Loved all the backstory this offseason, it'll be interesting to see how the 3 league system works.

And hopefully with a team in Milwaukee that means a team in the Twin Cities soon!

Wow, it's nice to be back in the Baseball Section! Now, y’all are probably wondering what I'm doing posting on a thread that hasn't been active since September, and I've got your answer. Luckily it's good news, but unfortunately I also have bad news to go along with it. Good news first, this thread is coming back! Bad news is that it isn't at the same time. What I mean is that the way this series ended has bothered me since I did it, I had so many big plans for this series and I was really attached to a lot of the work, so I wanted to bring it back. Obviously I can't though because I have my NFA football league, which is still my top priority. So after a few months of thinking and a couple rollback of plans, I finally decided what I would finally do. I’ve simmed the rest of the seasons to modern day, followed through with the plans I've had since day 1, and am working on every team's identity that you would see on the field today. So that way it's a proper send off to the teams and a satisfying end to the series. So now that we've jumped 125 years, I should probably explain what's happened to the USBL, NEBL and NBL.  
So let's just go in chronological order. In 1900 after years of bickering over players, a rift that growed ever wider with the founding of NBL, the three leagues came together in 1899, to form the United Leagues of Baseball. This was an idea I had for over a year now, before I had even started simming. To form the league though many teams were folded or moved to the United Minor Leagues of Baseball, keeping only 5 major market teams in each league. The agreement between the leagues is similar to the MLB in real life. All 3 leagues were practically separate, no interleague play, and were each considered their own separate entities. And also like the MLB, they agreed upon an interleague championship that would occur after the season came to a close. It would include each league's regular season champion and the team with the next best record out of all leagues. This would later expand to the 14 team bracket the league holds currently. These 4 teams would fill out a bracket, seeding 1-4 based on record, that would be called the Super Series, a name I've had in mind since last spring. Each series would be out of 5 games to start out, but be raised to 7 later on in history. The Super Series would not include each league's personal championship, and still doesn't. Each league has their own end of the season championship that includes the 2 teams with the best records in the league. It’s been a tradition that’s lasted to modern day. That meant a team could win their League championship but not make the Super Series, which had happened on occasion, before the Super Series would expand to include 8 teams in 1960. For a long time many teams valued winning their league championship over the Super Series, but by the Great Depression, feelings had changed and winning the Super Series had become the cream of the crop. The League would miss two seasons in 1944 and ‘45 to support war efforts, that would be the last time a full season would be missed however. The ULB would then enter the expansion era in the 50s and 60s where they saw the first expansion since 1904 and the formation of a new league for the first time since 1895. The formation of the Western Baseball League was to bring baseball to the Pacific Coast. Founded in 1960 as a co-effort by all 3 leagues, with a total of 6 teams to match all the other leagues, the Western League would pave the way for West Coast baseball. The next waves of expansion would happen in 1979 after an agreement that each league would have to agree to expand together held the Western League from expanding earlier in the decade. This expansion would also branch the ULB into Canada for the first time when the Northeastern League would add a Toronto franchise to their resume. This would happen again in the next and final expansion in the 90s when the Western League placed a team in Vancouver. Today the ULB stands at a mighty 36 team roster, with teams all across the country, both new and old. Each league is broken up into 2 divisions. Interleague play was introduced in the year 2000, although each league still is considered their own entity. Each League still has their own Championship, consisting of the 2 teams with the best record in the league. The teams with the 3 best records in the league however will move on to the Super Series along with the top 3 from every other league and 2 wildcard teams that are chosen by the best 2 remaining records from any league, it could even be the same league.  
Out of the original 3 leagues, the Northern and the Northeastern Leagues are still the same name, however the USBL changed to the Southern Baseball League after the formation of the ULB. Here’s how the leagues and teams shake out. 

Northern League:
Chicago Golden Sox
Chicago Packers
Detroit Chiefs
Milwaukee Millers
Cleveland Lakers
Minneapolis Muskies
Dallas Chaparrals
Kansas City Cowboys
Arizona Scorpions 

Southern League:
Cincinnati Monarchs
Louisville Stallions
Washington Eagles
St. Louis Olympians
New Orleans Herons
Baltimore Skipjacks
Atlanta Generals
Miami Suns
Orlando Gators 

Northeastern League:
Boston Valentines
New York Magpies
Brooklyn Dutch Lions
New York Rovers
Philadelphia Revolutionaries
Hartford Colts
Pittsburgh Knights
Toronto Canadians
Charlotte Flight

Western League:
Los Angeles Dons
San Diego Captains
San Francisco Seals
Seattle Emeralds
Denver Spurs
Los Angeles Grizzlies
Portland Chinooks
Houston Drillers
Vancouver Ravens. 

As you might be able to see Carolina and Seattle both need names still, so I’m taking suggestions for those teams.
Now let's get into the teams that do have names.

Last edited by MyTeamIsDr.Pepper (6/07/2020 10:27 am)

Cleveland Astronauts
Kansas City Masters
Charlotte Minters
Seattle Emeralds
Houston Commanders

Team #1: Boston Valentines
Nicknames: “The Hearts”
Rivals: New York Magpies, Hartford Colts 

ULBML: Providence Reds, Halifax Atlantics, Syracuse Valentines

The first team I have to show off is one you’re probably familiar with. The oldest team in the ULB, the Boston Valentines. The Valentines were one of the best teams in the sport as of when we left off, since then they’ve continued their dominance. Obviously they made the jump from Worcester to Boston, that happened in 1899 when the Sugarmen went bankrupt and the Valentines merged with them, taking their best players, moving into their stadium and also collecting the long winded history of the Sugarmen. This boost in talent right before the merger allowed them to win the first two Super Series. They would continue their dominance, racking up the second most Super Series titles at 12, winning their most recent one in 2011. They’ve won a total of 20 Northeastern League titles, winning 5 straight in the late 20’s.
As for their identity history, the Valentines still rock what is the most famous uniform in all of American sports; the heart patch uniform. They adopted their current road uniform design in the 50’s after using a variety of different scripts and designs over the decades. The B logo was modernized in the 90’s and made the primary logo during the same offseason the team, along with many others, added an alternate uniform to their rotation. The alternate is a red version of the road uniform that’s used very occasionally for Friday night home games.



This design has been updated. Here's the original.

Last edited by MyTeamIsDr.Pepper (6/22/2020 5:12 pm)

Thanks for the input H-town! 
For the "wacky" names I chose, most of them have a backstory that will be explained in each team's write ups. For example, the Golden Sox name comes from the the fact that the previous name was the Bees and the bright yellow socks the team wore faded to a more gold shade, the team won their first Northern League title that year, so they changed the name and stuck with it, that was 1906. As for the others that don't have much of a story behind them, they usually have a MLB comparison. Magpies=Orioles, Yankees=Revolutionaries, Valentines=Phillies (Local culture). The only one I don't really have a true answer for why they didn't change, are the Dutch Lions. I love the name and didn't want to change it. The original Dutch Lions would fold and the new ones were founded in 1904, renaming them there could work but I like the name too much and in this universe the Dutch Lions are Brooklyn Baseball.
As for Rockets and Millers, Rockets, another name I just liked, but I'm totally open to change, and Millers are Millers because I wanted to avoid using MLB names, if i had to restart this series all over again, Milwaukee would never of been the Giants. So hopefully that was some context to the names, I probably should've explained that before. 

This is probably also needed to be said, the founding dates for the teams that need names are:
Seattle: 1960
Cleveland: 1969, the original team moved away in 1961, and they took the history with them.
Kansas City: 1979
Houston: 1979
Charlotte: 1998

And thanks for the feedback on Boston, I'll fix the wordmark on the away and alternate, and I just realized that the pennants were that way, yikes, not supposed to be like that, I don't know how I let that get by me. For the B though I'm not sure how much more difficult it was to embroider a cursive b to an old English one, I quite like it, but I'll play around and see if I can get something a little simpler, maybe try and come up with a secondary mark as well.
Thanks for the feedback!