Al-Hoot wrote: And yeah, if that gets in to the mysterious acronyms BGC and GUBA and ORB2, that would be great too.
BGC.... Is that the international name for Baseball, Global Consortium?
For those not in the know, the Global Baseball Consortium (yes, I came up with the name) is the FPS BBPro98 successor to the Earl Weaver II-based NACBA, one of Matt and Brad's first successful nationwide sim leagues. While Matt and Brad have understandably moved on to the much more indepth world of OOTP sim leagues, the GBC still lives on as somewhat of an anachronism under the steady hand of commissioner Eric Ramon.
But its not due to our love of FPS BBPro, a solid but simplistic program that forces the commissioner of a sim league into literally hours of manual roster moves. The secret to the GBC's longevity is the Player Tracking System, the web-based league interface that is the brainchild of one Mr. Terry Stapleton. Rather revolutionary when it was introduced in the year 2000, it provides a central, web based home for each of the GBC's virtual teams. 38 seasons of stats and 11 years (real time) of roster moves are preserved for posterity on each team's homepage, while also providing for roster management and lineup submission.
Another great part of the PTS is the interactive Free Agent bidding system and financial management displays. These aspects of the PTS greatly enhance the ability of the BBPro98 program to function as a sim league, adding many features to a sim engine that doesn't natively include them.
Player development in BBPro98 is very straightforward, and as a result our league is less of a developmental league and more of a salary cap management league. Since your young players will more or less reach their potentials regardless of where you put them (albiet faster in "LOW"), the secret to competing in our league is signing players to creative contracts and locking up young stars early with "Franchise Player" deals. There is also a good deal of trading in the GBC, facilitated by the fact that one can trade their draft picks up to two seasons in the future. Trading of cash is also a big part of it, as both teams need to remain under the cap after any deal.
So that is a small snapshot of the GBC as it exists today. Matt and Brad can provide much more insight as to the league's founding, history, and transition from the NACBA, but as a GBC Apologist, I think our members should know that the league still exists today, mainly due to the hard work of a few induviduals interested in keeping the dream alive.
Below is a link to the GBC's Player Tracking System login page to the GBC 'Prime' League (The 'Deuce' League came about slightly later). By entering "guest" in the login box, you can view many of the features of the PTS as well as the roster of any team.
Global Baseball Consortium Prime League
What does this have to do with the MBWBA? Aside from the fact that a number of MBWBA members are also part of the GBC, it also represents the point in history where Matt and Brad's internet sim leagues really took off and became a nationwide community, much of which is still quite intact well over a decade and a half after taking first flight.
Hope this sheds a little bit of light about one of the ancestors of the modern MBWBA, and the reason why many of us first came together as a now international internet baseball community.
