The National Baseball League of Schiltzberg
Official Thread
Official Thread
For centuries, baseball has been the national pastime for the people of Schiltzberg. Various professional and semi-professional leagues have cropped up in Schiltzberg in the past, but all of them eventually ended up failing after only a handful of seasons, due to competition with foreign baseball leagues. The issue was not lack of attendance, but rather a lack of funding, which was vital for any league to successfully compete with other well-established foreign leagues.
In the year 2000, the then-Grand Duke of Schiltzberg Lucas the Great, who himself was a baseball fan, offered large amounts of money to subsidize a professional baseball league in Schiltzberg, hoping that such a league would prove Schiltzberg's dominance in international sports, and would allow the people of Schiltzberg to connect their love of the game with their love of their country. And so the NBLS was born.
Nineteen cities across Schiltzberg were chosen to host twenty teams; two in the capital of New Schiltzbierg, and one in each of the other cities. The teams were placed into two conferences, the East and West, which were both divided into two divisions, the North and South. The result was four divisions of five teams. Teams were placed in their respective divisions based on their geological position in the nation of Schiltzberg. The teams were as follows:
| Northwestern Division | Southwestern Division | Northeastern Division | Southeastern Division |
| Barlow Knives | Beyren Captains | Bakerstown Bears | Hamilton Hawks |
| Earlington Earls | Diamondhead Diamonds | Chesterton Ground Hogs | Orthorlandville Workers |
| Fox Valley Foxes | Dodgersville Dodgers | Markle Protestants | Rico Volcanoes |
| New Schiltzbierg Grand Dukes | Marion Catholics | New Schiltzbierg Presidents | Selmont Seldoms |
| Westport Fish | St. Joseph Carpenters | Sharpsville Sharpshooters | Tushka Turtlenecks |
The first game was played on Friday, March 31, 2000 between the New Schiltzbierg Grand Dukes and the New Schiltzbierg Prime Ministers (now the Presidents) at the Royal Dome, which is home to the Grand Dukes to this day. This was significant, because March 31 is Schiltzberg Day, the largest national holiday in Schiltzberg. Attendance was officially 43,276, despite the stadium's maximum capacity being only 40,600 at the time. The Grand Duke threw out the first pitch, and so Schiltzbergian baseball officially began. The game was won by the Prime Ministers 7-3, despite the Grand Dukes being the more highly favored team at that time. Ever since that first game, it has become a national tradition for the Grand Dukes to play the Prime Ministers/Presidents on Schiltzberg Day, and every year that game marks the first day of the season. The matchup is the only inter-conference game during the regular season.
The regular season is 180 games long. In those 180 games, each team plays ten home games and ten away games against every other team in the conference, no more and no less. No team ever plays a team in the opposite conference during the regular season, with two exceptions, those being when the Presidents play the Grand Dukes on Schiltzberg Day, and when the Catholics play the Protestants in the "Christian Cup", which is held every year on the first Sunday of October, marking the last day of the regular season. To make up for their interleague games, the Grand Dukes only play the Catholics nineteen times per regular season and the Presidents only play the Protestants nineteen times per regular season as well.
Every year at the end of the regular season, which is 180 games long, the top team in each of the four divisions is seeded into the postseason bracket. Each divisional leader squares off in a best-of-five Conference Series against the leader of the other division in its conference. Then the winners of the Conference Series square off in the best-of-seven Season Series, and the winner is proclaimed the best in the NBLS, and is often then chosen to compete against the champions of other professional baseball leagues, like Major League Baseball in the United States, the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan, and the Korea Baseball Organization in South Korea.
