Mehring Monday: Board Game Night
Last week's column dealt with that great RC Cola collectable sheet that I found in the attic of my parent's garage. This week is about a pair of items that were found in their basement.
These are some sports board games that we had as kids. The one on the right - Sports Spectacular - is amazing. There are boards and strategy sheets and scoresheets and rules and more.
I remember playing these. There are even a few scoresheets in the box. I have a Bjorn Borg vs. Jimmy Connors match for tennis, a Milwaukee Bucks vs. Dallas Mavericks game for basketball, and plenty of baseball sheets, including a game where I had Rollie Fingers as the starting pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers against Larry Gura of the Kansas City Royals. (NOTE: What do you want? I was eight!)
Unfortunately, a lot of the pieces needed are gone…except for the tennis cards for some reason. For the baseball game, there are supposed to be cards that read FAST BALL, CURVE, or SLIDER. There aren't any cards, but there are three pieces of torn loose leaf paper that read Fastball, curveball and change-up. (NOTE: Even at eight I knew that a slider was bad for your arm).
The instructions for playing the game can get a little involved, but relatively easy once you get the hand of it.
The pitcher places a card face down. The batter announces his strategy: Swing for a base hit, Bunt, or SWING FOR THE FENCES! The pitcher flips over the card. The batter rolls the dice and the total on the dice leads to the result of the play.
For example, I put down the card for FASTBALL! You say you are going to Swing for a base hit. You roll a 10. We look at the column and it shows: Error by Third Baseman…Batter sage at 1st; Runners advance one base.
The cool thing about this game is that - just as in the real game of baseball - you should never bunt. First, you only get to roll one die. Second, if the pitcher throws a fastball, you will not get a hit and only move the runners along two out of six results. Third, Bunting is stupid. Never bunt.
The game on the left still has all of its pieces. I believe in miracles! Lakeside's double-play baseball is amazing for another reason. It is a forerunner to today's sabermetrics and lineup construction.
Oh, it's not as detailed and WAR, UZR, ERA+, OPS+, and all the other statistics that have made their way into the game. Double-play baseball is like a starter set for offensive sabermetrics.
The pitcher only gets on die and there are four strikes and two balls. That is all they get.
However, the offense gets nine dice. Each of those nine die are divided into categories.
There is one red die. He is the SUPERSTAR and is guaranteed to get on base .667 of the time. There are two rolls of this die that will result in a home run.
There are five orange dice. They are .500 hitters. They can only hit for a single or a double.
There are three blue dice. They are .167 hitters. There is only one roll that will result in a hit for these players.
This is where roster construction comes into play. If you put all of your blue dice down at the bottom of the order, that won't help. If you put your superstar in the leadoff spot, that won't help either. You need to mix in the players just right and get a little bit of luck on your side.
I showed this game to Kyle Lobner before our last podcast. He had the idea of playing a game against each other on a future episode of the podcast. I am taking it under advisement. Stay tuned.
Next week, reviews of the Emergency! And The Six Million Dollar Man board games that I found in the basement. Unfortunately, we did not have The White Shadow table-top game.