Video Game Suckage

That is absolutely what I think of when I think of Chan Ho Park. I have absolutely no idea what the man did to the makers of Tony La Russa 3, but they must have hated him. I simulated so many seasons and picked so many teams, and every single time, the last player picked in a draft, and the worst pitcher in the first simulated year was Chan Ho Park.

Now, if we are going purely based on stats, sure, in his first two seasons which only consisted of a handful of appearances and innings, his ERA was over 7, but that's not much to go on, and he ended up with decent enough stats in real like, but in the game, the man never had an ERA under 10 that first simulated season.

Luckily, that was just a game and his career went a bit better than that, but whenever I see cards of his, that's exactly where my mind goes and the memories come flooding back.

Tony La Russa 3 was an amazing simulation game. I will say, at the time, the simulation definitely skewed to have pitchers pitching less - starters ended up regularly only pitching 4-6 innings so complete games were rare and relievers ended up with a bit more on the decisions, but as a trend, baseball itself did end up going a bit more that way given the wear and tear on pitchers.

Having played and simulated in the range of 100 years in one of the simulations, the fact it has a Hall of Fame, kept track of career records, and of course managing records - a great game for any stats nerd, especially at the time.

Oh, and a great sign of how the times change....back then, simulation chugged along well - you could start and each day of play in a season took 2-3 seconds to happen - now, I swear, a season is done in about 10 seconds if you let it run - the amazing increases in computing power.