Tony Larussa Ultimate Baseball Inspired WIS Sim League

Given the recent success filling the All Black QB Football League over at WhatIfSports.com, Inappropriate Hugs is back at again, this time with a league for good ol’ baseball.

The league is themed after the classic Tony Larussa Ultimate Baseball game. While Larussa may be right up there on my All-Time Sports Douchebag list, I was always able to look beyond his frightening face and waste countless hours playing the game he helped design.

As a freshman in college (a good 6 years after the game came out mind you) my roommates and I played out an entire 162 game schedule on the PC. A nice mix of introversion, alcohol, insomnia, awful weather, lack of responsibility and money, and dedication helped us achieve such a lofty goal.

Well since those halcyon days of youth, things have gotten more complicated and I can no longer shirk away from life completely and disappear into a magical world filled with crappy graphics, shitty sound, and Tony Larussa along with some friends.
But now, thanks to the brainwork of the guys at WhatIfSports, I can try and reconstruct the days gone by using their SimLeague Baseball simulator. In putting the league together, I tried to keep to a lot of the same principles of the old Larussa game.

Anyway, here are the ground rules:

• Each team owner must choose one MLB franchise to represent and can only pick players from that team to fill their roster. No 2 owners can represent the same team. The league will be made up of 24 teams, so naturally some of the current teams won’t make the cut based on what teams the public demands. See the comments section for a list of available teams. In honor of the team I played with in my Tony Larussa league 10 years ago, I have selected the Minnesota Twins. My apologies to the nice people up there that would have liked to take them.
• Unlike the Tony Larussa game, I’m limiting the players to the period of time from 1985 to 2006 for the Sim League. In the old game, you would end up having matchups like Honus Wagner vs. Christy Mathewson. While that’s cool, I’m more interested in seeing players I know involved. Grover Cleveland Alexander might pwn Andre Dawson, but I don’t really care to find out.
• You cannot have the same player on your team more than once. It may be nice to have an outfield made up of Barroid Bonds seasons 2001-2003, but I’m not allowing it. Unlike the Larussa game, 2 different teams can have the same player though (example, both the Pirates and Giants can have Bonds on their rosters).
• Owners must place their team in their home ballpark (any parks that team played at from 85’-06’ are eligible).
• Team names must contain the city/state of the team first so it is easily identifiable. Feel free to bastardize the team nickname.
• A team salary cap of $100 million has been instituted. This will level the playing field so the owners that picked the better franchises over the past 20 years don’t have a huge edge. It also means more role players/bad pitchers get to be involved which makes for a fun time. In the old Larussa game, the older franchises had a huge edge because they had a bigger time span to pick players from. The salary cap will limit that problem for franchises that weren’t around in 85’.
• Trades will be permitted once league is filled to allow owners to address any weaknesses/over strengths your team may have.
• The AL teams will have a DH spot, the NL will not. The leagues will be realigned when filled up to adjust the divisions correctly.
• When selecting a team to represent, you must post in the comments section below which team you want. You will then have 6 hours to signup for the league and fill the roster for your team. If you don’t, that team will be available to others again (doing this as a follow up to my lessons learned from the football league).
• League is restricted to newbies of the SimLeague Baseball game.
  

To join and play for free, click on the link and use Promo Code FXFBSLB7 and join Sim League Baseball League ID MLB67335. See the comments section for teams still available in the league. The league is open to all readers, and it'd be nice to get a cross-section of fans across this great land to fill it up.

In addition to the prize from WhatIfSports, the owner of the winning team will get 2 other bonus prizes:

1) A 1990 Donruss rookie card from one of the best, most steroid abusing players of this era, 2-time AL MVP, Juan Gonzalez.

2) A 1991 NY Mets Calendar. Not exactly glory days.

Signup now and pick your favorite team… the promotional code expires at the end of the month.