OpenBaseball is a baseball simulator game being developed under the GNU Licensing program. I have played Diamond Mind Baseball for many years but since I now run Linux, I want a baseball game that will run natively under Linux.
OpenBaseball will be first and foremost a statistically accurate game. Season replays will provide results that are close to the real season. The game will be graphical in the sense that it will be multi-windowed. For example the main screen may show the game being played. Clicking on a player's name may open another window showing that player's stats for the simulated season, real-life stats for the real season, and career stats for his career. The game will not be graphical in the sense that there will be little cartoon figures running around on the screen. That may work in football, but baseball is more of a strategy game.
In order to produce a statistically accurate game, we will need to use data supplied by RetroSheet.org. They have been entering baseball games into a database since the early 90's. Their system tracks every "play" or "event" in a baseball game. Their data files are stored in text files for each team, consisting of every play for every game. They provide a DOS application for converting this file into a comma-delimited format for input into databases. I will probably go ahead and convert each of the files and then create a table in MySQL to store the data. After this, I'll start doing some number crunching to find the frequency of each type of event. I will also be able to get each players stats for the season from this data. In fact, with this data, it will be possible to do situational stats such as a batters performance against a left-handed throwing pitcher, a right-handed throwing pitcher, and even their performance against a particular pitcher.