About the Redux
The Premise
Ambitious and forward-thinking Pacific Coast
League owners, determined to achieve the prestige
and financial rewards associated with “big league”
status, elevate their circuit’s level of play by
infusing its ranks with major league-quality black
players beginning in 1921. Before the decade has
ended, the National and American Leagues’ owners
have recognized the PCL as a third major league,
instituted a three-league post season
championship, and have begun integrating their own
clubs.
Historical
perspective
The PCL’s status and reputation before 1958
For most of its history the PCL was generally
considered the highest level of competition after
the major leagues. To baseball fans on the West
Coast in the pre-TV era, it was “the” league. At
various times during its history the league had
major league aspirations, and by the early 1950’s
serious steps were being taken to accomplish this.
Hard to say whether it was bound to happen or
exactly what form it would have taken, but the
point became moot when the Giants and Dodgers
moved west and claimed the PCL’s two largest
cities.
Integrated baseball on the West Coast
There was an integrated professional
baseball league in California from 1910 to 1946.
The California Winter League did not have
integrated teams, but for most of its run
there were all-black teams which played against
all-white teams. Many of the game’s biggest
names—Major League stars, PCL stars, and Negro
League stars—played against each other in this
league annually for decades.
Rewriting history,
beginning in 1921
Cooperation with MLB
Historically, upstart leagues have attempted to
attain major league status by means of all-out
warfare: placing teams in existing major league
markets and raiding the rosters of existing major
league teams. Most of these efforts failed after a
year or two, the exceptions being the American
Association (1882-1891) and of course the American
League (1901-).
In our alternate history, the PCL takes a
different approach. Seeking to impress rather than
antagonize the established major leagues, the
prospective West Coast major respects MLB’s
existing markets and contracts.
The PCL also abandons its 180-200 game schedule
and adopts the 154-game standard MLB schedule
hoping to enable a post-season championship
tournament with the NL and AL champions.
The major difference between the PCL and its
Eastern rivals beginning in 1921 is that one
league is open to black players, while the other
two maintain a de facto Jim Crow policy.
Racism
Obviously, just as there were Major League
players in 1947 who objected to playing on the
same team as black players, there would have been
players with the same objections in 1921; probably
in greater numbers, and probably with greater
pig-headedness.
On the other hand, integrated baseball was
already a reality in California by 1921; many of
the players who participated in the California
Winter League would have been the same ones
playing in an integrated PCL, if there had been
such a thing. Of course, there’s a difference
between white players agreeing to play against
black players, and white players agreeing to play
with black players. Would the
play-or-go-home directive that worked in 1947 have
been effective in 1921 if someone had the
conviction to initiate and enforce it? We’ll never
know. But that’s the premise we’re going with.
Finances
With the exception of Los Angeles and San
Francisco, the PCL cities were not major
league-sized cities in 1921. Los Angeles, in fact,
had only recently overtaken San Francisco as the
West’s largest city, and was still smaller than Pittsburgh
(that was 1921; the population of Los Angeles
would more than double by the end of the decade).
So we’re looking at smaller cities, smaller
ballparks. To put it in terms a modern fan could
relate to, the PCL in 1921 had one team in a small
major league city (San Francisco), two teams
sharing another small major league city (Los
Angeles), three teams in triple-A cities (Seattle,
Portland, Oakland), and two teams in cities that
were at best double-A (Salt Lake City,
Sacramento).
These teams (like virtually all minor league
teams at the time) survived in part by developing
star players and selling them to major league
teams. That was the reality then, and it would
have continued to be the reality even in a PCL
that had been granted major league status. Not
that the PCL teams would have been alone in this
amongst major league franchises: the practice of
down-and-out MLB teams compensating for low gate
receipts by selling players to more prosperous
clubs had long since been established.
How it works in OOTP
We aren’t using OOTP’s financial system, and the
draft has to be conducted outside of OOTP.
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Each team has a limited number of “slots” to
hold Negro League players, PCL players who
went to MLB in real life, and PCL players who
went to other minor league teams in real life.
The intent of this is twofold: 1) it prevents
any one team from getting too strong, and 2)
it prevents the league itself from becoming
too superstar-heavy. The goal is for the
league’s overall quality of competition to
improve slowly over the course of several
seasons until it becomes equal (or close to
equal) to that of MLB. I want to ensure that
the bulk of the players playing in the league
are players who actually played in the PCL.
Most players who had long PCL careers in real
life should be starting, not sitting on the
bench. Of course, it is inevitable that some
players who were starters in the PCL won’t be
starters in this league, but within reason,
GMs should attempt to ensure that that will be
the exception rather than the rule.
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The league started out with the actual 1921
PCL rosters. There was a limited supplemental
draft (a very limited one) that
brought in a handful of Negro League players.
Black players will continue to filter in over
the years, but the largest number of them will
come in during the first three years. With
few, if any, exceptions, they will tend to be
the best players in the league.
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Players who played in the PCL in real life
make their PCL debuts with the appropriate
teams. In general, they stay with those teams
for the same period they stayed with them in
real life, but GMs have the ability to keep
some of them longer. The limits set on this
will generally result in a lot of players
moving around from one PCL team to another,
which was in fact something that did happen a
lot historically. It will also result in a lot
of players going to MLB from the PCL, which
simulates the need for PCL teams to
occasionally sell off players to stay solvent.
The best players in the PCL, however, will
tend to stay in the PCL, which was not
what happened historically, and simulates the
PCL’s emergence as a true major league
determined to compete with the AL and NL, at
least in terms of on-field excellence.
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