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Welcome to Diamond Mind Baseball
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User Interface Tips
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Tutorials Overview
Basic Tutorial
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Managers
Color and Text
The Game Screen
The Game Screen
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Sample Boxscore
Sample Scoresheet
Sample Game log
Playing the Game
Defensive Tactics
Offensive Tactics
When the Game is Over
Saving Game Data
Advanced Tutorial
Advanced Tutorial Setup
Game Day
Scheduled Games
Play Options
Setting the Lineup
Lineup Overview
Starting Pitchers
Batting Order
Setting Up a League
Introduction
League Setup Overview
Your Primary Tool
Common Scenarios
General Rules
Preparing the Database
Your First Database Decision
Starting with an Existing Database
Starting with a New Database
Gathering the Components
Introducing the Components
Assembling Eras
Assembling Teams
Assembling Parks
Assembling Players
Putting It All Together
The Big Picture
Creating a League
Creating an Organization
Assigning Teams
Assigning Players
Generating a Manager Profile
Creating a Schedule
Managing DMB Databases
What is a Database?
Converting Databases
Creating a New Database
Changing the Active Database
Copying a Database
Adding a Reference to an Existing Database
Removing a Reference to an Existing Database
Installing a Season Disk
Migrating a Database
Backing Up Your Data
Restoring Your Data
Organizer
Organizer Overview
Teams
Teams: Overview
Creating a New Team
Importing Teams
Parks
Parks: Overview
Parks: General Information
Parks: Physical Characteristics
Parks: Image Files
Parks: Weather Patterns
Parks: Statistical Factors
Creating a New Park
Importing Parks
Players
Overview of Players
Players: General Information
Players: Player UID
Players: Real-life Statistics
Players: DMB Statistics
Players: Ratings Overview
Players: Offensive Ratings
Players: Defensive Ratings
Players: Pitching Ratings
Players: Pitcher Profile
Players: Injury Ratings
Players: Injury and Usage Info
Creating a New Player
Modifying a Player
Importing Players
Player Profiles
Leagues
Overview of Leagues
Leagues: General Information
Leagues: League Teams
Leagues: Rules and Options
Leagues: Playing Time Limits
Leagues: Post-Season Information
Creating a New League
Organizations
Overview of Organizations
Organizations: General Information
Organizations: Rules and Options
Organizations: Playing Time Limits
Organizations: Post-Season Information
Creating a New Organization
Eras
Overview of Eras
Eras: General Information
Eras: Rates
Creating a New Era
Importing Eras
Schedules
Overview of Schedules
Creating a New Schedule
Schedule Editing
Adding Games
Copying Games
Scheduling Tools
Generating Regular-season Schedules
Generating Post-season Schedules
Schedule Templates
Importing and Exporting Schedules
Editing Game Results
Drafts
Drafting: Overview
Draft Preparation
Creating a Draft
Draft Window
Setting the Draft Order
Working with Draft Picks
Manual Picks
Computer Picks
Drafting and Manager Profiles
Resuming a Draft
Deleting a Draft
Notes
Overview of Notes
Editing Transactions and Injuries
Editing Transactions
Editing Injury Reports
Rosters and Manager Profiles
Roster/MP Window: Overview
Manager Profiles
What is a Manager Profile?
Pitching Chart
Saved Lineups
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Playing time limits
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Player Tendencies
Roster / manager profile window
Roster Management
Pitching chart page
Saved lineups page
Depth charts page
Manager tendencies page
Player tendencies page
Manager Profile Report
Manager profile generator
Playing Games
Playing Games: Overview
Exhibition Game Options
Managers: Human or Computer
Game view preferences
Modify Weather
Playing Scheduled Games
Scheduled game window
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Scheduled game options
Special Events
Starting Lineups and Substitutions
Overview of Lineup Selection
Lineup Selection: Window Layout and Tools
Lineup Selection: Using Real-life Lineups
Lineup Selection: Choosing Starting Pitchers
Lineup Selection: Choosing Starting Lineups
Lineup Selection: Loading Saved Lineups
Lineup Selection Making Substitutions During a Game
During the Game
Game Window
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Offensive Tactics
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NetPlay
NetPlay Overview
Preparing to Host a NetPlay Session
Finding Your IP Address
Firewalls
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The NetPlay Control Panel
NetPlay Options
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Playing a Game
Quick Play
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When a Game is Over
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If the Connection is Dropped
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Reports
Overview of Reports
Generating Reports
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Custom Reports
Adding a New Column
Memorized Reports
HTML formatting
Report Options
Report Options Overview
Batting Register Report Options
Report Groups
Report Groups Overview
Two Ways to Use Report Groups
Generating a report group
Creating and Modifying a Report Group
Adding a Report to a Report Group
Generating a web site
Overview of Web Site Generation
Generating a web site
Transfers
Transfers: Overview
Setting up the League
Exporting a League Database
Installing a League Database
Creating a League Database
Exporting Statistics
Importing Statistics
Rebuilding Database Indexes
Updating Streaks and Usages
Tools
Restarting a Season
Resetting player usage
Trading Players
Releasing Players
Deleting team-specific player records
Generating Manager Profiles
Important Concepts
Bullpen Warmup Rule
Catcher fatigue
Clutch and Jam Ratings
Player Status Codes
Playing out of postion
Reading the Scoresheet
Reading the Game log
Real-life Transactions and Lineups
Sacrifice Fly Rules
Weather System
Uninstalling Diamond Mind Baseball

Parks: Overview

Baseball is rare among professional sports in that the playing field is not standardized. The official rules of baseball provide for precise measurements within the infield, but only a few guidelines for distances to the outfield fences, leaving room for a wide variety of shapes, sizes, playing surfaces, building types, and so on. Combine these physical variations with the effects of altitude and climate in different parts of the country, and you can easily see how a ballpark can exert a large influence on games played there.

For this reason, ballparks play a large role in DMB. When players are created, their raw statistics are adjusted for the statistical impact of their home park. This (along with the era-based adjustments) helps us create park-neutral ratings for all players. And when you play a DMB game, the nature of the home park plays a significant role in the outcomes of games played there.

These park adjustments add realism to your DMB games. If you use the real-life rosters and the real-life schedule, the park effects that are removed during player creation are cancelled out by those that are added during game play, so the players will produce statistics in DMB that are very consistent with their real-life stats. If, on the other hand, you draft new rosters, many of your players will be playing their DMB games in different parks than in real life, and the change in parks will have an impact on their DMB statistics.

This is the way it should be. In real-life, when a hitter is traded to a hitter-friendly park, you expect their statistics to rise even if their talent level doesn't change, and you discount their real-life stats for the effects of their new home park. The same is true in DMB. If you move a player to a new park that is quite different from his real-life park, you can expect to see his statistics be affected by this move.

Working with Parks

To create or modify a park, choose the View>Organizer command to open the Organizer window, then click on the Parks tab at the bottom of the window. This displays a list of the parks in your database. From here, you can click on the buttons across the top of the Organizer window to create, copy or modify a park. Each of these commands causes the following window to display:

In DMB, the influence of a ballpark is reflected in the following four groups of park attributes and ratings:

If you choose to create or modify parks, keep in mind that the statistical park factors are the most important of these groups of ballpark ratings. If you move a fence back by 20 feet, it won't decrease the number of homeruns hit in that park unless you also adjust the homerun factor. If you change the surface from grass to artificial turf, it won't increase the number of extra-base hits unless you also increase the doubles and triples factors.

Why not? Because we haven't yet figured out how to isolate all of the things that affects the statistics produced in a ballpark. How much will the rates of doubles, triples and homers be affected by a 20-foot change in wall distance? By raising the fence by 10 feet? By putting in a new type of artificial turf? Adding a new tier of seats that changes the wind patterns? Or blocking off the center field seats so hitters can see the pitched ball better? We don't know for sure.

But we can measure the overall impact of each park through careful study of home and road statistics, and we can capture that overall impact through the statistical park factors. If a park consistently increases doubles by 30%, we can give the park a rating that will produce a 30% increase in your DMB games. To that extent, we don't need to know precisely how much each of the factors is contributing to this 30% figure.

The DMB historical ballpark database

Once upon a time, anyone who wanted to create players in DMB had to start by creating the home parks for those players. Statistical ballpark information is not easy to find, so this could prove to be one of the more time-consuming parts of the player creation process.

To simplify the process of creating players, Diamond Mind has compiled a historical database with the park dimensions and statistical park factors for every ballpark that has been used since 1901. This database is a separately-priced product that you can purchase and install along with your DMB game. If you have purchased and installed this database, you can use these historical parks directly in the player creation and modification process, and you can import any of those parks into your database so you can use them in your own leagues. In short, you may no longer need to create or modify your own parks.

If, however, you are creating players for a fictional league, a foreign league, or one of the minor leagues, or if you wish to use a park based on a range of real-life seasons, you won't be able to use the parks in the historical database. You can, of course, create and modify your own parks using the DMB Organizer.

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