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By Brad Cook

March:

Spring training opens 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. Then word comes down from the owner: he expects a .500 season. You demand a playoff spot.

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.

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 assembles reports on key players, and 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.

July:

Your fortunes begin to turn around. An eight-game winning streak puts you within striking distance of first place. Your key starting pitcher 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.

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.

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 strategies to formulate. Already your opponents are crying: “Wait ‘til next year!”

Game Hardware

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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.

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 X

Out of the Park Baseball X allows you to easily import leagues from OOTP 9 and versions 6.5 or 6.12. (To import files from other versions, use the demo version of OOTP 9 to convert a file to that format, and then import that file into version X.) Improvements found in the latest edition lead off with revamped artificial intelligence and even better play-by-play, complete with thousands of new lines of play description.

Next up is a redesigned pitching system that features individual pitch ratings and a reworked endurance system. Now pitchers can improve certain pitches or lose effectiveness with others, forcing you to modify their approach. Injuries are also more realistic, with the possibility that players will suffer setbacks during their recovery, and each minor league team now has its own disabled list too.

During games, you can customize what you see by activating the widgets option and moving the information boxes around the screen. Between games and seasons, salary arbitration and free agent compensation have been adjusted so they more closely parallel what happens in real life, where players can make salary demands and teams can agree to the terms or ask an arbitrator to make a decision. Free agency can complicate those situations, and that’s reflected in OOTP X too.

There’s plenty more for baseball aficionados to enjoy, including the ability to enter player statistics and automatically convert them into ratings, improvements to the look and feel of the interface, performance enhancements to the game speed, and more.

Create Your Own Baseball History

OOTP X 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 X’s rosters are current as of the beginning of the 2009 baseball season.

Of course, there’s also plenty of fun in seeing what could have been, and that’s where OOTP X lets you play with history to your heart’s content. The new version also includes improved historical simulation accuracy, making older seasons more realistic, even when simulating just one year.

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 2008).
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, but Johnson 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. They don’t return 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 2009 season got underway. (Alex Rodriguez is the next player due to join that elite club.)
1953: The New York Yankees’ victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series marks their fifth championship in a row and sixth over the previous 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.
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 nearly 1,000 more than numbers two and three, Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens, heading into the 2009 campaign. Carlton finishes his run in 1988 with 4,136 strikeouts, good for fourth on the all-time list as of 2009.
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.
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.
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.

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.