What is Weaverball?
Here's the lowdown on The Eternal Weaver League... Weaverball is a fictional baseball league that was established back in 1987. We basically use a computer simulator to let the members of our league play Owner and General Manager of their own baseball franchise. Our league is a career association, meaning that instead of re-drafting our teams after every season the teams stay the same and the computer ages the players. For more info on how it works check out this page from the Weaverball Online Manual.

Do you use Earl Weaver Baseball?
No. When the league was established back in the late 80's we used EWB to simulate our games. We called our league the Weaver League and referred to the game itself as Weaverball (How's that for originality?). We changed the program that we use to sim our games in 1997, but we kept the name the same.

What program do you use to simulate your games?
We currently use Front Page Sports Baseball Pro 98 by Sierra.

Sierra doesn't support the FPS series anymore. Why do you still use it?
One word: Continuity. We could switch to one of the many other baseball sims on the market today, but we would lose the continuity of our current career association. Besides, despite the fact that it's been a while since it was released BBPro is still a pretty damn good sim engine. It has it's flaws, but in our opinion none of the other stats-based baseball sims that are around nowadays hold a candle to the BBPro physics based model.

At this point there are probably only two things that could make us switch: 1.) If someone made a new game that allowed us to import our current BBPro association AND met our expectations as far as the quality of the sim results go, or 2.) If an asteroid or other catastrophic event were to hit Weaverball Galactic Headquarters in San Jose, California and destroy all copies of the league archive file. At that point we would consider starting over using a new sim engine... maybe.

How is the Weaver League structured?
Our association has 24 teams. Those 24 teams are broken down into two leagues of 12 teams each, with each league having two six team divisions. The postseason consists of the two division winners from each league going to the League Championship Series, and the LCS winners play in the Weaver Series for the championship.

Why don't you expand the Weaver League or add wild card teams?
Because we don't want to! Actually there are several reasons, but the main reason gets back to the continuity issue. Technically there is a way that we could expand or even contract the Weaver League, and along with that we could change the playoff structure to add wild card teams. But by doing so we would have to actually create a new association and import our current teams. One byproduct of that would be that it would throw the process of inducting guys into the Weaverball Hall of Fame out of whack. At this point we'd rather just keep things as-is.

Who knows, although it seems highly unlikely right now someone may someday create a utility that would allow us to alter the league structure without abandoning our current association. But until then we're staying old school and will do without expansion or the wild card.

When do you run the sims?
We run the sims twice per week, Wednesday and Saturday. Each sim takes us through seven days on the league schedule. I do reserve the right to alter the schedule when necessary, although I always try to give as much notice as possible if I have to do so.

Where can I download the league archive file?
You can't. The archive file is not made available to anybody. This is intended to keep any of our owners from knowing potential ratings of players. To get up to speed on the whole concept of actual vs. potential ratings, check out this page from the Online Manual.

Anyway, a lot of leagues either make the archive available or they just post the potential ratings on their site. To us that's like giving every GM a crystal ball into the future, everyone will know exactly how every young prospect in the league will turn out before they're even drafted. Our league is like real life, there are no "can't miss" prospects. Nobody will know how a player will develop until he does.

What is the deal with the All-Timers?
Our league has used All-Timers since we started back in our Earl Weaver Baseball days in the late 80's. Basically each team has the rights to one All-Time Player, so along with the regular guys on your roster you can also have a Hall of Fame type guy to lead them.

An All-Time Player can be any player who has played a season in the American League or the National League from 1901 to today, with the exception of anyone who has played in the Weaver League already. When the time comes for you to choose a new All-Timer you will choose stats from any individual season to base their ratings on... NOT the player's career numbers. Also keep in mind that not only are ratings based on the individual statistical season you pick for your player, but their initial age and experience level as well.

All-Timers can be traded. However, even if you trade your all-timer your team will still get a replacement for him when he retires. If your all-timer is playing for your arch rival when he retires it doesn't matter, your team will get a replacement for him. We have this rule because if this wasn't the case nobody would ever consider trading their all-timers.

If you're new to the league and you're not sure who your team's original all-timer is, just drop me a line and I'll let you know. When it comes time for you to select a new All-Timer a good place to research players is at Baseball-Reference.com.

UPDATE: Argentina Archers owner Rob Wyatt is going to keep a record of all of the All-Timers that have seen action in the league, you can check it out here.

Do you have Free Agency? How about a Salary System?
We started using a basic Free Agency system before the 2010 season. In our system all players with six or more years experience are eligible for free agency. Teams can protect six players on their teams who would otherwise be eligible for the draft. The draft is one round, and teams can lose no more than one player from their roster. There is no salary system involved.

Anything else I should know?
You can check out the Weaverball Constitution for some more info about the league. There's not much to it, it's mostly just a set of basic expectations for our owners. It also details a few other rules regarding franchise relocation, our trade committee, etc. And of course feel free to dig deep into the other sections of our site.

The Stats Register kicks ass! How did you make that?
You're right, the Stats Register does kick ass! I didn't create it though, it was made by Havana Cigars owner Edwin Mercado. The way he explained it to me is that he takes the HTML files from our history section and parsed the HTML using Perl5's object-oriented capabilities to get the names/positions/years/statistics for each player. He also mentioned that it can be done with Java or C++ but that he chose Perl because he is most familiar with that language. Does that answer your question?

What in the hell is a capybara?
Capybara n: 1. A large semiaquatic rodent (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) of tropical South America, having short limbs and a vestigial tail and often attaining lengths of more than 1.2 meters (4 feet). 2. The largest rodent on the face of the Earth. 3. A charter member of the modern Weaver League, based in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. Five time Weaver Series Champion.

How do I join the Weaver League?
You can contact me and I can put you on our waiting list, but be forewarned that it'll probably be a while before a team becomes available for you. Up until a few years ago the longest anyone had to wait for a team was a couple of months, but lately our waiting list has grown quite a bit and we've had very few ownership changes. As of this update (11/08/04) there are 24 people on our waiting list, and the next guy up has been waiting for a little over two years.