                        Season Disk Notes
                        -----------------


These topics are covered in this note:

  Copyright notice
  License agreement
  Disk contents
  Real-Life Transactions, Game-by-Game Lineups, and Schedules
  Parks and Weather Information
  The Accuracy of Real-life Statistics
  Salaries
  Parting Thought


Copyright notice
----------------

This document and all other information in this Season Disk are 
the copyrighted property of Diamond Mind, Inc.  Any commercial use or
distribution without the express written consent of Diamond Mind is
strictly prohibited.


License agreement
-----------------

Please read this license agreement carefully.  Use of Diamond Mind Baseball
("the Software") and related Season Disks constitutes your acceptance of 
these terms and conditions and your agreement to abide by them.  If you do 
not accept these terms and conditions, return the product(s) to Diamond 
Mind within 30 days for a refund.

The Software and Season Disks are protected by copyright laws and 
international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property 
laws and treaties.  

This license agreement grants you the nonexclusive right to use this 
Season Disk for personal and recreational use.  Commercial use of 
this Season Disk is not permitted.  You may not rent or lease this 
Season Disk.

You are authorized to make backup copies of this Season Disk for the 
sole purpose of protecting your investment.  You may transfer the  
Season Disk freely from one computer to another, so long as there is no 
possibility of it being used by two people in two places at the same 
time.

If you administer or play in a league that uses Diamond Mind Baseball and 
this Season Disk, you are authorized to distribute copies of this Season
Disk to other league members, PROVIDED YOU FIRST RECEIVE CONFIRMATION
FROM DIAMOND MIND THAT EACH AND EVERY PERSON TO WHOM YOU ARE MAKING THE
DISK AVAILABLE IS A REGISTERED OWNER OF THE DIAMOND MIND BASEBALL GAME
AND THIS Season Disk.  Distributing this Season Disk in any other fashion
is a violation of our copyright and is strictly prohibited.

You may permanently transfer all of your rights under this license 
agreement provided you retain no copies and the recipient agrees to the 
terms of this license agreement.

This Season Disk is provided "as-is" without warranty of any kind.  
Diamond Mind will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, 
indirect, or similar damages.


Disk contents
-------------

We have created player records for everyone who appeared in the big leagues 
this season, including:

* basic player facts:  names, batting and throwing hands, birthdates

* official batting and pitching statistics, including left/right splits

* fielding statistics by position

* games started at each position against left- and right-handed pitchers

* thousands of player ratings that you can see:  injury, bunting, range, 
running, throwing, and so on 

* thousands more player ratings that you can't see:  the event tables and 
pitch-by-pitch ratings that make the game produce accurate results


If a player appeared on more than one team in real life, we have created a
player record for each team (for people who do season replays using the real 
rosters) plus a combined record (for use in draft leagues).  The combined 
records appear in the free agent listings.


Real-Life Transactions, Game-by-Game Lineups, and Schedules
-----------------------------------------------------------

We have compiled a complete set of real-life transactions (trades, 
promotions and demotions, disabled list moves, and so on) and game-by-game 
starting lineups.  If you play seasons using the real-life rosters and 
schedule, Diamond Mind Baseball will process real-life transactions on the 
appropriate dates and will choose the real-life starting lineups for each 
game.
  
  NOTE:  If you want to change the real-life rosters in any way, either
  by moving one or two players around or by drafting entirely new teams, 
  you'll need to modify the settings for your league or organization to
  turn off the use of real-life transactions and game-by-game lineups.
  Those transactions and lineups are meaningless once you change the
  rosters.

To make all this work, the league schedule shows games when they were 
actually played.  (We call this the as-played schedule.)  If, for example, 
a game was originally scheduled for April, but was rained out and replayed 
in June, it shows up on the schedule in June.  That's the only way to 
do it, since the starting lineups for a game in June might include a 
player who was not on the roster on the original April date.  (One 
exception:  if there was a tie game, that game is not included in the 
schedule since it is replayed later most of the time.)

As you know, the 1994 season was shortened by a player strike.  As a 
result, this season disk includes both the as-scheduled (162-game) 
version of the schedule the as-played schedule.

You will need to use the as-played schedule, which is the default,
if you wish to take advantage of the real-life transactions and
lineups.  If you prefer, you can modify the leagues to use the 
full 162-game schedule instead.

  NOTE:  If you switch to the as-scheduled schedule, remember to turn off
  the use of real-life transactions and lineups.


Parks and Weather Information
-----------------------------

As we do with every season disk, we have updated the ballpark information
to reflect changes in the physical characteristics of the parks and their
statistical impact on offense for that season.

For seasons prior to the mid-1990s, we do not have access to weather
information for each of the games played that year, so the ballparks
have weather settings matching those from the 1990s (if the stadium is
still in use) or standard values (if we have nothing else to go on).

Beginning with the release of Diamond Mind Baseball version 8 in December,
2000, we began supplying scale drawings of each park.  These images are
displayed on the main game window when you play games in those parks, and
we are committed to maintaining and adding to our collection of park images.
In 2001, we added more than 30 new park images, covering all parks used from
1978 to 1999, and you can download those images from our web site at no
charge.

You don't need the new park images to use this season disk.  Until you
download the new images, DMB will display the generic park diagram when
you play games in those parks.  But it's the ballpark information in the
database, especially the statistical park factors, that really matters,
because that's what the game uses to determine the outcomes of plays in
those parks.


The Accuracy of Real-life Statistics
------------------------------------

This Diamond Mind Baseball Player Disk is the product of extensive
research into player performance.

We begin with play-by-play data for every big-league game.  Using this
detailed information, we compile batting, pitching and fielding
statistics and carry out computerized studies that help us rate players 
for skills such as baserunning, throwing, bunting, and defense.

There was a time when we believed the official stats were absolutely 
perfect, but after years of compiling and licensing statistics from the 
leading statistics companies, we have learned that the official records
are prone to error.  For much of baseball history, they were compiled by
hand and maintained on ledger sheets, and that process is susceptible to
a variety of human errors.

Over the years, we've discovered that fielding statistics get much less 
attention when it comes to finding and correcting mistakes.  This is 
especially true for older seasons.  

While our statistics don't always agree with the official fielding totals,
and in some cases the official fielding totals are the correct ones,
there are a number of advantages to using fielding statistics derived
from play-by-play data -- we can provide fielding stats for each outfield
position (the official stats lump all outfield stats into one bucket) and
compile unofficial statistics like games started and defensive innings.
For those reasons, we have chosen to use our fielding statistics rather
than the official totals.


Real-life Salaries
------------------

Because salary information was not routinely published for much of 
baseball history, this Season Disk does not contain player salaries.  We
began compiling salary information for the 1999 season and will continue
to do so for future seasons.  We currently have no plans to compile a
salary database for past seasons.


Parting Thought
---------------

We put a lot of effort into our Season Disk each year -- slogging 
through reference sources to track down batting and throwing hand 
discrepancies, compiling stats and checking them against other sources, 
and poring over thousands of pages of analytical data and player notes
to come up with what we believe are highly accurate player ratings.

It would be easier, we suppose, if we just carried forward a player's 
ratings from year to year or if we based our ratings on what we hear 
in the media.  But we don't believe we'd be doing our job if we did 
that.  

We hope you are pleased with the results, and thanks again for choosing 
to play Diamond Mind Baseball.
