When I woke up this morning, I realized we had officially hit what I call the “sports dead zone” of the summer. The NBA, NHL, and NFL have all wrapped their 2023-24 seasons and that leaves just MLB in-season. With that in mind, I wanted to give a quick plug to OS user kdutch98 and their MLB The Show 24 franchise mode story with the Detroit Tigers.
This year is not the best example of a dead zone since we have the Olympic trials and Euro 2024 going on right now (plus the NBA Draft tomorrow), and it’s probably outdated in general since MLS continues to grow in popularity and there’s not really a “big 4 leagues” feel anymore to the sports media landscape (at least in the US). Still, I coined this phrase as a kid when I would be at home during summer vacation watching SportsCenter all morning and realizing by the third time I was watching the same hour of highlights that there really wasn’t much going on beyond baseball.
It’s something that’s stuck with me since then, and before EA Sports College Football 25‘s return this year, it still felt like a dead zone for sports games. We maybe had a Madden beta, but really it was a calm before the big push by EA and 2K to highlight their games coming in August, September, and October.
So this time really was my “baseball” time and it’s when I would get deepest into franchise mode. In general, our most popular baseball dynasty mode stories are either OOTP write-ups or fictional league stories, but I wanted to highlight kdutch98 because it’s still a fresh franchise story that’s only been going for three months.
It’s been good to follow because while there’s not as much “character work” in terms of creating a fictional reason the Tigers are being selected, it seems like they’re probably just a big fan of the Tigers and are doing a traditional go at things.
We’ve got box scores, highlights, and they even use the Arenas to add some extra touches like trade rumors and team stats at various points.
It’s also a good time to scope it out because the Tigers have just started playing September baseball and are on the clear favorites right now to win the World Series. (See, anything is possible when you write the story, including the Tigers being the WS favorites.)
Published: Jun 25, 2024 10:06 am