APBA

APBA Baseball (official site) is a lot like Strat-O-Matic, except most of the action is determined by charts instead of the cards. The basic game is almost too basic - all but ignoring things like stolen bases and lefty/righty breakdowns. The master (advanced) game, however is sublime - a very fair approximation of the real thing.

I switched from Strat to APBA at some point (early ’80’s), and then back again. (And then back again, and so on...). Despite the decline of table-top (and text-based computer) games in the Playstation era, I have yet to play a decent baseball video game that gives me the same thrill as APBA.

When I was a kid, I dreamed of visiting the APBA offices in Lancaster, Pa - a nice little brick building depicted on the box of the ‘70s era Master Game (see above). One Saturday in 2007, I finally did. It was in dire need of some landscaping (and looked much smaller in person) - but it was the building I remembered from my youth.

Of course the office is closed on Saturday, so all I could do was snap a few pictures.

I returned last year - with my wife in tow - to buy a baseball game in person. Their “store” is a large wood-paneled room that looks more like a small banquet hall. The walls are decorated with pictures of mostly middle-aged men playing the game at conventions and such.

We were followed into the store by a middle-aged man who seemed to be there solely to chat up one of the employees about a game he was playing (in progress). I believe the best word to describe my wife’s expression during the visit is “bemused”.

APBA also sells a Football game. In their day, they also sold Basketball, Ice Hockey, Bowling, and Saddle Racing games. A revamped Ice Hockey game is making a comeback later this year.

Here’s APBA President Marc Rinaldi demonstrating the game at a trade show.

Cop Out!

Here's a failed pilot from the '70s for a game show called Cop Out!

Everything about the show is lame, from the failed-attempt-to-be-hip of a title, the all-too literal set, the bad hodge-podge of pseudo-celebs, the flimsy-as-hell premise...

You can actually tell when the show "dies" - it's around the 3:52 mark when Ann Elder admits she was "copping out". The almost total anti-climax is greeted with a dull thud from the studio audience (assuming there is one), and forgive me if I'm wrong, but do I hear the producers murmuring in the background?

Strat-O-Matic Baseball

I received Strat-O-Matic Baseball as a gift in 1975, and played it obsessively for many years following – taking time out only for meals and the ocasional shower. The day each Spring when the new player cards would arrive in the mail - was second only to Christmas and last day of school as the happiest of the year.

Strat-O-Matic has great Basic and Advanced rules that are easy to play and easier to learn. Most of what you need to know about the game can be inferred from the individual player cards which have most of the play results printed right on them. Each year, they print new cards for just about every player based on the previous season.

The game has a great Lefty/Righty system – with results for batters broken out against left-handed and right-handed pitching. (And vice-versa for pitchers). For many years, Strat was the only game that had this distinction.

Being a Phillies fan, I played that team more than any other - probably wearing out the Steve Carlton and Tug McGraw cards. My second favorite was probably the Royals (George Brett, Dennis Leonard). Most of what I knew about the Royals when they played in the 1980 World Series was from playing the team in Strat-O-Matic through most of the late ‘70s.

I was also a fan of the 1975 Milwaukee Brewers (for some reason - maybe because they had boyhood hero Hank Aaron at DH), the 1977 “Bronx is Burning” Yankees, Billy Martin’s 1980 Oakland A’s (five solid starters and Rickey Henderson), the 1980 Expos (great pitching - Steve Rogers and Charlie Lea, and unbelievable baserunning - Tim Raines, Rodney Scott, and Andre Dawson.)

It used to be easy to find Strat-O-Matic in stores - it was readily available at KB Toys at the mall, for example. At some point (mid ‘90s) it became less available. These days, you need to either order it online, or go to a “gaming” store like The Complete Strategist.

Last season I purchased a new version of the Strat-O-Matic Advanced game (with the 2007 players) for old time’s sake. Although it’s still is a great game – new “Super Advanced” rules make things a bit more complicated. (I refer primarily to complex new base-stealing and cutoff rules).

Strat-O-Matic also sells Football, College Football, Basketball, and Ice Hockey games. (Besides Baseball, their Ice Hockey game is probably the best of the lot). And if I’m not mistaken, they still support computer versions (Windows only – of course) of each game.

I don’t really have an interesting link to accompany this post (you could always visit the official site) – so I leave you with this fascinating Google Street View of the company’s headquarters in Glen Head, Long Island.

Sherco Grand Slam Baseball

Sherco’s Grand Slam Baseball was the only tabletop game that attempted to use real ballparks, weather effects, and hit locations. For example, a routine fly ball might turn into a single if your fielder was positioned too deep, or it could turn into a homerun if the wind was especially fierce that day.

Sherco was played on a 28x28 grid representing a baseball field. It came with diagrams for each major league stadium (and a few classics) - so you knew where the outfield walls were.

Player positioning was a key feature. Whereas other games never got more sophisticated than “Infield In/Infield Back”, Sherco let you position your fielders exactly on the grid. You could shift your outfield to target a pull-hitter, for example.

For me, the gimmick didn’t quite work. You had to count the number of grid squares based on the fielder’s throwing arm. Routine ground balls required numerous checks, especially with runners on base.

Sherco also gave you the ability to play with any player in history using their ratings formulas. This was a real break, especially if you had a Baseball Encyclopedia handy. (It would be even better now that all this information is readily available on the Internet).

I always like the idea behind Sherco, if not the execution. I once tried - with mixed results - to integrate the game’s ballpark effects into Strat-O-Matic.

Saturday Morning TV Comic-Book Ads

Just because Saturday morning television sucks now (Cake, Jane and the Dragon, Veggie Tales and such), is no reason why we can't enjoy the thrilling days of yesteryear when it sucked a little bit less.

Our friends at Stupid Comics have two whole pages devoted to this topic here and here.

All-Star Baseball

As baseball season approaches, I’d like to take a look at some of the many table-top games I used to play (and still occasionally do).

All-Star Baseball was an entry-level game that was widely popular. Unlike Strat-O-Matic and APBA, All-Star was relatively cheap (about the same price as Monopoly) and pretty much available at any toy store.

Uniquely, the game used spinners instead of dice, and rounded player cards instead of square ones. The cards contained numbers which roughly approximated how a player would perform in real life. The set I owned (1975 or so) contained an assortment of big named “All-Stars” from the majors (Joe Morgan, Reggie Jackson, etc...), but not a complete set of teams (as the other games did), and no Phillies - which was important to me back then.

I played the game pretty much every day for years. All-Star was so simple, you could bang out a game in 10-15 minutes. And I knew the numbers by heart and still do - 1 is a homerun, 11 is a double, 13 is a strikeout, 7 is a single. I became so enamored of the game and it’s oddball assortment of players, that when I wore out the game box and spinners after a year or two of play - I insisted on buying a replacement that contained the exact same players.

The best player in All-Star (for me, anyway) was Lee May. In real life, May was a decent firstbasemen for the Astros, but in All-Star he was a cross between Babe Ruth and Roy Hobbs. If I had played him for a full season, May likely would have been good for 150 or so homeruns. (This probably has more to do with my liberal interpretation of the spinner than the accuracy of the game).

There is a great article about All-Star Baseball and it's creator, Ethan Allen, here. It’s a shame that the game company (Cadaco - the same company that still makes Bas-ket) doesn’t sell it anymore, because I think kids would still love it.

Top 10 Movie Gimmicks

I'm linking to the Top 10 Movie Gimmicks, only so I can wax nostalgic about one of them - Sensurround - a technique which gave the illusion that the theater was shaking.

As far as I know, it was only ever used in two films - Earthquake and Rollercoaster. I saw them both, and even saw Rollercoaster twice.

I didn't realize Earthquake was such a dreadful movie at the time (Lorne Greene plays Ava Gardner's father for chrissakes) - I was too fascinated by the brief sequences where the theater appeared to be shaking. It was the moment in my life when I first discovered the term "richter scale".

Rollercoaster was a much better movie. A real gem from the '70s about a mad bomber who blows up rollercoasters - starring George Segal as a detective. I actually saw this twice, and then watched the non-Sensurround version when it played on TV.

Turns out "Sensurround" was a bit of a rip-off; just an exaggerated loud sound that made the seats vibrate. (And I always thought the theaters had to be specially wired!)