Long Baller Baseball is a simulation baseball league that uses Out of the Park 5 (OOTP 5) as the simulation program. Owners take part in the role of General Manager of their team to compete against other owners throughout the season towards the role of League Champion. The league consists of 30 teams and follows the general guidelines set by Major League Baseball.

The Commissioner's job is to basically control the league. He simulates the games, maintains the website, handles league problems, along with many other responsibilities.

The owner's job is to maintain their team (lineups, roster changes, trades, etc.) and to be continually active in the league.

Owners may only own one team, if caught owning multiple teams, you will be removed from the league.

Owners are REQUIRED to have AOL Instant Messenger. I feel this is a very useful tool to keep the league active as communication is much easier and quicker. If you do not have this, it is free to download at http://www.aim.com.

Any owner who will be away for an extended period of time (vacation, out of town, etc.) will need to notify the commissioner of his absence in order to not lose their team from inactivity.

Unless otherwise stated in the rules, anything allowed by OOTP is allowed in Longballer. These rules either explain settings (such as the salary cap) or additional rules that make up for missing features in OOTP (such as minor league roster limits).

Major League Rosters have a maximum of 25 players. You are required to have at least 23 at all times.

Minor League Rosters have a maximum of 25 players for each minor league level (AAA, AA, A). There is no set minimum for minor league rosters.

Trades may be made with any owner in the league until July 31st (Trade Deadline).

Both owners must confirm the trade by posting in a single thread in the league forum.

Trades will go into effect at the beginning of the upcoming sim once both parties have replied with confirmations. Lineup changes can be specified in the trade post.

Any lopsided trades will be reviewed by the commissioner and other owners and possibly (sparingly) overturned.

Free agents may be claimed at any time and in any number during the season by posting on the league forum, except for the off-season free agent signing period.

Free agents signed outside the offseason signing period will only be signed for a 1 year contract. The requested salary can be seen by owners if they run the FREE version of OOTP 5 and right-click the player's name in the free agent list. Download is on the league homepage.

In the sim after offseason free agency ends, claim order is broken by highest 1-year offer. All other sims, free agents are signed on a first-come, first-serve basis. The first acceptable offer gets the player.

Salary cap is $82 million. Any team who exceeds the cap, and does not attempt to get under for the next sim, will have the highest salaried players released until the team has met the cap limit.

Cash maximum is $10 million (set in game) carryover from season to season, debt maximum carryover is $10 million (edited before first free agency sim).

All team markets are set to Good and will be adjusted if the game changes that. This is because Team Market does not improve/decline according to team performance. Fan loyalty is correlated to performance and varies over time.

OOTP revenue sharing will be undone every season and replaced with LBB revenue sharing. The revenue sharing pool comes from teams that carryover more than the maximum cash limit. The pool is capped at $55 million. That pool is then split among the lowest 10 revenue teams. The lowest revenue team gets 10/55ths, the next lowest gets 9/55ths, etc, up to the 10th lowest revenue team getting 1/55th.

Contract extensions may be made at any time after May 12th of the current season.

All players, when offering contract extensions or getting arbitration, must have their role set to their highest rated position, making his contract worth the highest asking price for his talent. This is to avoid a bug in OOTP 5 where players don't realize they are better suited for a more valuable position.

Position player role determinant: Highest range of qualified positions, if tie then broken by highest fielding percentage of tied positions.

Pitching role determinant: If the pitcher has any SP endurance, they sign as a starter. If the pitcher is a reliever only, a pitcher getting the majority of saves for a team signs as a closer. Majority is defined as >50% in the past season.

There will be 6 sessions of bidding which offers will be sent in to the commissioner. Each sim will be 5 game-days long.

Exporting bids ensures confidentiality and is highly encouraged over email/private message

The Amateur draft occurs on June 1st of each season.

The draft is 10 rounds and is always held live in an AIM chat room. Priority lists are encouraged for any owners who cannot attend the draft live.

After 5 rounds of live drafting, the computer will draft the remaining 5 rounds.

Sims will be 3 times a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings after 7 PM PST. Any deviations from this schedule will be posted on the league calendar and announced in advance.

For those with OOTP 5, the league file can be downloaded on the website. To load it into the game, you have to create a New Folder in the main OOTP 5 folder and name it "LBB.lg" (that's a L in .lg). Unzip the league file's contents into this folder from the zip file you downloaded. Once in the game, the league should appear on the list of leagues to open.

(If FTP Upload doesn't work) What you have to do to submit your team's files, with changes placed, is to go to the Team Setup page under your team and click on "Export Team". This will send your team file to the folder "EXPIMP" in the LBB.lg folder. Your file should be named "team#" in that folder. To verily your team's #, look on the Team Setup screen you just exported from in the game and it should match the number under the team logo on that page in the logo address line. Attach this file that you created to an e-mail and send it to commish@longballer.com where I will upload it to my copy of the game for your changes to go into effect. When it is updated, you will see the date on the "Team Update" page with the most current update that has been entered.