Yankee4Life

I'm just trying to review a mod here and while doing that I was just looking at everything about this mod. I looked at what was in this mod and since some early reviews were posted before I did this, I looked at those too. If you can't deal with that then I blame you entirely. I'm not going to defend every word I say in here and have some joker accuse me of stirring up trouble. If it isn't you it will be someone else. It does get quite boring you know and maybe you should just quit while you are behind. Also, don't respond to this in this thread. This thread is about reviewing all Total Conversion mods that are available for download on the site. This isn't going to turn into a debate thread between you and I because this thread is not going to be taken off on a tangent like that.

1998 continued The Expos break up a double play. Wade Boggs drives home the Devil Rays' sixth run with this broken bat RBI single. Any chance of an Expo rally in this inning was thwarted when Fred McGriff made this unassisted double play. Here's Vladimir Guerrero of the Montreal Expos in his pre-bad back days. Fittingly, Miguel Cairo makes the last play of the game via this diving catch.

Next up in this thread is the 1998 season mod which was made by andy82. This mod can be downloaded right here. This is the first season mod that andy82 has made and by just taking a quick glance at the feedback in the support thread for this mod you can tell he did a great job. This mod delivers the look and feel of major league baseball just twelve short years ago. And by just spending some time in this mod you realize how much has changed in baseball over this short time span. For instance, many players have long since retired and one team (the Expos) are not even in existence anymore. About the only gripe I read about this mod from the support topic thread was from a Red Sox fan who complained about the choice of introduction video chosen for the mod. The Yankees, if you remember, were the best team that year as they won 114 games in the regular season and swept the World Series in four games over San Diego, thus justifying the choice of intro video for this mod. Ignoring this, you can see that this mod has been very well received. And the real issues with the mod (some cyberface questions and a small overlay mistake) can be easily fixed via a patch. Screenshots Welcome screen for Total Classics 1998. Andy82 did a very nice thing here as he credited the people who have in the past help with their talents in contributing to these season mods. It was a very nice touch to this mod. However he forgot one very, very important person here and that was Fuzzone. It was Fuzzone who created the very first Total Classics mod for Mvp Baseball 2004 and in the early editions of the Total Classics series, he was the one who was a huge part of it. But Fuzzone was very scarce around here by the time Andy showed up and therefore it is understandable that he was not familiar with Fuzzone's contributions. Also, homer813 and Homer are in fact one in the same person. When Homer first joined the site here he did not have the same screen name as he does now. Again, Andy would not know this. Wade Boggs of the Devil Rays. Boggs was winding up his long big league career with the expansion Tampa Bay team and will retire one year later. Olympic Stadium in Montreal. No more baseball is being played here these days. Even though the Expos were chosen for this game, Washington is still shown in the overlay. Kevin Stocker can not dance out of the way from this pitch and is hit. Miguel Cairo had a career day for the Devil Rays as he went 5 for 5 in Tampa's 6 - 1 win. Tampa catcher John Flaherty is caught in a rundown between second and third as he tried to stretch his hit into a triple.

Updated to 1-3 ...There is always a sense of relief when the holidays are over with. ...When midnight struck on January 1st the first thing I said after "Happy New Year" was "Spring Training starts next month." ...I also immediately thought of my little dog who I lost back in September. I'll never get over her. ...I don't make New Year's resolutions because I don't want to end up disappointing myself but if I had to be forced to do one, I'd get 100% better from this surgery I had. I'm not even close yet. ...Thank you so much to the little child who hacked the site on New Years. Now go play on the railroad tracks. ...Total Classics 1998 is now available and ready for download. Grab it and you won't be sorry you did. ...Any movie with Jackie Chan in it I will watch. ...While I'm at it, same goes for Tommy Lee Jones. ...I got 100 dollars worth of gift cards for Amazon.com and I don't know what to get. Now if I didn't have them I'd find some stuff I'd want. ...Sent back my new laptop I got for Christmas so they can fix the DVD drive. God knows when I will get it back. Wish me luck. ...By the way, this is not my own personal thread in here. Everyone's welcome here.

Next up is a book called Dawn of a Dynasty: The Incredible and Improbable Story of the 1947 New York Yankees and it was written by Frank Strauss. This book can be found on Amazon right here and they have new and used versions of this book for sale. There are a lot of books written about the Yankees and there are a lot that concentrate on one particular year of that team and this book captures perfectly the story of the 1947 Yankee team. If you listen to certain people on this website (and I will come out and say it here- they are Red Sox fans) they will have you believe that the Yankee teams of this era had it so easy that all they had to do was walk on the field and they had the game won. Just reading this book will show you that this lie that these people perpetuate on this site is as far from the truth as you can get. Going into the 1947 season the Yankees were predicted for nothing higher than a third place finish and the Red Sox were once again favored to win the pennant in the American League. But at the end of the '47 season it was the Red Sox who finished in third place, 14 games behind the pennant winning Yankees. The Yankees overcame a lot of injuries during this season to just about everyone on the team. Joe Dimaggio (the MVP of the AL that year) missed parts of the season with various injuries but still hit .315 for the ballclub. This book details the rookie year of Yogi Berra, Bobby Brown and pitcher Spec Shea. Notable things while reading this book was seeing once again how pitchers were treated back then. This was the day of no pitch counts and complete games. And it did not seem to me that these pitchers from this era were no worse for wear. Some other things that stood out (among other things) ...The Yankees played a game that season in one hour and thirty minutes. Try that today. ...The doubleheaders that this team had to play that year were a lot. ...The Yankees had an old timers day that year and it was scheduled for the final weekend of the season. It had a game against the Yankee Old Timers that were managed by Joe McCarthy against the American League Old Timers, managed by Connie Mack. ...The 1947 season was the first season that the World Series was televised, and three local stations in the New York area shared game coverage.

Updated to 12-27 ...All together now: "Thank God Christmas is over!!" ...My wife got me a nice new laptop with Windows 7 on it. Trouble is, it will not read any DVD data disks that I have and I have no idea why. It's always something, isn't it?? ...Of course, what I got her (some Amazon.com Kindle thing) works perfectly. ...Raise your hands if you were forced to go to the stores the day after Christmas to return things. Yeah, I had to. ...The main thing is I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you got everything you wanted and for those of you who are home this week (like me!) enjoy your time off! ...I would like to take the time here to thank the Washington Nationals for signing Jason Marquis. Rumor has it that the Yankees were maybe interested in signing this "pitcher". I mean why not? They've already made so many stupid moves this off season. What's one more? ...Which brings me to the King of the Off Season Stupid Moves. Javier Vazquez. I got to admit, it would have been funny if it happened to any other team. But when the Yankees re-acquired this loser I did everything but laugh out loud. ...I like that NFL Network because they had a great game on Christmas night. If any of you guys don't have that channel you should really look into it. ...One of the best endings to a movie that I ever saw was in Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. In the last few minutes of that movie not one word was spoken because nothing needed to be said. It was George Lucas at his finest. ...Well, it didn't take long. After having a blu-ray player with our HDTV for less than a month now, I have become a blu-ray snob. All my future movie purchases will now have to be on blu-ray or else it will be no way. :)

This looks excellent Andy!

Here's some dogs decorating a Christmas tree and putting presents underneath it all by themselves.

Next up is a book called The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox and the Playoff of '78 and it was written by Richard Bradley. The book can be viewed and purchased right here at Amazon.com. If this game was not the greatest game ever played, it sure has come close to it. A lot of us in here are very familiar with baseball history. We all know about Babe Ruth's called shot in 1932, Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'round the World against the Dodgers in 1951, Roger Maris' 61st home run in 1961, etc, etc. This game that was played in Boston on October 2nd, 1978 is right up there with those other famous games. What makes this '78 playoff game different for me as compared to the examples that I just gave you is that I saw this game on TV and I lived through the 1978 season. And by reading this book it brought me right back to that year and to that game. The author, Richard Bradley details every inning and every at-bat. But he did it in a way that let you know what the players were thinking during that point in time in the game. So, in the bottom of the ninth when Carl Yastrzemski came up with two outs facing Rich Gossage, you learned that all Yaz wanted to do was hit a ground ball between first and second. He was telling himself not to do too much against Gossage, just meet the ball. And you'll also find out why Gossage's last pitch of the game was also his best pitch. The book briefly covers the history of the two teams, but it mostly dwells on the '78 season and how both of these teams ended up in Fenway Park that day. You'll learn how the Red Sox looked unstoppable at the beginning of the year and how the Yankees were just happy to stay close despite all the injuries that they accumulated. You'll find out how people that were not even in Fenway Park that day had an influence on the game. Take Billy Martin for example. The Yankees talented but paranoid manager resigned in July and was replaced by Bob Lemon, who was a calming influence on the team. Many players said that if Martin was still there, there would not have been a one game playoff. Another guy who had a hand in this was Seattle pitcher Mike Parrott. You may have not heard of him but Red Sox right fielder Dwight Evans has. Evans was hit by a Parrott on the 29th of August behind his left ear that left him with a bad case of dizziness that left him practically useless for the month of September. His dizziness was so bad that he could not step off a curb without losing his balance. There's a lot of inside stories included in this book about all the players who either played in that game or who were on one of the two teams. Ron Guidry for example almost quit and went home to Louisiana back in 1976. Bucky Dent did not know who his parents were until later on in his life. This book was 257 pages long and the pages just flew for me. I highly recommend this.

This auto installer is a huge help!

Updated to 12-20 ...All I can say is thank God that it is only five days until Christmas. Then all these Christmas commercials and movies and TV specials will be put away for another year. My wife has been driving me nuts because she has been watching a Christmas movie every single day since Thanksgiving. ...Already next year's NL Championship has been handed to the Phillies because of the addition of Roy Halladay to the team. Do you think the games should be played first? ...If there was a Yankee fan on this site that said the same thing about the Yankees for next year, he'd be roasted by the Yankee haters in here something awful. I say this because this is the truth. ...One thing I am curious about this whole Halladay affair is where were the Mets in all this? ...And if anyone thinks Toronto made out in this they are delusional. The Blue Jays were offered horseshit for Halladay and they happily accepted whatever Philadelphia offered for the best pitcher in the American League. ...I'm really going to miss Hideki Matsui on the Yankees. And I don't know why he was not resigned for the DH spot. How is Nick Johnson better than Matsui? ...I'd rather have the Yankees sign Justin Duchscherer instead of Ben Sheets. With Nick Johnson already on the team we already have a clumsy ox who is going to get hurt in some stupid way next year and that is all Sheets is good for. Let him stay in Milwaukee. Those people over there wouldn't know a good pitcher if they tripped over one. ...Just when you think the Seattle Mariners are serious about improving their team for next year they go out and get Milton Bradley in a trade. How is this time going to be different for this idiot? No matter what team he is on he ends up causing problems. ...Thank you Dallas Cowboys for beating the Saints last night. Now all I am waiting for is for them to fall flat on their faces again in the playoffs. ...My pros and cons list of getting a PS3 are just about even. This is a tough decision for me. The main thing is I only want this console for one game (The Show) and really not anything else.

What is the difference between versions 1.0 and 1.1?

Can't believe this has not been sold. Then again, a price has not been given.

Updated to 12-13 ...Jim825 was right. When we got our HDTV hooked up with DirecTV this week, all we did was compare regular TV to the High Definition and it looks amazing. Looking at sports on this is like looking at it for the first time. I keep switching between the NFL Network and the MLB Network to see how good everything looks. It's a good thing that we got this hooked up last Tuesday (the 8th) before the snow got here or else we would have had to wait. ...I don't like watching many of the Christmas movies out there because they are so predictable, but I always enjoy watching A Christmas Carol or any version of that story. That was one of my favorite books. ...One of the first clues for Tiger Woods' wife about his messing around was when he bought her lingerie from Victoria's Secret was that he insisted on bringing home the girl that was modeling the items in the store. ...It doesn't matter that Woods is taking an "indefinite break." It's never going to be the same for him again. ...If the Red Sox do not re-sign Jason Bay it will be what Mr. Branch Rickey used to call "addition by subtraction." Meaning that getting rid of a player will make your team better. ...Thank you Milwaukee Brewers for signing Randy Wolf. Now someone sign Jason Marquis before the Yankees do something stupid and do it themselves. ...I'm still not sold on the Curtis Granderson trade but at least Granderson isn't 42 years old with a bad back like Randy Johnson was. ...Who the heck is Jamie Hoffmann? ...Offer Johnny Damon two years and if he and Boras don't like it, tell them to get lost. ...Peter Gammons is moving on to the MLB Network now. That will only make that Network better and believe me, they need it. With no-talent hacks like Harold Reynolds and Hazel Mae getting a lot of air time, it's good that a real pro will be added to the mix. ...I love watching NFL Films highlights especially the older ones with John Facenda doing the narrating. That guy had a golden voice.

Jim, how about if I do this for you. I'll grab some songs that I see on the newsgroup and listen to them and then I will zip them up and mail them to you so you can have the final say if they are to go into this mod?

If there was permission to do this, I could gather up some songs for the jukebox. There is a newsgroup that has songs posted from the 1920's and 30's and I can look around for some half way decent sounding songs there. I know how to put them in the proper format with the ditty importer and I am positive I can come up with nine songs that depict the time period. Keep in mind however that the sound quality here would not be as good.

Jim, using your uniforms from the 1946 mod would have been closer than using the ones from 2005. Despite the fact that those uniforms are in TC Phase 10, they are still not the 1927 uniforms except for the '27 Yankees road jersey. Not having the correct uniform for each team here was one of the biggest disappointments of the mod. How can we? We would need permission to do so. Also, the stadiums in this thing are no where near completion.

Maybe some of it was fictionalized for the screen. Some things usually are when movies are made. But the guy who wrote this book originally wrote Cobb's autobiography when Cobb was sick and dying. The name of the author was Al Stump and he lived with Cobb for awhile as they both worked on the book. The book, which came out in 1961 was called My Life in Baseball: The True Record and it was written by Cobb and ghost written by Stump. Here's the link for this book at Amazon right here. Cobb made Stump put everything in that book exactly the way he wanted it and even though Stump knew it to be untrue or inaccurate, he had to put it in anyways. Many years later, Stump finally decided to put the record straight and he wrote Cobb: A Biography which was a book completely different from the first one. It told of the experiences he had with Cobb while writing the book and how Cobb was. That book can be found right here on Amazon. While Cobb was a player that had remarkable stats and played hard, this was also a guy that I would never want to meet.

No there is not. I have all the classic throwback uniforms that have been uploaded over the years for Mvp 05 and there were none for that era. The guys that did most of the classic uniforms back then were fizzjob and sandman. Check out their work sometime. Those guys made the best throwback uniforms ever.

Since it is the off season there is not really that much news about baseball that the average fan can have. The MLB network will give you up to date news but at the same time will repeat the same stuff over and over again. Reading about baseball during the off season has always been one of my favorite things to do. So what I am going to do here is post some reviews about some books that I am reading and also post some things that I read in the book that I thought was interesting. Anyone can post a book review. This isn't a private thread you know. Any baseball book you want to review please feel free. Just post why you liked it or disliked it. Starting this thread off is a book called Ty Cobb and it was written by Charles C. Alexander. If anyone is interested in this book, you can check it out on Amazon right here. You can get it pretty cheap there. While reading this book you can almost feel the way Cobb drove himself to be the best. Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best you can be, but Cobb took it to another level. All his life he got into fights and situations -on and off the ballfield- that could have been avoided. He had a quick temper, held grudges against many people that were many times unjustified and when he died he was estranged from most of the people from his family. Cobb was at the same time extremely generous and extremely miserly. He funded a hospital in Royston, Georgia in his hometown and supported many down on their luck ballplayers over the years. For example, he helped pay for Mickey Cochrane's medical bills after he was beaned in the late 1930's. But then there was another side of Cobb. One time he went out to dinner and when he got the bill he discovered that the restaurant overcharged him. He went into a rage and demanded the bill be fixed immediately. The restaurant overcharged him by three cents. Here are some other things that stood out for me while reading this book: * Cobb's father was a schoolteacher. When his father was 20 years old, he met and fell and love with Amanda Chitwood, who was the daughter of the most prosperous family in the area. Amanda Chitwood was also his student. They married in 1883 after her father reluctantly consented. His daughter was only twelve years old. Cobb was not born until 1886 when his mother was fifteen. * Even as a boy Cobb was quick tempered. In the fifth grade he beat up a fat boy for missing a word in the class spelling bee and thereby giving the victory to the girl's team. * Cobb's father died in 1905 under suspicious circumstances. His mother shot him by mistake when she thought he was a prowler. There was talk that Cobb's mother was having an affair and his father sneaked back home one night to see for himself. That's when he was shot. Cobb's father never got to see him play in the major leagues and this was one of the reasons why Cobb was so driven. * Cobb was raised in the south not too long after the Civil War. At that time there were still very hard feelings about the war. This explains partly his feelings towards blacks over the years, whom he had many confrontations with about some very petty things. * Cobb came up to Detroit in 1905. He played his home games in Bennett Park. The capacity of this ballpark was about 8,500. The owner of the Tigers was William H. Yawkey, Tom Yawkey's uncle. * Cobb got in many fights as a player, both with the opposition and his own teammates. In 1907 Cobb got into a fight with a Tiger player and the Tigers, fed up with him, offered him to Cleveland for outfielder Elmer Flick. Cleveland declined, saying Cobb was a troublemaker. * Cobb had a brother named Paul who was drafted by the St. Louis Browns. * Cobb got married in 1908 during the pennant race without consulting anyone in the Tiger management. What he did was take off, leave the team to get married, and then he came back. See if that happens today! * Another thing that Cobb did that wouldn't happen today is that many times he would train with the Washington Senators because the Senators trained close to his home in Georgia during his contract holdouts. Cobb held out mostly every spring for more money and hardly ever trained with the Tigers. * Cobb was the first millionaire ballplayer by the time he retired because he invested wisely in stocks. For example, he got in on the ground floor with a Georgia soft drink company that ended up making him a lot of money. That company's name was Coca-Cola. * In 1928, Cobb made an offer of $275,000 for the Cincinnati Reds but his bid was eventually rejected. It proved very fortuitous for Cobb because of the stock market crash in 1929. * Cobb was married and divorced twice. Both times his wives cited "mental cruelty" as the reason for the divorce. * When Cobb died in 1961, only three ballplayers went to his funeral. They were Ray Schalk, Mickey Cochrane and Nap Rucker. The Hall of Fame sent a representative also. Not one other person associated with baseball came to pay respects.

Good find Dylan, good find. But even though he did ask for help for the 1927 uniforms and didn't get it, he still released the mod without the proper uniforms included in it. And when you get into that mod and play a game you will see that this a glaring oversight. Not having the right uniforms for each team for a TC season mod is something you can't overlook. It was because of this and other things that made this mod severely lack in some very important areas.

Yes there was Homer. Trues got this from the tutorial section because mcoll needed it. He's going to be putting the tutorial section back up soon but he just grabbed this one right now to post for him to use.

Updated to 12-6 ...My wife and I just updated to the world of HDTV. We just got a new TV and after the Direct TV people get here on Tuesday to update our dish, we will be watching TV in hi def just like everyone else. I really can't wait. ...The New Orleans Saints have won 11 games? It wasn't too long ago that I could remember it would take them four years to win 11 games. ...Just to prove once again to the world that he's a total moron, Robinson Cano would like to see Pedro Martinez in pinstripes. ...Oh hell, today's such a nice day. Don't get me started on how much I hate Cano. Or Posada. ...There's joy in Beantown as fans all over New England are ordering Marco Scutaro jerseys left and right. He'll be wearing #16 for those of you who don't know. Here's a photo for you so you can see for yourself. ...I can hear it now: "Scutaro is better than Jeter!" And the sad part is, they'll believe it. ...One final thing on the Red Sox and then that's it. They raised their ticket prices for the 2010 season Good. Squeeze their fans even more. ...Hey, I just got NHL 2004 yesterday in the mail. I ordered it from Amazon. I got it for less than twenty dollars. I got it because I wanted to try out the mods that are made for this game because of what I read in this thread. The work that those guys do over on that site with this game will make the price I paid for this game well worthwhile. ...The New York Post this morning did the impossible. They made Scott Bora$ seem almost human in this article. I'm telling you, that's hard to do. ...Just wondering, does anyone here own a Blackberry phone? What makes them so special? I always see them advertised on TV and I'm curious.

1927 continued Babe Herman of the Dodgers. Herman had a career batting average of .324 and was one of the most feared power hitters of the late 20's and early 1930's. Another thing that should have been added to this mod was the name of this Dodger team. While they were still named the Dodgers, the name they went by during this time period was the Robins because they were named after their manager Wilbert Robinson. Dodger pitcher Dazzy Vance, who had a 16 year Hall of Fame career. This Braves runner is safe at first as the throw is high and the double play could not be turned. Pinch hitter Max Carey tries to lay a bunt down in the eighth inning but the ball was hit right back to the pitcher, who in turn made the easy out. A fine example of the loading screens in TC 1927 Like I stated, the loading screens were one of the strong points about this mod. They gave a lot of information about the players in 1927. I really enjoyed reading them.

Next up is the 1927 season mod which was created by Sal, a new user who just joined up here this past April. It's obvious that when he joined he quickly became a Total Classics fan because of all the season mods available here, so he must have decided to create his own TC mod himself. Please bare in mind that what I just said right here is just conjecture on my part since I have never talked to this guy since he's been here. Nonetheless, after two previous attempts to release this mod, the 1927 mod is now available for download right here. Checking the download description for this mod, it tells you what is included and not included in this mod. Here is what is included in case you didn't go to the download area: 1. Rosters 2. Portraits 3. LOC files (In-game text) 4. Graphics screens (Splash, License, CTS, Menu, Loading, Stadium Select) 5. Stadiums (the same ones already included in other TC mods) As you will see during my review of this mod, I have serious questions about #3 and especially #5. I'll show you. What is not included in this mod is the following: 1. Uniforms 2. Audio (team names, stadium names) 3. Walkup Music 4. Jukebox Music Unfortunately everything that is said here is true. There are no 1927 uniforms to use in this game unless you count the Yankees 1927 road uniform and that is only because EA Sports included that in the default version of the game. The uniforms in this mod are the same uniforms that are comprised in the original version of Mvp 05. As for the audio, that was true. Nothing was said here or played here to give it a 1927 mod feel. And again, the jukebox music is the same as the jukebox music you would have on the default version of Mvp 05. Now I understand that finding music from the 1920's would be a chore, but the type of music played around that time was swing and ragtime. At least that is what I heard was popular during that time period. My point is that something could have been added here in this mod to give it more of a time period feel than the lousy tracks that EA originally gave us. Before I go on, I have to stress and then stress again that I am not criticizing Sal personally. I don't know him at all to criticize him and I have no reason to get personal with him. What I am talking about here is the mod itself and unfortunately it does not measure up at all to the other Total Classics mods. This is NOT to say this mod did not have its good points. The portraits were sensational. The loading screens were outstanding and the tidbits of information about the 1927 season and the players involved in that season were fun to read. But I am sorry, that is all there was to like about this mod. Not having the choice to use 1927 uniforms for the teams was a huge drawback. We have been accustomed to this in every single season mod out there. If you play the 1964 mod for example, you will get the 1964 uniforms to use for each team. Not here. In every mod out there, from 1946 to 1994, you get the exact feel of the year of that appropriate mod. The uniforms, the sounds, the music, the ballparks. You do not get this here. And this is why after I played one game in this mod I saved the screenshots for this review and then deleted this mod from my hard drive. As a Total Classics fan from the beginning, I expect more from a season mod. Screenshots Loading screen for Total Classics 1927 Here I am picking the Boston Braves at the Brooklyn Dodgers. I'll show you why this is important later on. Uniform select screen. I had to pick the uniforms closest to 1927 as I could, so I got the 1929 Braves road jerseys and the 1944 Dodgers home jerseys. Both of these uniforms of course are included in every game since they are the default EA jerseys. As I said in the review, the portraits provided in this mod are excellent. This area of the mod was done quite well. Look at the overlay for the TC 1927 mod. I could have swore that I picked Boston at Brooklyn. But for some reason I got Atlanta at Los Angeles. These mistakes in team names were all over this mod. Babe Herman of Brooklyn is hit by a pitch. By the way, this game was played in Navin Field in Detroit, which was home of the Tigers during that time period. Now, does this stadium somehow look familiar? Boston's Lance Richbourg triples to right center at Navin Field. Well, this was Navin Field only by name. Seems that Sal used the default version of Tiger Stadium as the Tiger's home park and just renamed it Navin Field.