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By Brad Cook

March:

Spring training begins with the wide-open promise that accompanies each new season. As the exhibition games commence, you tweak your lineup, trying out newcomers in different slots and attempting to account for off-season losses, including a Cy Young Award-winning pitcher who left for greener pastures. Then you receive a message all managers fear: your owner, who is tight with cash, demands a playoff spot and has little patience for team rebuilding. He wants you to produce a winner now.

April:

The season progresses as spring training did, full of missed opportunities and struggles to build team chemistry. An injury to your best outfielder puts him on the disabled list for four weeks, forcing you to juggle your lineup when setbacks extend his recovery time. A key starting pitcher acquired in a blockbuster trade fizzles when his breaking ball loses its snap, putting your job on the chopping block. Looking through the list of available free agents, you notice an aging player who is past his prime but whose leadership skills could boost your flagging clubhouse. You offer him a basic one-year contract. He accepts, happy to be playing again.

May:

Your lineup and pitching rotation intact once more, you now contend with the daily dilemmas brought on by the vagaries of hot and cold streaks: Do you bench a player whose performance begins to tail off, or do you stick with him and hope he turns it around? What if that player is your star third baseman, who signed a very expensive contract during the off-season? And how do you handle a rising star whose popularity drops when he’s suspended after an on-field fight?

There are no simple answers to these questions, but the ability to pull up side-by-side player comparisons gives you the opportunity to make some informed decisions. You write up notes for each player based on what you see and set reminders so you can prompt yourself to revisit your thoughts later in the season.

June:

The team’s first — and hopefully only — prolonged slump of the season accompanies the start of summer. Six games into a losing streak, you leave a starting pitcher in too long and he gives up an eighth-inning grand slam that seals yet another defeat. You turn to your Scouting Director for help. His team of scouts assembles reports on key players; that information proves vital in making decisions. You swap a few players in your lineup and rearrange your starting rotation, hoping to ignite a spark.

Meanwhile, the annual First-Year Player Draft gets underway, with prospects from more than 1,700 colleges and over 17,000 high schools available. The loss of that Cy Young winner still smarts, but as compensation, you received the top pick for the team that signed him. You make careful decisions throughout the 50-round draft, keeping in mind the fact that many draftees never even get playing time at the highest level, and few of those make enough of an impact to earn spots on a big-league roster.

However, that doesn’t stop your draftees from demanding signing bonuses, particularly those chosen in the first two rounds. Negotiations can be tricky: a draftee might snub you entirely and sign elsewhere, or even decide to go to college, if they were drafted out of high school. First- and second-round picks who don’t sign a contract earn you an extra selection next year as compensation.

July:

Your fortunes begin to turn around. An eight-game winning streak puts you within striking distance of first place. Your key starting pitcher, whose rise through the minor league farm system was overseen by you, produces two sterling games. That star third baseman earns back-to-back Player of the Week honors, capping those games with a ninth-inning, game-winning double in front of a cheering home crowd. Your closer converts all nine of his save opportunities during the month, putting those two walk-off homers in May behind him.

August:

The dog days of summer bring you a tie for first place, neck-and-neck with your toughest division rival. Sifting through the voluminous statistics at your disposal, you notice something interesting: your back-up second baseman has fared much better against right-handed pitchers than the starter, despite the fact that both bat right-handed. Going with your gut, you start him during a key three-game series and he drills four home runs. Perhaps a platoon at second base is in order.

And you discover something else about that back-up: in a late-inning situation, during a close game, you decide to send him home as he rounds third on a shallow single to right field. Knowing the outfielder’s arm isn’t very strong, you hope your runner’s average speed is enough to allow him to score. You’re right.

September:

The race for the division title heats up. In your league, one division leader has a 15-game edge, all but ensuring a playoff spot. The other division is closer, while yours continues to swing back and forth. Your team seems to click as the month draws to a close. A seven-game winning streak, punctuated by your best starting pitcher’s masterful one-hit shutout of your division rival, gives you a two-game edge heading into the final weekend.

One of your top minor league prospects, who you summoned when rosters expanded on September 1, delivers two key hits during the streak. You also uncover something intriguing about him: during a lopsided win for your team, you give that prospect some late-inning pitching, figuring he can’t do much damage while giving your bullpen some rest. He walks two batters and allows a hit, but he also strikes out one and shows poise in working his way out of a bases-loaded jam with a lone run allowed. Maybe you’ll work on converting him into a much-needed middle reliever during the off-season.

October:

The final series of the year, against your division’s last-place team, turns out to be free of drama, thankfully. You sweep them in three blow-outs, securing the division title and allowing you to focus on the playoffs. Round one breezes by in a three games to one victory, putting you in the League Championship Series against your arch-rival.

Down two games to none, your team limps home for the crucial middle three games of the series. You take two of the three as your line-up comes alive with timely hitting. Now you face the daunting task of taking games six and seven on your opponent’s home turf, but you pull off the feat, a 12-3 laugher capping the series.

Moving on to the World Series against the other league’s champion, game one sees your star third baseman go down with a devastating injury while fielding a sharply-hit ball. He’s out until next year, but his teammates soldier on. His back-up provides key support to your hitting attack, and your pitchers excel in their starting and relief roles. The teams split the first two games, but the next three belong to your club, ending a 20-year championship drought. You had recorded all of the games in the series for posterity, allowing you to relive those thrilling moments any time you want, complete with the roar of the crowd and animations charting the trajectories of batted balls.

There’s little time to bask in the glory, however. You have contracts to negotiate, free agents to peruse and pursue, and strategies to formulate. Already your opponents are crying: “Wait ‘til next year!”

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Swing, Batter, Batter! The Broadcast view gives you a nice look at the simulated action, with a scrolling commentary at the bottom.

New Season, New Options

To make it easy to see what’s new in our month-by-month rundown of an OOTP season, we’ve highlighted the changes in red. Check out the sidebar at the bottom of the page to learn about the other new features in OOTP 11.

Stats, Stats Everywhere. Peruse piles of sortable stats.

Location, Location, Location. The Webcast view presents more data on the screen, including each pitch’s location.

The Face of the Game. FaceGen puts a personal touch on your team.

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System Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.3.9, or 10.4.4 for Intel Macs (10.4.8 or higher recommended)
1GHz PowerPC G4 or 1.8GHz Intel Core Duo processor (2GHz G5 or 2GHz Core Duo processor recommended)
256MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
1GB hard disk space
1024 x 768 display resolution

What’s New in OOTP 11

Team owners had fairly simplistic personalities in previous versions of OOTP, but now they have varying fiscal attitudes and patience levels, along with more complex goals for their clubs. Just like in real life, some of them are free-spending wheelers and dealers looking to win the World Series every year, while others pinch their pennies and would rather let a veteran leave than sign him to an expensive contract extension.

To help you deal with owners, players, draftees, scouts, and other computer-controlled personalities, you can now jot down manager notes, complete with reminders, and you can write your thoughts on player pages too. Position players can migrate over to the pitching side, and vice-versa, allowing you to tap into hidden potential, and you can now clone players and see if their doppelgangers chart similar careers.

Under the hood, a built-in statistics re-calculator regularly pulls simulated statistics in line with historical trends through settings you can customize. That’s important when playing historical seasons, which also now evolve the way they really did: new teams enter the leagues via expansion during the appropriate years, free agency arrives in 1975, and so forth. OOTP 11 follows Major League Baseball rules in requiring five years after retirement for a player to be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame, but you can change that number.

And if you’d prefer to just indulge in the best baseball has had to offer, try the All-Time Baseball Greats Quick Start feature, which gives each team a 40-man roster populated with the top 25 position players and top 15 pitchers who have ever played for it.

Create Your Own Baseball History

OOTP 11 comes with everything you need to start a season of Major League Baseball, but you should visit PadresFan’s OOTP Baseball Mod Website to download stadium photos, team logos, and more, including player images that the game’s FaceGen technology uses to represent everyone on the field. You even get all of the teams’ minor league clubs, allowing you to nurture prospects as they work their way through the farm system and hopefully emerge as Major League stars. OOTP 11’s rosters are current as of the beginning of the 2010 baseball season.

Of course, there’s also plenty of fun in seeing what could have been, and that’s where OOTP 11 lets you play with history to your heart’s content. Here’s a roundup of some of the most intriguing seasons from Major League Baseball’s history. Perhaps you can change the course of one or more of them.

1904: New York Giants manager John McGraw refuses to play the World Series against the American League champion Boston Americans. The World Series was first played in 1903, but many in the National League looked down on the upstart American League.
1908: The Chicago Cubs win their second, and last, World Series (at least through 2009).
1911: Cy Young pitches his final season, concluding a career that started in 1890 and culminated in 511 wins, a total that no one has ever come close to matching. (Walter Johnson, who began his career in 1907, is second with 417; Johnson also set a career strikeout record that lasted more than 50 years.) Young won over 30 games in a season five times, an astounding feat at a position where a 20-win season is considered the gold standard. The award given to the top pitchers in the American and National Leagues each season is named for him.
1918: The Boston Red Sox win their fifth World Series, but it’s their last championship until 2004.
1919: Many players on the Chicago White Sox roster take money to let the Cincinnati Reds win the World Series, five games to three. The team doesn’t return to the World Series until 2005.
1927: Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs, setting a record that stands for 34 years. He powers the Yankees to World Series wins that year and the next.
1936-1939: The Yankees’ first run of dominance concludes with four straight World Series championships. The first pair comes at the expense of the New York Giants, two of several “Subway Series” played between New York ball clubs. (The Dodgers were located in Brooklyn before moving to Los Angeles in 1958.)
1939: Lou Gehrig has his brilliant career cut tragically short when he’s diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is now also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
1941: Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox finishes the year with a .406 batting average, while the Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio hits safely in 56 straight games. Williams was the last player to hit over .400 for a season, and DiMaggio’s record has yet to be broken.
1943-1945, 1952-1953: Ted Williams’ career is interrupted by military service during World War II and the Korean War. While he wasn’t the only major leaguer who lost playing time while serving his country, his career statistics would have been even more impressive had he seen more at-bats. For example, he would have almost certainly eclipsed 600 career home runs, a feat achieved by only six players ever as the 2010 season got underway. (Alex Rodriguez is the next player due to join that elite club, and Jim Thome could reach that mark in 2010.)
1953: The New York Yankees’ victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series marks their fifth championship in a row and sixth over seven seasons.
1961: Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hits his 61st home run of the season on the final day, overcoming Ruth’s record. Amazingly, Yankee fans are not happy.
1964: In one of Major League Baseball’s greatest collapses, the Philadelphia Phillies squander a 6.5-game lead with 12 games remaining in the season. Ten straight defeats usher in the disaster, which ends with the team one game behind the St. Louis Cardinals.
1969: The New York “Miracle” Mets defeat the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, four games to one.
1976: The Cincinnati Reds sweep the Yankees for their second straight World Series title, but the Yankees return in 1977 and 1978 to defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers each time.
1978: The Red Sox blow the division lead in September, allowing the Yankees to win it with a victory in a one-game playoff. The Red Sox had been ahead of the Yankees by as many as 14 games in July.
1982: Rickey Henderson steals 130 bases, breaking Lou Brock’s 1974 record of 118 swipes in a season, which had in turn surpassed Maury Wills’ 1962 record of 104. No one has come close to Henderson’s feat since.
1983: The Houston Astros’ Nolan Ryan surpasses Walter Johnson’s record of 3,509 career strikeouts, but Steve Carlton of the Philadelphia Phillies passes Ryan later in the year, setting off a furious back-and-forth battle that lasts through the 1984 season, when Ryan finally takes over the lead for good. Ryan ends his career in 1993 with an amazing 5,714 strikeouts, a total that is hundreds more than numbers two and three, Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens, heading into the 2010 campaign. Carlton finishes his run in 1988 with 4,136 strikeouts, good for fourth on the all-time list as of 2010.
1985: Another record falls as Pete Rose, player-manager for the Cincinnati Reds, collects his 4,192nd career hit, breaking Ty Cobb’s record. He ends his career the following year with 4,256 hits but is later barred from entering the Hall of Fame because he had gambled on the Reds while managing them. As of the beginning of the 2010 season, no active player is even close to Rose’s record; Ken Griffey, Jr. leads active players with just shy of 2,800 hits.
1986: The Red Sox come within a single strike of ending the so-called “Curse of the Bambino,” only to lose games six and seven of the World Series to the New York Mets.
1989: The World Series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants is interrupted by an earthquake just as game three is about to start. The resulting delay allows the A’s to reuse their games one and two starters and sweep the series.
1991: Rickey Henderson breaks another of Brock’s records when he steals the 939th base of his career. He finishes his career with 1,406 steals, a number that no active player is even close to reaching.
1994: A players’ strike in August results in the cancellation of the rest of the season, with the overachieving Montreal Expos in first place and the San Francisco Giants’ Matt Williams on a pace to break Maris’ home run record.
1998: The St. Louis Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa leap-frog each other all season in their pursuit of Maris’ home run record. McGwire ends the year with 70 round-trippers while Sosa concludes with 66.
2001: The San Francisco Giants’ Barry Bonds eclipses McGwire with 73 home runs, which stands as the current record. Amazingly, he draws 177 walks the same year, a record that he surpasses in 2002 with 199 free passes and again in 2004 with 232.
The same year, the Yankees’ bid for a fourth consecutive World Series title is thwarted when the Arizona Diamondbacks defeat them in a thrilling seven-game contest. If the Yankees had prevailed, it would have also been their fifth championship in six years, since they won in 1996 too.
2004: The Boston Red Sox become the only team to ever rally from a three games to none deficit to win a League Championship Series, doing so against their arch-rivals, the Yankees. They then end an 85-year drought with a World Series sweep over the St. Louis Cardinals.
2005: An 87-year streak of futility ends as the Chicago White Sox sweep the Houston Astros in the World Series.
2007: The Mets become the first team in baseball history to squander a lead of seven games or more with 17 to play, ending the season one game behind the Phillies. They don’t even qualify for the wild card.
2009: The Yankees win their 27th World Series, far more than any other team in baseball. (The Cardinals are second with 10 championships.) They defeat the Phillies, who had won their first World Series since 1980 the year before and who become the first National League team to play in consecutive World Series since the Reds in 1976.

Want to take the helm of a beleaguered team and lead it to its glory years? The Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, and Washington Nationals (the current incarnation) have yet to appear in a World Series, while the Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Rays, and San Diego Padres have participated in the championship but haven’t won it yet. And let’s not forget that the Chicago Cubs haven’t played in the World Series since 1945 and last won it in 1908, the longest such streak of futility in Major League Baseball history.