark at some point late in the year. Previous unknowns were pitching at levels that would’ve won them pitcher of the year honors the year prior. Batters faced the opposite problem. No one could really tell the reason for it, but no one was hitting home runs at any extent. The most anyone ever ended up with was Willie Burke with 7. As a result, attendance plummeted. Most teams were expecting that many fans would come to games regardless, and jacked up their ticket prices by as much as 20%, but their predictions never came true. The only teams with increased attendance were Brooklyn and Chicago, pennant winners with rabid fanbases. Over the offseason, the owners of each team have decided to come together and figure out what went wrong.

                Once again in the Eastern League, the media and fans of the new league picked Baltimore to win the pennant. They further developed their core in the offseason and most believed that they simply had too much firepower to lose to even the most solid of lineups. Bryan Taubenfeld was even more on top of his game this year, leading the majors in batting average with .337 and an Association record of 82 stolen bases. Their ace, Midwest Independent League pickup Charles Liquet, ended up with 43 quality starts with a 2.71 ERA, tagging a towering 8.1 WAR to the end of that impressive stat line. They truly looked primed to take the EL, so much so that at one point in mid-June they were ahead of second place NYC Athletic by 10 games. Things looked over and Baltimore seemed content to coast. However, Brooklyn kept winning ballgames. The streak wasn’t ever impressive, just a few games here and there in a row, but enough to push New York City to 3rd in league standings and end up only 3 games back heading into a 4-game series with Baltimore in mid-August.
                Here’s where we pick up Brooklyn’s story. On opening day, their 3 starters were Lenzie Kurnew, Warner Buckman, and Wilbur Penn. All were quality pitchers who started in the championship series, and it was expected that all would remain starters for the rest of the year. However, during pre-game warmups before the very first game at the new Washington Park, a blue jay landed on relief pitcher Asher Lisiewicz. The press caught the photo, and after Lisiewicz pitched 1 1/3 innings of relief to give Brooklyn a 5-2 win over their crosstown rival, printed it on the front page of all New York newspapers, claiming that the blue jay somehow was their good luck charm. Lisiewicz took this to heart and eventually supplanted Buckman on the starting rotation before the end of April and was extremely expressive on the field. His addition to the starting rotation, originally a move to get more of the immigrant population, eventually became a tactically advantageous one, as Lisiewicz unleashed a dominant stretch that might not ever be seen again. In just over 412 innings pitched, he stuck out 389 batters. The year’s second most was 141. His ERA, 1.83, was pedestrian compared to how his other numbers stacked up compared to his competition, with Penn even getting the Association’s second-best ERA with 1.88. However, those records could be beaten by a prime JV or Kershaw in our timeline; the crowning jewel of this year for Brooklyn as a whole was Asher Lisiewicz, a former SA Chicago relief pitcher who had only had 34 innings of major league work coming into this year, compiled a staggering 24.2 WAR. No one in our timeline has even gotten within that ballpark. Although not as eye-popping, the rest of the team did extremely well at the plate. 2B Joe Watkins, LF David Thomspon, and CF McKinley Brown were 1-2-3 in the Association for OBP, yet none were top-5 in batting average. Association Rookie Jimmy Manko played alright, although not too extremely impressive in his first major league season with a .284/.318/.356 line. However, none of this mattered unless they could win a pennant. Brooklyn started abysmally slow, ending up with a .500 record 30-odd games in, ending up 12 games back of Baltimore. Opposing fans started heckling the team by calling them the Blue Jays, Jays, or Jaybirds whenever they came to town, due to the opening day overhype brought on by the press, as well as their loud, boisterous ace. Manager Moishe Lipp was soon able to use this to advantage, and instead focused that into fueling his players instead of degrading them. He allowed everyone on the field to show their emotions and play with outward intensity. Teams, specifically Baltimore and NYCA, called them dirty and disrespectful, but they didn’t care. They fully embraced the Jays identity, going so far as to have a blue jay painted within their home dugouts. It also helped that their away uniform was a blue top with grey pants, further cementing them to the community as the Blue Jays.
                Back to the 4-game series. Coming in, Baltimore needed to split their home series to stay ahead by a game. In an ace-vs.-ace matchup, Liquet was able to outduel Lisiewicz 2-1 for the first game victory.  However, because of some very interesting decisions by Baltimore manager Mike Lentz, they dropped the last three games and ended up tied with Brooklyn for the 1st place spot in the EL. This series defeat demoralized the previously red-hot Baltimore team, and they collapsed at the end of the season and let Brooklyn take the pennant. The pitching, outside of Liquet, looked weak and tired throughout the entire last month of the season, and Lentz might very well soon be on the hot seat going into the offseason where some very big decisions must be made.
                New York City Athletic, playing for the second year in historic Polo Grounds, once again found themselves playing second fiddle to their rival across the East River. A year in which lofty expectations were placed on a team that knew that it wasn’t going to compete for the East simply didn’t live up to Wester’s expectations. After firing team favorite and longtime manager Gilbert Kennedy in an effort to cleanse the team, he brought in former New York League/Colonial League skipper Chris Waters. Waters initially looked like he was the difference maker, but alas he could only bump the team’s win total up by 2 games, even with a more talented roster to work with. Many in the media blame this one either one of two people: Chris Wester or Manuel Rojas. Wester became increasingly involved in team operations over the year, going so far as to create official lineups for the team while they were only 4 games behind Baltimore, and due to his both inexperience at managing a team and his unwillingness to let Waters take over, star player and huge attraction Ottaviano Disanti (.249/.360/.330 with 5 home runs and 38 RBI) threatened to never play another game in America unless Waters was given control over the team. Understanding that firing one of only a few immigrant players would be horrible for attracting new fans, Wester agreed to let Waters take control over managing duties. By then, however, it was too late. The pennant had become a two-team race, and New York City watched as for the second straight year (while only some of the time in the old New York League) become Brooklyn’s sideshow. Many anti-immigration whites were quick to point out the two non-whites on the team, Disanti and 1B Manuel Rojas. Rojas specifically bothered many, because he wasn’t technically an immigrant. His family lived in California and was one of only a very few to travel across the United States to the eastern side. Rojas was born in Florida and way his way up the eastern seaboard by playing minor league circuits, eventually landing in the New York league playing for Buffalo. Wester was able to sign him for a larger deal than necessary just to keep him around, and he joined the team the year that the Association was formed. Although overshadowed by his teammates last year while only hitting .357/.427/.579 with 23 home runs and a 4.7 WAR, this year he was the only player to keep up even a slightly similar level of production. He hit .300/.351/.391 with 6 home runs in absurdly weird year for baseball, leading his team in all 4 categories. This would’ve been good press for almost anyone, however because of his skin color and immigration levels peaking right around the turn of the century, many fans turned on him. They believed that he was the problem and the reason why New York City couldn’t get to 80 wins, so much so that he was almost kicked out of the club entirely when a high-ranking club member pressed Wester to terminate Rojas’ contract. Things eventually ended up without anything extremely dumb happening, and the team finished out the year strong with a 11-8 September. Despite all the shenanigans that this team has gone through, they look to have everything figured out heading into the offseason.
                They also received a nickname during in the year. The club’s golf squad were colloquially called “The Oranje” since their first season in 1895, and at some point within the last few years, most other teams have adopted the name unofficially, regardless of whether or not they actually wore the color. The newspapers picked up on this, and throughout the year it was used in conjunction with the team’s full name or acronym.
                BC Boston didn’t see themselves going in trying to make a pennant run, and they finished with the same record as they did last year. A lot of this team actually feels like last year, with Dan Ostrowski ended the year with a 2.12 ERA and compiling 5.2 WAR while most of the bats didn’t wake up and the depth ended after their ace. Nothing about the team seemed to function other than Ostrowski, who was out for the first 2 months of the year with a hamstring injury. After a tumultuous year in the locker room with manager Keith Boker demanding that Ostrowski pitch on 2 days rest for multiple occasions, the two are in what is described as fellow players as a “functional, yet tense” relationship. 1B Jeremy Robertson, Boston’s big Free Agent acquisition, ended up with two separate 6-week injuries to his throwing hand that sidelined him for all but 68 games. Whe he was out there, he didn’t look like the man they signed a year ago, instead hitting .282/.362/.345. No one seems to be happy about the situation, especially since Robertson was under the impression that this team was going to go into contending mode when instead they’re rebuilding.
                After an offseason of acquisition, Philadelphia looked to capitalize on a surprising 2nd place EL finish despite losing 1B Josh MacIntosh. This, however, didn’t turn out to be the case when they started out the year immediately falling to the bottom half of the East. Johnathon Needham, last year’s MVP, had a significant drop in production by only hitting .259/.316/.326. Their pitching staff, while not expected to be great by any means, fell below relatively low expectations and often got the team into holes early. No one on offense could pick up the slack and going into this offseason the team is in a strange sort of limbo. Many close to the team are asking if it was a down year or if this is the new norm. They got picked over Pittsburgh to be the Pennsylvania League’s best bet at major league baseball, but fans from around the state are wondering whether this was the right call. After the merger of the Pennsylvania, New England, and new New York Leagues into the Colonial League, Pittsburgh has dominated the competition by winning both league championships. The media and baseball insiders alike are wondering if it makes sense for Pittsburgh to at the very least be accepted into the Eastern League, or at least if Philadelphia would be better playing in the Colonial League for a few years, later re-emerging in the Association. It is important that these talking heads are the vast minority of people following the Association and the baseball world, and Philadelphia will stay at the top level of baseball for the foreseeable future.
                Federal Athletic, however, is a completely different story. For the second straight year, the team failed to eclipse 60 wins, and even other league owners are wondering about kicking D.C. out of the Association. The team didn’t do anything at all over the offseason to acquire any new talent, they have no major league rights to any independent league players, and owner Justin O’Shea has refused to increase spending on the team. The future isn’t looking bright on the field either, as their best and most marketable player, power hitter Justin Bader, only hit 3 home runs on the season while batting .285/.363/.363 (each stat 50 points down from the year prior). Even in the strangest year of the pitcher, only one of the team’s starters dipped under a 3.00 ERA (Chase Vanderslice with a 2.78). Manager Norman Sherris has turned the locker room into a proverbial warzone, ostracizing almost all pitchers and picking the side of the star players in almost every instance. They don’t really have a direction, and most of the media and fellow league owners are left wondering what happened during the transition to the Association.
                In the West, Chicago took the crown for the second straight year. They started out relatively well, although incapable of pulling away from St. Louis for the first quarter of the year. At the end of May, both teams were tied at the top of the West with a 25-16 record, but SA Chicago was able to turn it to another level come June and eventually finished 23 games ahead of St. Louis with a franchise record (both pre and post Association merger) 99 wins. Their star trio of pitchers Cody Miller, Thad Fiefield, and Tom Viar were complemented by the infield duo of SS Dan “Charisma” Stahl and 2B Brandon Johnson. Miller, the West’s best pitcher in terms of ERA and WAR, was a relative unknown coming into the year. Signed away from his MIL (Midwest Independent) contract for a 4-year, $6160 deal that brought him to Chicago’s starting rotation, many didn’t expect him to play as well as he did. However, he set the West on fire with 34 pitching wins and a dominant 1.94 ERA, and will likely be crowned the Western League Pitcher of the Year. Fiefield, on the other hand, came in as a known force of wreckage. He ended the year with a 2.32 ERA and 30 pitching wins. His contract does expire after the year, although it’s expected that he’ll sign a long-term deal to remain the team’s face of the franchise. Tom Viar also received an extra workload this year, starting 18 more games in 1898. Through those 18 extra starts, Viar was fantastic. At one point in early July he had a sub-1.00 ERA, although it didn’t last for long. The “3 Pillars”, as they were called by the fans, were a terror to opposing batters by holding them to 3 home runs the whole year and a sub-.240 batting average. If this were any other Federal Athletic’s starting rotation, it would’ve been hard enough beating them. However, Stahl was able to absolutely embarrass pitchers this year, hitting .357 and ending up with a 1.008 OPS, both of which would’ve led the majors if he had managed to play more than 98 games due to an opening day oblique strain. Johnson was also extremely capable at the plate, although nowhere near as prolific as compiling a league-leading 6.5 WAR through less than 100 games. His slash of .305/.351/.417 has him near the top of the Western League MVP race and Chicago’s faithful have rallied to his cause. They also were finally allowing the papers to give the team an unofficial nickname. An interesting thing to note about SA Chicago (that I probably should’ve mentioned before) is that in this timeline, they played a game of baseball as part of the American Exhibition at the 1893 World’s Fair. After the game, the media started calling the Republics after the statue that overlooked the fair. Although they quickly stopped using it after being sent a letter by Sporting Association owner Joel Pelletier, it became very common around the city to hear the name used by fans. When their starting pitchers were given a nickname that evokes Roman architecture, Pelletier had no choice but to relent and allow the papers to use the Republics nickname.
                St. Louis, after an offseason of waiting, was ready to make a run at the West. However, injury would do as much as it possibly could to get in the way. They were first in the pennant standings until late May, when new catcher Jeff Pennington went down with a broken kneecap on a busted play. A few weeks later, with St. Louis barely hanging with a surging Chicago, two of their three starting pitchers, Tommie Cropper and Rufus Beale, went down with season-ending injuries in back-to-back days. This bad luck carried over for another week, when their backup catcher Kenny O’Donnell went down for the year as well. For 3 months, St. Louis’ pitcher lineups was a revolving door between 4 players: John Fangant, relief pitcher Scott McNamara, 3B Will Moody, and Bobby Riddle. Eventually, the position player ended up in the final starting rotation, ending the year with a 3.16 ERA and was the team’s leader in pitching WAR with 2.8. It is unclear on whether he will fully transition to a starting pitcher role as Cropper and Beale are expected to make a full recovery, although many fans want him to stay a pitcher. With the depleted pitching lineup, St. Louis was still able to top the league in runs scored with 705. SS Jeremy Cunningham and RF Frank Palmer were once again holding down the fort at the plate. Cunningham hit over .300 for the second straight year, while Palmer was still solid despite being nowhere near his MVP level the year prior. CF addition Chase Johnson was able to lead the team in home runs with 6, and the rest of the lineup was extremely solid. Although the pitching wasn’t there to contend this year, St. Louis owner Gregory Bates is more than willing to wait ‘til next year. There is a lot of promise in the team and many of the key pieces to this year’s squad are relatively young, so most fans in the city are more than willing to sit back and watch their team’s stars to make a full recovery and make a run at the western pennant.
                The Reds weren’t able to recover from an early hole lasting all the way throughout April, at one point reaching the lows of 4-17 in the middle of May. However, some managerial magic by Fred “Jewel” Tilcott was able to turn the team around, with Cincinnati finishing a respectable 73-71. CF Sweetness Hill and LF Joel Skaggs both hit above .300 for the second straight year while SS Luis Campos brought up the back of the order with a .288/.354/.369 slash and compiling 4.8 WAR. The pitching could’ve been better, but going into the year no one expected it to be. No pitcher had a sub 2.80 ERA, and Chris Cassity topped the team’s strikeout leaderboard with 112. Nothing too terrible happened to the team, nor did nothing great. Cincinnati goes into the offseason with a great offensive outfield and a great team bond that extends far beyond what the other teams in the league have. Although already having a nickname, their fans have started calling them the “Brothers” or “Blood Brothers” due to their uniforms and the tight bond they share. While the baseball world groans at the name, many of the players have taken a liking to it, going so far as petitioning owner Butch Wagner to have that as one of the official team names. Wagner denies their request, but always refer to themselves as the blood Brothers in the media.
                Milwaukee, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Nothing worked for them in both the field and behind the plate. New 2B Josh MacIntosh, whom many around the league considered to be an MVP candidate as the year began, turned out to be a solid but not great player in his first year in the West, hitting .283/.345/.334 and accumulating a 3.5 WAR. Some league insiders suspect that the change from facing the weaker pitching from the worse Eastern teams to the stronger lineups of worse Western teams did him in, while others suggest that it was just part of the trend that encompassed all of the Association. George Rogers was their ace, ending up with 96% of his games having wins and losses attributed to him. Over 48 starts, Rogers was able to throw a league average 2.81 ERA while collecting 112 strikeouts and being the only pitcher with a winning record (25-21). The rest of the team was plenty less compelling, as their best player Brandon Carrera hit a .295/.334/.402 slash with only 1 home run to his name. The team spent big money attracting MacIntosh to Milwaukee, but wasn’t able to capitalize with their current core. Owner Nick McCormick is looking at either spending more money or re-organizing the front office this offseason, as he’s very worried about the state of the franchise.
                Cleveland’s offensive production proves that you can’t win without good starting pitching. Their middle of the batting order was stacked with talent, including batting average leader Jason White (.339/.373/.442), Midwest Independent pickup Willie Burke (.723 OPS and a league leading 7 home runs), SS Carlos Bachicha (.310/.341/.368) and 3B Dylan Story (.300/.340/.353 and 71 RBI) was absolutely dominant throughout the year, finishing second the league in runs and had a .281 batting average, best in the Association. The pitching just couldn’t match the production. When their best pitcher, Exorcist Brown, went down with a season ending shoulder injury in mid-June, manager Don Bergeron and Edwin Cole attempt to pull off a masterful trade by sending middling pitcher Chris Mickelson to New York City in exchange for centerfielder Rich Romaker, who at that time was hitting .320/.411/.467. However, Mickelson ended up pitching a 2.52 ERA and never missing a start in New York, while Romaker struggled to hit above average for his time in Cleveland. As Cole becomes more demanding, especially with all the offensive weapons they’ve acquired, Bergeron goes into the offseason hoping to turn around an increasingly toxic clubhouse.

                Detroit was awful. If it weren’t for Federal Athletic, they’d be dead last in almost every statistical category for the Association. RF Tommy Schroder and Eric Peterson played alright, and although Peterson fell off the map this year, he still led the team in stolen bases with 34. However, the showstopper in Detroit was the offseason pickup of 2B Sergio Pimienta. After a horrible ’97 season with Cleveland, Pimienta signed a 4-year, $3,160 contract that runs through 1901. That money, however, ended up being well spent as Pimienta stole the show and batted .328/.379/.379, all team high marks. John Makofske, a Michigan League pickup, ended the year batting .290 and was second on the team with 63 RBI. The pitching did ultimately fail to compliment the top-heavy order, with Bobby Farmer averaging a team low 3.40 ERA (every other team had a player under a 3.00 ERA) before being traded to Philadelphia midway through the season. Depsite their failure, however, the team is sticking together. There are no locker room divides, no unwilling participants, yet instead a young team building towards the future. Manager Rick Shultz allowed his players to have fun on the diamond and express themselves, and some players took this to the extreme. At one point in the season, Makofske ended up cutting his collar off of his uniform, saying that it was too tight for the sport. When fined by Western League President (and rival SA Chicago owner) Joel Pelletier for doing so, the rest of the team cut their collars off in solidarity with Makofske. They media saw this act of defiance and started calling them the “Rowdy Boys” or “Rowdies”. Going into the offseason, things are looking pretty okay for Detroit, despite their poor pitching and terrible bottom half of the lineup.


Up next: the 1898 Association Championship Series between the Brooklyn Baseball Club and Sporting Association Chicago! Stay tuned and thank everyone following this early on and being extremely helpful while doing so. It means a lot to have a community like this.

Last edited by H-Town1141 (5/04/2020 2:59 pm)

Re: how much you should write - not only do you have over 100 years of history to go through, keep in mind that this all happened 100 years ago. How much do you, or anyone else really, know about what actually happened in baseball in 1898? I'm willing to guess not a lot. Once you get to 1998, it'll make sense to have long summaries of everything that happened in that season, but for now, we probably wouldn't know as much as you wrote about that season anyway. All that said, I did stop to read the story about Detroit, and it was great, so don't cut out too much; I just don't need to hear about the contract details and WAR of every St. Louis pitcher. Your designs are looking great, too, as always.

Glad to see this return!

Not entirely sure how I missed this, but I think you are doing a fantastic job for your first time. My general rule of thumb now is to reread your write up and decide

1. Does the point of what the reader needs to know get explained. If yes, the rest is basically filler.
2. It is great to have filler because it brings more depth, but read your write up back and decide if it kept your attention the whole time as the reader, not the writer.

That is what I have done more recently with my series, and it has made me less stressed, less burnt out and it makes the posts a lot less text and a lot more fun visuals. Visuals make things more tangible, bringing a sense of reality to readers and you are great with them. Just keep having fun, we will too I promise.

From what I have had time to read, I really enjoy this New York rivalry. I much prefer the Athletic because of their brand, but I wish they kept those stripes. I think a great publicity stunt to fire back at Brooklyn for the "CHAMPS" jersey would be the fans nicknaming the club something like Burrowers.

This would claim all areas of NYC, stating they are the big boys of New York, while giving an interesting name out of that era. Could also set up a unique identity revolved around a number of animals such as:
mole
gopher
groundhog
rabit
mouse
ect.