Prominent OOTPers

Ex-Major League Pitcher Bryan Rekar ‘Blown Away’ By OOTP

June 20, 2014 by Brad Cook

Like Curt Schilling, Pat Neshek, and others with professional experience, former major league pitcher Bryan Rekar was attracted to OOTP because, as he recalls: “I first found OOTP in 2013 as I was searching for a truly realistic baseball game that allowed me to be the General Manager and/or Manager. I had tried other games for years, but none of them really had what I was looking for in a true simulation baseball game.”

He adds: “Then I found OOTP and was totally blown away with not just the realism of the play, but the unbelievable detail of every aspect of the game: from the amount of true players and their true, detailed abilities, to the off-season and drafts every year. It is exactly what I was looking for and more.”

As is the case with many other OOTP players, Rekar had some experience with the dice-and-cards version of Strat-o-Matic Baseball, as well as Micro League Baseball on the Commodore 64. He remarks: “OOTP is the first game I have played since then that is truly realistic and uses real players with their real abilities. I have played the video games, but they are too unrealistic for me as I am all about the games being true and keeping realistic stats.”

Soren Johnson: In the Core Audience For OOTP

May 11, 2014 by Brad Cook

Out of the Park Baseball can boast a link to not one but two lead designers in the venerable Civilization series of strategy games: Civilization V lead designer Jon Shafer talked to us about the game’s “unique unfairness” and now Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson has some things to say about OOTP. He is currently working on some strategy games through his new company, Mohawk Games.

Eddy Vegas Gets His Audience Involved in OOTP Broadcasts

December 19, 2013 by Brad Cook

Nothing livens up a performance like a little audience participation. Eddy Vegas has created a new twist on the idea by incorporating the names of his viewers in the fictional OOTP league that he broadcasts on Twitch.tv. He provides live commentary on the action, with a voice that sounds a bit like famous Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, as he guides the Las Vegas Mudcats through multiple seasons of the Eddy Baseball League.

Vegas says he “got totally addicted to casting” a couple years ago, when he discovered how easy it was to set up and run a Twitch.tv channel. “It totally blew me away!” he recalls. “I had no idea it was that simple; I thought you needed equipment and expertise. So I put a game up, Space Pirates and Zombies, and actually got a viewer to watch! The rest, as they say, is history.”

He decided to start broadcasting OOTP games because: “I wanted to cast games that no one else cast. I figured the Starcraft/Call Of Duty/League Of Legends market was already saturated, and anyway, I suck at those games.” In his search for intriguing games to cast, he stumbled across OOTP 8, which he used as his testing ground for setting up an OOTP league. He later moved on to OOTP 14 and established the Las Vegas Mudcats.

Shane Callahan: Trading Away Strasburg on the Set of ‘Revolution’

November 8, 2013 by Brad Cook

Shane Callahan may not be a household name, but he’s one of many Hollywood actors who sustain themselves with a steady stream of minor roles in movies and TV shows. Since 1989, he has amassed 42 acting credits, with 35 of them after 2000. He has played everything from Rookie Cop in a made-for-TV movie to a medic named Jimmy in five episodes of the TV series “Revolution.”

“I think I traded Stephen Strasburg away while on the set of ‘Revolution,'” Callahan says. He runs team in the MLB Pro and PBL online leagues, and he says playing OOTP while on the set helps while away the lengthy stretches of downtime that are typical of an actor’s life. “I check PMs from leagues I am in all the time while sitting in a trailer I am checking,” he says. “Checking reports. Looking for possible trades and so forth. It’s quite addicting.”

The Old Days

Callahan began playing OOTP in 2007, but it wasn’t his first experience managing digital baseball teams. He recalls an experience that many older OOTP players will probably appreciate: “Back in the Sega 8-bit baseball days, I used to keep track of stats and records and make schedules in notebooks with old console games. I’d have piles and piles of notebook papers on baseball stats from all the games I’d play. I’d set up the schedules and everything.”

Civ V Designer Jon Shafer Discusses OOTP’s ‘Unique Unfairness’

August 1, 2013 by Brad Cook

“The great thing about sports is that you never really know what’s going to happen,” remarks Civilization V lead designer Jon Shafer, who is now the CEO of Conifer Games. “Your ace pitcher could go down just before the playoffs, or a scrub you thought had no chance of making it could blossom into a star. I love this unpredictability and possibility for crushing defeats, as most entertainment today is designed to end with a happy ending. In my opinion, an experience isn’t truly rewarding unless there’s the possibility of failure.”

Twins Minor Leaguer A.J. Pettersen Dreams of the Big Leagues With OOTP

July 11, 2013 by Brad Cook

Getting drafted is a dream of many young baseball players, but being drafted by their favorite team is extra special, as Adam (A.J.) Pettersen knows. He grew up rooting for the Minnesota Twins and was drafted by them in the 25th round of the 2011 June Amateur Draft. He worked his way up the minors and, as of early July 2013, is playing for the Twins’ AA affiliate, the New Britain Rock Cats. (He’s @apettersen1 on Twitter.)

“It’s a dream to play for the Twins; I have always been a huge fan,” Pettersen says. “I remember rushing home from school in October to catch the 3 PM playoff games in the ALDS. The Twins made it fairly consistently in the early 2000s and my friends and I hung on every moment of those games.”

Growing Up With Baseball Videogames

Pettersen and his brothers and friends also grew up with baseball videogames, but the Pettersen household always approached them a little differently. “My friends always used to make fun of my brothers and I because we would never play any games in franchise modes — we would only simulate them,” he recalls. “We loved being the GM and making all the moves.”

Peter Burns: OOTP is the “Perfect Fit”

June 21, 2013 by Brad Cook

“I grew up in Dallas area, and my first games were watching the late 80’s/early 90’s Texas Rangers,” recalls Peter Burns, who co-hosts The Press Box weekday mornings on Denver’s Mile High Sports Radio (AM 150/FM 93.7). “My first season I put together in Out of the Park Baseball, I was so excited to have Nolan Ryan as my ace and build around him.”

He continues: “I made a few offseason moves and put together an incredible starting rotation. In the fourth spring training game, Nolan tore his rotator cuff and was gone … forever. I sat in front of my computer for a good 10 minutes, feeling like I was slapped in the face. It was then that I knew OOTP was the game for me.”

Thus began Burns’ love of OOTP, which he says he discovered through Twitter, where he maintains an active presence as @peterburnsradio. “I kept seeing people tweet about OOTP like it was a real life game,” he says. “I figured I had to check it out and once I got the game, I knew exactly what everyone was talking about. It consumed me like no other game ever has.”

Sam Adams: Still Looking For the Next Parker Gooch

April 19, 2013 by Brad Cook

“Baseball has always been a huge part of my life,” says Sam Adams, who has served as the director of sports at KHQ TV in Spokane, WA since 2009. He grew up an Oakland A’s fan in the Bay Area, and his childhood love of Strat-o-matic Baseball, Tony LaRussa Baseball, and other games eventually led to his discovery of Out of the Park Baseball in the late 90s.

“OOTP has gotten progressively better and better through the years and I never really stopped playing it,” he says. Adams has reviewed the last two versions of OOTP: “Video Game: Yep, Mariners Still Stink” and “Out Of The Park 14: Sam Adams’ Quest As A Major League General Manager.”

Steve Corino: A Tale of Two Generations Joined By OOTP

March 21, 2013 by Brad Cook

Fathers and sons. Baseball has a way of tying one generation to the next, creating traditions that are passed on while new ones develop along the way. In the case of pro wrestler Steve Corino, baseball has helped strengthen his relationship with his father two ways: through their passion for the real world sport and by sharing stories about playing Out of the Park Baseball.

“When I was seven years old, my father, Big Frank, taught me the old APBA card game,” Corino says of his childhood in Philadelphia. “Now this was 1980, when the Phillies were making that run to the World Series. He was a milkman and worked the overnight shift, so I would keep score of the Phillies games for him. The funny part is that we didn’t get cable until the fall of 1981, so I would listen to the radio and keep score for him like I was the official scorekeeper. Back then, the newspapers only carried the basic box score, so I would make stats for him. Then he showed me the APBA game and I was off!”

As an adult, Corino moved on to digital baseball sims, primarily MLB The Show. “I would buy that game every year on the PS2,” he says. “Traveling with pro wrestling, I would spend half the year in Japan and half at home, so I would have plenty of time.”

However, the GM aspect of baseball videogames was what he really enjoyed, so when a fan told him about OOTP on Twitter during the 2012 Thanksgiving holiday, “it all changed,” he remembers. (We encourage you to follow him at @KingCorino.) “I downloaded OOTP and haven’t stopped playing!” he says. “Not only do you control your team on the field, but you are responsible off the field too: budgets, stats, trades, ’emails’ from other GMs and players, and so forth. OOTP is the best game for the obsessed fan.”

Curt Schilling: ‘There is no comparison to any sports sim I’ve ever played’

January 23, 2013 by Brad Cook

“I was, quite honestly, born into the game,” says Curt Schilling, who pitched for the Orioles, Astros, Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Red Sox during a 20-year career. “I was told my dad had a ball and glove in my crib when I came home from the hospital. I’ve lived and breathed it since I can remember. I grew up in Arizona so I could be on the field 365 days a year.”

He continues: “When I wasn’t on the field, I was doing something associated with the game. I first found APBA football but baseball came soon after. I loved being able to ‘run’ a team and a league. I had notebooks with reams of stats; I kept everything by hand.”

Schilling remained an avid gamer throughout his playing days, which ended on March 23, 2009 after accumulating 3,116 strikeouts with a 216-146 record and a 3.46 ERA. He’s not sure when or how he became an OOTPer, but he says he’s “always been a HUGE sim fan, and played about everything there’s ever been a game for in football and baseball. I played all the Front Page Sports stuff and just loved the ability to ‘GM’ a franchise.”

Out of the Park Developments

Blog by Out of the Park Developments

Prominent OOTPers

Ex-Major League Pitcher Bryan Rekar ‘Blown Away’ By OOTP

Soren Johnson: In the Core Audience For OOTP

Eddy Vegas Gets His Audience Involved in OOTP Broadcasts

Shane Callahan: Trading Away Strasburg on the Set of ‘Revolution’

Civ V Designer Jon Shafer Discusses OOTP’s ‘Unique Unfairness’

Twins Minor Leaguer A.J. Pettersen Dreams of the Big Leagues With OOTP

Peter Burns: OOTP is the “Perfect Fit”

Sam Adams: Still Looking For the Next Parker Gooch

Steve Corino: A Tale of Two Generations Joined By OOTP

Curt Schilling: ‘There is no comparison to any sports sim I’ve ever played’

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Prominent OOTPers