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Oakland A’s Pitcher Pat Neshek: “This Game Has it All”

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ST. PETERSBURG, FL - AUGUST 23: Pitcher Pat Neshek #40 of the Oakland Athletics pitches against the Tampa Bay Rays during the game at Tropicana Field on August 23, 2012 in St. Petersburg, Florida. (Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images)

Several former major league players, including Curt Schilling, are avowed Out of the Park Baseball fans, but you probably wouldn’t expect a current player to be into the game. After all, that’s like a carpenter returning from work and anxiously getting started on home improvement projects.

However, current Oakland A’s relief pitcher Pat Neshek isn’t like many players. His delivery style is an unorthodox sidearm one that he developed after being hit in the arm by a ball in high school. He runs a personal web site where he talks about his card and autograph collections, offering to trade items, even his game-used gear, for memorabilia he wants. And he’s willing to give baseball sims a try.

“I discovered OOTP just this past year,” Neshek says. “I was bored with Rise of Nations and wanted a baseball sim, so I looked around and found that OOTP had a ton of good reviews. I read the Deadspin article touting it, and Curt Schilling had some quotes, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

He continues: “I wanted something that had real players and a real minor league system. I also wanted things such as the 40-man roster, the draft, salary arbitration and in-depth contracts. This game has it all.”

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Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: Islandian Pro Alliance

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There are many ways to play Out of the Park Baseball, but one element that runs through every session of the game is the ability to build a living, breathing world. Whether you want to sim one season or 100 seasons, OOTP allows you to create a baseball world that is constantly in motion, always evolving into its next form. Which teams will see their fortunes rise and fall? Which players will transform themselves from goats into heroes?

One such world is Eugene Church’s Islandian Pro Alliance (IPA). I encourage you to read his dynasty thread and peruse the IPA’s back story, including the cool map he created, but in a nutshell, this is the tale of Ruthlandia and Tycobbia, countries founded in the 1850s by abolitionists who emigrated from the United States to Islandia to escape the intolerance that was about to fuel the Civil War. Immigrants brought baseball to the countries in the 1890s, and by 1920, the sport was so popular that many towns shut down in the afternoons so everyone could attend the local baseball games.

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The Baseball Chronicle: MLB’s Alternate History

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What if we could rewind baseball history and start over, only this time with a fresh set of names? Who would emerge as the Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, and Sandy Koufax of this alternate world?

Those are the questions that Joe Cronin, commissioner of The Baseball Chronicle, set out to answer. (Editor’s note: The Baseball Chronicle web site has been removed since this article was published, so a Wayback Machine link has been substituted.)

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Tales From the OOTP Multi-Verse: On the Road to See the PEBA on $25 a Day

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ron-collins-toronto-fish“Write about what you know.” That’s an ages-old piece of wisdom, but in the case of Ron Collins, he sought inspiration in an unlikely place: the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance (PEBA), an online league that runs on Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP). (The PEBA and its sister organization, the League of the Rising Sun (LRS), are the subject of a previous article.) The PEBA is a rich universe, and it was the perfect place to set a travelogue called “See the PEBA on $25 a Day,” which is available in various formats at Smashwords as well as for Kindle at Amazon.

Collins is an award-winning published author whose short stories have seen print in Analog, Nature, Quantum SF, Asimov’s and many other magazines, along with a collection called “Picasso’s Cat & Other Stories,” which The Merry Blacksmith Press released in June 2010. (E-versions are available for Kindle and at Smashwords.)

Asked why he decided to write a baseball novel, Collins responds: “It all boils down to the fact that I wanted to play in the PEBA. I want to put 100% of my energy into a league, and I expect most owners in a league to have something close to a similar passion. Community is great, but I was looking for a league that was ultra-competitive (meaning the owners are truly skilled), and a league that breathed, that was filled with players who were characters in a bigger world. I want to play in elite environments. I thought the PEBA hit that mark and more, but there weren’t any teams available. So I decided I would write for them until I bludgeoned them into submission.” He smiles at the recollection.

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The PEBAverse Rises From the Ashes of MLB’s Demise

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peba-baseballEvery time someone sits down to play Out of the Park Baseball, they’re asking “What if?,” even if that question is posed simply to see how the last Major League Baseball season could have turned out differently. However, in the case of the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance (PEBA) and its sister organization, the League of the Rising Sun (LRS), the traditional “What if?” question can’t be answered in just a few sentences or a paragraph.

If the story of the PEBA and the LRS was a novel, it would be a sprawling epic destined to dwarf “War and Peace” and “The Lord of the Rings.” In fact, it has even inspired a novel penned by published author Ron Collins, who also manages an LRS team. (Ron’s story is the subject of another article.) The “PEBAverse,” as it’s known, came into existence after the unthinkable happened: Major League Baseball fell on hard times as ticket sales and TV ratings crashed in the wake of fan disillusionment over the steroids scandals, creating an opportunity for the founding of a rival league. The PEBA turned away existing pro players and filled its rosters with top prospects who would have normally entered the MLB amateur draft. The general public soon grew to embrace a baseball league that was untainted by performance-enhancing drugs.

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British Baseball Society: A Jolly Good Time on the Baseball Pitch

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Baseball is seen as a uniquely American sport, with an additional level of strong interest in the Far East, but what if it became popular in other countries too? How would they embrace it, and how would they organize their teams? It’s a fun “What if?” question, and Mark Cooley decided to take a stab at it with the British Baseball Society (BBS), which he created thanks to the vast customization options available in Out of the Park Baseball. (Editor’s note: I discovered on March 29, 2013 that the BBS site was no longer being hosted by Cooley, so I am now linking to an Internet Archive capture of that site that unfortunately has a lot of broken images. It’s the best I can do.)

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