‘OOTP Baseball:’ How a German programmer created the deepest baseball sim ever made

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When Heinsohn was a computer science student at the University of Hamburg, he and a few friends would stay up late, drinking beer, crunching chips and watching weekly MLB games broadcast in Germany. He fell in love with the Atlanta Braves, admired Greg Maddux’s command and Ryan Klesko’s swagger.

Trying to replicate it all, he forked out a bundle of money to order a copy of Diamond Mind, an early computer descendant of tabletop games like Strat-O-Matic. He had it shipped from the U.S. to Hamburg on a 3.5-inch wide floppy disc. He had also played rudimentary baseball games such as “Hardball III” and “Hardball IV.” He was usually underwhelmed. He craved more depth, like the soccer simulations he grew up playing in Germany.

“The statistics were terrible,” Heinsohn said. “When you were simulating a season you would have pitchers with a 0.30 ERA and hitters hitting like 80 home runs.”

By this point, Heinsohn’s coding abilities had grown. He enjoyed the challenge.

“For me, it was like playing with Legos, but more advanced,” he said.

And one day, in October of 1997, an idea popped in his head. What if he tried to create his own baseball game, one where you could generate new draft classes, trade players, sign free agents, customize everything and play into the infinite future?

That’s how the best baseball sim ever made was born.

Negro Leagues legends to be featured in MLB The Show 23

Negro League legends are coming to MLB The Show.

MLB The Show 23 will feature eight of the greatest Negro League players—Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Buck O’Neil, Rube Foster, Hilton Smith, Hank Thompson, John Donaldson and Martín Dihigo—in a new game mode called “Storylines.”

Sony, which partnered with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and NLBM president Bob Kendrick to bring Negro League stars to MLB The Show, announced the new feature for the game on Monday. MLB The Show 23 will be released on March 28.

It’s our honor to bring the Negro Leagues to MLB The Show 23! In partnership with the @NLBMuseumKC and president @nlbmprez we invite you on a journey to celebrate the Negro Leagues and their stories of triumph over adversity in a new game experience! pic.twitter.com/8D50kKBWt8

— MLB The Show (@MLBTheShow) February 6, 2023