There is a way around this, which I'll explain later in the FAQ.
4. Look at Park (F7). Lets you view the currently selected park. Whoopie.
5. Display stats (F8). Here you can look at various league, team, and individual stats. If you go here, it should be pretty easy to figure out how to use this option. Just remember, if your system runs anything newer than Windows 3.11, a fair warning to NOT hit Set Path (F5) at this time. There is a way around this, which I'll explain later in the FAQ.
6. Continue Game (F9). I've never tried it, so I can't help you here. Just don't hit Set Path (F5).
7. Commissioner (F10). Here you can create your own league and alter many league and team factors. A sub-section will be devoted to the commissioner later in the FAQ. If your system runs anything newer than Windows 3.11, a fair warning to NOT hit Set Path (F5) at this time. There is a way around this, which I'll explain later in the FAQ.
Quick Main Menu Commands List
F2 - select visiting team F3 - select ball park F4 - select home team F5 - practice mode F6 - general manager F7 - look at park F8 - display stats F9 - continue game F10- comissioner P - play ball
C. General Manager Instructions
There are several things you can do in the General Manager (GM)screen. The main functions are trading, cloning, and editing. Trading (F6) meansthat if you hit enter while on a highlighted player, he will be selected. Then if you go to the other team and hit enter on one of their highlighted players, it will trade the players (this is very easy to figure out if you try the GM screen). Second, you can clone players (F7). This means if you highlight a player, hit enter, and then go to an empty slot, the player you initially highlighted will be cloned to the empty slot. This is useful if you have to draft using the actual weaver game because you don't have the commissioner's disk (see terminology under commissioner's disk or "stattool"). There will be a sub-section for drafting later in the FAQ. The third option is to edit player (F8). This is an excellent option. With it you can create your own players, edit existing players, or even create your own real stats of more current seasons (which is a long, tedius process but worth it in the end). If you go to a highlighted player or empty slot and hit enter, the stats screen will pop up, but you can physically alter the stats. This is helpful in several ways. First, if you get some stats from a friend or online, and they are outrageous in just one or two aspects (say they give hitters too high a power ranking consistently), you only have to go through and edit that one aspect of the player, and not recreate them completely. Also, if you wish, you can create completely fantasy players, such as yourself, or make up your personal dream team with any players from any years you wish and have them play for your team (How many games will let you have a 1980 George Brett play with a 1990 Rickey Henderson?). A whole sub-section will be given to creating players with this option later, but for now it might be useful to know that www.mlb.com is a very useful site for getting accurate and complete stats. Also, if you hit the space bar on a highlighted player, his stats will pop up on the screen. This is good for draft preparation.
D. Commissioner Instructions
The commissioner option (F10) offers you several functions to create or alter your own league. These are: customize league, customize teams, customize parks, grant day off, copy one ball park, erase all saved games, delete players and teams, create new league on new disk/path, clear accumulated stats, clear won/loss record. Note that for all these options if your system runs anything newer than Windows 3.11, a fair warning to NOT hit Set Path (F5) at this time. There is a way around this, which I'll explain later in the FAQ.
Commissioner options as follows:
1. Customize league allows you to alter league and division names. You can either change the currently existing data of a season, or create league and division names for a newly created league (which starts up with all blank data). Because of the time in which the game was created, EWB only allows you to create only upto 4 divisions, techinically. This has never been a problem, because you will probably never have enough human players to need more than 4 divisions. If you did want to play with more divisions, you could by merely keeping track of the game records on something else (excel or even just pen and paper).
2. Customize teams allows you to alter currently existing teams or create team data for a newly createdly league. EWB allows you to create upto 32 teams for one season's data. Trust me that is more than plenty.
3. Customize parks allows you to alter currently existing parks or create parks for a newly createdly league. EWB allows you to create upto 32 teams for one season's data.
4. Grant day off lets you give all players one day off. One of the player stats is "Required Days Off". General, this number is used for pitchers and ranges from 1 to 4 depending upon how much they pitched in an outing. Say you start Nolan Ryan in a 1990 season and he pitches around 100 pitches. He will probably have to take 3 days (i.e. games) off before he is allowed to pitch again. This option allows you to give all players in the league to reduce their "Required Days Off" count by one. Also, note that if a player is injured, the "Required Days Off" are what keep him from playing. "Required Days Off" reduce 1 per game you play.
5. Copy one ball park allows you to copy an already existing ballpark. This is useful if you are starting a new league and want to simply copy as many ball parks as you need for how many teams you have in the new league. Be careful, though. Doing this requires going through Set Path (F5), which is very problematic for anything newer than Windows 3.11, and probably won't work on that system. See the "Problems with Windows" section later in the FAQ for tips on helping this.
6. Erase all saved gamed. I actually have never tried this option, since I've never tried to save games while they were in progress.
7. Delete all players and teams. It does just what it says. Not highly recommended normally, though it can be useful if you need to create a new league in Windows 95/98/2000/XP. See the "Problems with Windows" section.
8. Create new league on new disk/path. If you are playing in DOS or Windows 3.11 (or before), this is where you go to create a new league. Hit enter on this and type in the new directory you wish to create for your new league. It will ask you to create players, parks, and league data files. Say yes to all. If you are using Windows 95/98/2000/XP, see the "Problem with Windows" section, and DON'T use this option of the commissioner.
9. Clear accumulated stats allows you to set all accumulated stats back to zero. This does not effect real stats. See the terminology section for more information on real and accumulated stats. Use this option with great caution.
10. Clear Win/Loss record. Sets the Win/Loss record back to 0 Wins and 0 Losses for all teams. Use this option with great caution.
E. Line-up screen Instructions
Okay, you've picked your teams and hit "playball" (P) from the main menu. The game now asks for a password (ugh!). If you have downloaded a cracked version of EW online (they exist), you might be able to put in anything here and have it work. If not, then you would be in a world of hurt, except that you can print off pictures of the original weaver wheel (see terminology) at:
http://www.demystifier.org/ewb/ewbpics.html
Print and cut this out (the holes of the front part too) and it can function as your password wheel. Make sure that you don't have the two pictures print at the same size. Keep them at exactly the size they are for printing purposes. The wheel with all the passwords on it
Anyway, with the password entered, the line-up screen now pops up. First you are asked to pick the starting pitcher of the visiting team. You can either pick him yourself, or Ask Earl (F7). If Earl is managing the visiting team, Earl will autopick a starter, but you can change the starter if you want to. Hit Finished (F10) when you are done. Second, you pick the home team's starting pitcher just like you did for the visiting team and hit Finished (F10). If you need to go back to any previous screen at any time, this can be done with back up (F9). The third screen asks you to pick the lineup for the visitor. You can alter players positions for the game and their order in the line up. You can Ask Earl (F7) for a suggested line-up. Note that if anyone is injured, you cannot change the players position until the main line-up screen. The fourth screen asks you for the home team's line-up, just as with the visitors. The fifth screen is the main line-up menu. From here you can alter any position of any players and change both visiting and home team line-ups. You can also put pitchers in the bull-pen, though this is usually not necessary at the beginning of the game, unless you are playing with a strange team strategy (say, having 12 or 13 really good relievers and no real starters). When you have finalized all your selections, hit finished and you are ready to get into the actual game.
A few other things to note about this game include:
1. This is where you go to subsitute players, switch pitchers, pinch hit, etc. during the game.
2. While your team is hitting, you can highlight your pitcher and he will tell you how his arm feels (you get the catcher's opinion you need to do a conference call while pitching).
3. You can send upto 2 pitchers to the bull pen to warm up on this screen. It is absolutely vital to warm up your relievers before putting them in the game if you wish to have success with your pitching staff.
F. In game instructions
In the main game there are many different commands you can do. A list (perhaps lacking a few things are as follows). Note that the game is played from a split screen perspective on the pitch, with the field being on the left side of the split screen and the batter/pitcher on the right side.
F1 - Change game speed (ranges from slow to super) F2 - Turn announcer on and off F3 - Turn sound on and off F7 - Tells you wind speed (too fast on most Windows run computers) F8 - Conference call with your pitcher F10- Leave game L - Access main line-up menu Ctrl+Pause-Break - Exits game Space Bar - Brings up a 2 column menu on the right half of split screen. More on this as follows:
"Space Bar Menu":
From the "Space Bar Menu" on offense you can:
- Go to the main line-up menu (lineup) - Ask Earl for advice (Earl) - Hit Aggressively (Aggr.) - Bunt (Bunt) - Hit and Run (H & R) - Run and Hit (R & H) - Take a pitch (Take, not recommended for one pitch mode) - Leadoff the bag (Leadoff, recommended if you want to steal) - Steal Bases (Steal 2, Steal 3, Steal H, D Steal) - Suicide Squeeze (Squeeze) - Cancel out previously selected options (No Play)* - Hide Selections (Hide)*
*These are very helpful against human opponents. If you don't hide against a human opponent, they will know exactly what you are doing. You can also psych out opponents sometimes if you pretend you are doing something and then actually hit "No Play".
From the "Space Bar Menu" on defense you can:
- Go to the main line-up menu (lineup) - Ask Earl for advice (Earl) - Conference call with the pitcher (confer) - Guard the Line (Guard) - Hold the Runner (Hold) - Shift Fielders (IF Shift, IF Depth, OF Shift, OF Depth) - Pitch around hitters (P Arnd) - Pitch out (P Out, 4 in a row constitute an intentional walk)
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