It would be pretty cool if the team was actually unknown to Colon.

That would be some stealth negotiation. Send a 3rd party lawyer with an offer.

It wouldn't be worth it for a guy like Colon, but in a really big negotiation, I could see a team wanting to test the waters w/o disclosing their interest, especially if the needed to make a trade to fit the FA.

Hardball!

The Athletics. Of course.

It would be pretty cool if the team was actually unknown to Colon.

Bartolo to agent: "Surprise me."

I have also agreed to sign with an unknown team.

nothing says moneyball than Bartolo Colon?

nothing says Funyuns more than Bartolo Colon

fixed

The Athletics. Of course.

Billy Beane is doing his best to make the team a bunch of unknowns.

The Athletics. Of course.

The plan the Giants and the MLB have forced on the As has no room for a pitcher as good as Colon.

Jeremy Brown will come out of retirement to catch Colon. And no jeans will be sold.

He'll make a great #2 starter behind Pepi Perez, who if I remember correctly had an absolutely sick curveball. The All-Stars were a far better team than the Champs, who had no offense beyond the powerful Contos/Barnes/Nyden trio.

Bartolo will now get to be teammates with Ultimate Warrior and George the Animal Steele

#5 - I regret to inform you that Unknown Team has NOT agreed to terms with you. Sorry, but they were also negotiating with Unidentified Team Source, who has a better shot at a spot on the Opening Day roster.

#10 - Literally my first thought! Billy is feeling nostalgic, gotta have at least one "Not selling jeans..." guy.

They're in the Korean league ... it's actually pronounced Unk-noun.

In other A's news, the Nationals have signed Gio until 2016 with options for 2017 and 2018.

He'll make a great #2 starter behind Pepi Perez, who if I remember correctly had an absolutely sick curveball. The All-Stars were a far better team than the Champs, who had no offense beyond the powerful Contos/Barnes/Nyden trio.

True, but the Champs had Tommy Euler, who was a nice, well-rounded, 4-pitch SP if memory serves.

Anyone here *ever* manufacture a run in Hardball? I remember it being even more dependent on the home run than the early 2000s A's.

Is he likely to have any midseason trade value? Maybe they can get a C prospect?

If he pitches the way he did for the Yankees early in 2011 and maybe sustain it a bit more by pitching in a bigger ballpark, he may become an attractive short-term acquisition.

At least Bartolo is an old man and has made a lot of money already in his career and will not have his quality of life affected that much by whatever horrible thing is about to slay him now that he is an Athletic.

Anyone here *ever* manufacture a run in Hardball? I remember it being even more dependent on the home run than the early 2000s A's.

Hell yes. I always played as the Champs and I could reliably hit triples with the speedy leadoff guy McCall -- mastered the bloop hits the other way down the line and into the gaps.

Euler was great too.

Hardball would be a prudent use of this 70-foot digital scoreboard at Wrigley I'm hearing so much about.

He'll make a great #2 starter behind Pepi Perez, who if I remember correctly had an absolutely sick curveball. The All-Stars were a far better team than the Champs, who had no offense beyond the powerful Contos/Barnes/Nyden trio.

True, but the Champs had Tommy Euler, who was a nice, well-rounded, 4-pitch SP if memory serves.

Well that's a whole heap of names I hadn't thought of in 20 years. I think Euler had the advantage of throwing to Miller behind the plate, that lad could hit like a young Johnny Bench.

I was a big fan of the Champs. They could steal bases like mad, so you pretty much always had guys in scoring position. Although the All Stars had a reliever who could throw the sinker, which was a pretty devastating pitch.

The mystery team continues to load up on starting pitching.

It's good to see The Mystery Team finally land a guy. It seems like they're in on all the big names but never seem to come out on top.

True, but the Champs had Tommy Euler, who was a nice, well-rounded, 4-pitch SP if memory serves.

If I remember correctly, my best pitcher on that team was actually Barnes (or one of the other hitters)... he would throw a "fat pitch" nowhere near the strike zone but called a strike. Not sure if that was a C64-only glitch or not.

I once struck out 19 batters with Pepi Perez. I tried and tried, but I could never tie (or break) the record.

Is there anywhere where you can buy this game for your PC? Man, I spent a lot of hours throwing that screwball that would wiggle like crazy at the end, and catch the outside corner on right hitters. All on the C-64...

That, and Microleague baseball. Replaying the 75 and 82 World Series, years before the internet...good memories.

Is there anywhere where you can buy this game for your PC?

Sure - especially if you're not all that choosy about confirming the state of the software licenses... You'll also need to DL a DOS/C64 emulator, but there are several sites that have a whole host of old C64/Amiga/80s-early90s games. The hardest part is usually getting your GFX card/driver to cooperate.

I had a c64 emmy on my last PC -- haven't ported it over to my new one -- but I played Hardball and Oregon Trail (the original) on my old PC.

I would suggest, if you're on a windows machine -- set up a separate user account with limited permissions... You can google around easy enough to find plenty of places to DL games (and emulators), but a lot of them also love to pack in the trojans. I never got anything particularly nasty -- just a lot of adware and such -- but if you keep it confined to a limited access account, they're easy to deal with.

The game I used to play was SSI's Computer Baseball. Zero action; it was sort of like a really primitive Diamond Mind or OOTP. You made the managerial moves. It didn't auto-update stats, so after every game you had to print out the box score and then update your team's stats.

Thing is, abilities were based on stats, and it had no concept of small sample size. Thad Bosley from the 1984 Cubs once won the batting title with a BA well north of .400, for example.

But it was awesome. I would work out entire seasons, but since I didn't have the patience to type in the stats for all of the teams, I would play my seasons against the included "all-time great" teams. (The 27 Yankees used to kick my ass a lot.)

The game I used to play was SSI's Computer Baseball. Zero action; it was sort of like a really primitive Diamond Mind or OOTP. You made the managerial moves. It didn't auto-update stats, so after every game you had to print out the box score and then update your team's stats.

Thing is, abilities were based on stats, and it had no concept of small sample size. Thad Bosley from the 1984 Cubs once won the batting title with a BA well north of .400, for example.

That was Microleague for me -- man, when microleague came out with a stats compiler add-on, it was nirvana.

My brother (Tigers fan) and I created minor league all-star teams for our respective organizations, and I still remember this guy being just unfair (we got the stats from the year-end Baseball America almanacs and didn't bother concatenating split levels -- so I used his Pittsfield line from '87). Leonette saved about 60 games over the course of our 162 game schedule - and was only scored upon twice.... My brother felt using him enormously unfair, but I pointed out that this guy on his team stole 150 bases.

I could probably still come up with my entire roster if I think about it for a bit -- Rolando Roomes, Darin Jackson, Dwight Smith (far and away the MVP), Wade Rowden, Mark Grace... that 1987 Pittsfield team was a beast to a sim without MLEs...

The downfall of the league came when we discovered that fast, LHBs could drag bunt their way to ~.750 BAs, even if you played the corners in.

Micorleague baseball!

The game I loved, and stuck with for years, was Hardball six. I had an entire fictional league of characters that I kept up for years.