Author: Jason Winston

Jason Winston is a lifelong baseball fan and player of various simulation games. He has worked as (among other things) a professional educator, journalist, marketing writer, and compliance analyst. He has managed tens of thousands more games than Connie Mack did, and with a better winning percentage, too!

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Baseball MLB Sim Baseball

All-Star Baseball

Fresh from my garage, my original All-Star Baseball game is still ready to play.

Among the many sports simulation board games still housed in my garage is the original and best-selling All-Star Baseball. Designed by a former major league player and coach, Ethan Allen, and first released in 1941, All-Star Baseball reigned as the ultimate baseball sim for decades.

I can’t trace my first encounter with ASB precisely, but I know I played solitaire and head-to-head games with friends often. The game’s simplicity was critical to its success, even if it overlooked tremendously important aspects of baseball. Everything was reduced to the batter, and the cards realistically simulated the percentage of times a real player did certain things like hit a home run, strike out, or walk. 

ASB cards were discs with numbers around the edges that represented different outcomes in proper proportions. Results were revealed by a spinner that would stop and point to the play’s result. New card sets would come out after each season, and there were also all-time greats available. I remember learning the names of some baseball legends from playing the game.

The version in my garage probably dates to about 1979 or 1980, based on the player cards in there. It was last played close to 20 years ago, as I can tell from one of the simple scorecards included in the set, when I challenged my stepson to a couple games when trying to teach him more about baseball. He beat me, 10-9, so you can tell I wasn’t cheating!

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Game 2: Back to Earth

After the offensive fireworks of Game 1, the second game of our season turned into a pitchers’ duel fitting with a pair of Dodgers opposing each other. My 1975 Burt Hooton and his 1985 Orel Hershiser each gave up one early run and that was it. Hooton lasted 6 innings and allowed 4 hits, while Hershiser went 7 and gave up only 3 hits. 

Both teams threatened in the 9th, but we left the bases loaded and Tulo left two on. The bullpens battled into the 10th inning, until Tony Phillips hit a walkoff homer off Joe Sambito to leave the Veterans Stadium crowd jubilant with a 2-1 victory.

Game 2

It’s important to note that I developed a text-message friendship with NebHusker, my opening opponent, over the past couple years playing this game, and we really ramped up the conversation during this draft. Because I’d already taken a second baseman, Ryne Sandberg, in the 3rd round, I asked Husker if he’d been considering Phillips for his open 2B spot as the draft progressed. He hadn’t, then immediately took a liking to him and drafted him. And now, fittingly, Phillips delivers the winning hit in Game 2.

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Baseball Sim Baseball

A Deck of Cards

I remember sitting in the otherwise empty conference room of my father’s law office in downtown LA one afternoon. I was perhaps 8 or 9, and the only thing I had to entertain myself for a few hours was a deck of playing cards. 

I knew solitaire games, but at some point I tired of them and decided to turn my deck into a baseball game. I did some math to figure out what percentage of the deck should be outs, walks, and different types of hits. And then I started playing a game.

Knowing myself and the era, it was probably Yankees vs. Dodgers. For one thing, my first two World Series memories are of those teams battling it out in 1977 and 1978, and I definitely would have known both teams’ lineups. I can’t remember how many games I played or who won, but I remember flipping over cards to get the results of at-bats, keeping track of who was on base and how many runs were scored, and finding that the time passed quite quickly.

That may not have been the first time simulated baseball crossed my path, but looking back it clearly established that I saw the game mathematically and had the imagination to recreate a game that way. It was like backyard baseball you’d play with friends, but when you didn’t have any equipment or friends or a backyard handy. That would happen a lot over the rest of my childhood.

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Baseball Sim Baseball

Opening Day Win

Opening Day is in the books, and I can only hope it’s a harbinger of what’s to come. Jack Bauer Squared opened the season with a resounding 17-7 victory over Tulo? More Like Too High. Catcher Gene Tenace led the way with 2 homers and 7 RBI, including one of our two grand slams in the top of the 6th inning. Ryne Sandberg belted the first one to chase Mike Norris from the game after giving up 10 runs. 

We also got 2 hits apiece from outfielders Kal Daniels and Garry Maddox, and even pitcher Mike Cuellar got in on the action with 2 hits himself. Cuellar was less than dominant on the mound, however. I might have given him too much rope, as he faded badly in the 7th inning in allowing 5 runs. 

On the flip side of this thrashing, I feel a bit bad for my friend and opposing manager NebHusker. That’s a rough box score to wake up to in the morning, and I’ve certainly been there, too. You never want to see your ace pitcher get shelled, let alone in the season opener.

Game 1

But it’s only one of 162, and we’ll be facing off again twice more in the opening series. Game 2 will be a matchup of Dodgers pitchers from 10 years apart, my 1975 Burt Hooton facing his 1985 Orel Hershiser. 

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Baseball Covid MLB Sim Baseball

Here Come the Seasons

July 18, 2020

The season will start tonight, shortly after 10 pm where I live. I’m writing the season narrative as it unfolds, so this could turn into a description of a championship season or the struggles of an also-ran team. Starting off with a team I already had success with and then going back and writing about it would have been cheating. 

Does this raise the stakes a bit? Sure. Do I wish I’d decided to do this before I started drafting the team in the first place? Sure. But does life normally come at you with direct plans that work perfectly? As in baseball, the unpredictable happens.

Five days from now, Major League Baseball plans to start an abbreviated 60-game season that will run roughly parallel with this sim season about to unfold. Our simulated season will play three games a day for 54 days to reach a full 162-game season, starting July 19 and finishing on September 10, followed by a few days of playoffs. 

MLB will attempt a Covid-shortened schedule from July 23 to September 27, followed by a month or so of playoffs, if all goes well. A lot has to go well, too. The sports world, like the one at large, looks drastically different in 2020. The only place nothing has changed is here on the computer, where games go on unhindered 365 days a year. 

Categories
Baseball College

The Application

“You have just finished your three hundred page autobiography. Please submit page 217.”

My actual submission is lost to time, but I remember well how I answered it. The admissions application for the University of Pennsylvania used to include some unique questions, and that was one of them. I remember pouring hours into getting it just right, trying to figure out some future reason why I’d be writing my autobiography and then placing a key episode deep in the second half of it.

I imagined myself as the general manager of a Major League Baseball team that had just won a World Series, and I was doing what winners often do — publish a book to tell how they did it. For one page anyway, I was the architect of a champion, the builder of a great roster that won it all.

A job in baseball eluded me, and I was a generation too early for the new wave of smart, young Ivy Leaguers who did deep dives in analytics and found their way into every front office in a matter of a few years. GMs used to move up through the ranks, former players, coaches, scouts, and managers who climbed through front offices. 

I sent a resume to the Dodgers once, but a career in baseball never seemed genuinely possible. The highlight of my baseball playing days was winning the Most Improved award at a baseball summer camp when I was 9 or 10. Of course, to be Most Improved it helps if you weren’t very good to start with.

Turns out there are many other ways to win a championship. Or 10 or 20 or more. You just don’t get parades. Or champagne baths. Or book deals.

Categories
Baseball Sim Baseball

Anticipating Opening Day

July 17, 2020

Opening Day will be here in just over 24 hours, and soon we will find out if hard work pays off on the field. The lineups are set. The pitching rotation is in place. The relievers know their roles. 

Sometime after 1 am Eastern on July 19, a server in some unknown building will kick around some code and issue the outcome in the form of one complete box score of a baseball game. One I will care more about than I reasonably should, considering it is completely a work of fiction.

Simulated baseball games include no baseballs. No equipment. No hot dogs and peanuts. No umpires or coaches or trainers. Not even players. This “team” I have created only exists in a shared fiction for myself and 23 other owners in this unimaginatively named 24×24 Draft League, but there is ample imagination involved.

Hard work, too. All 24 owners spent hour after hour preparing for and executing a draft process that lasted 20 exhilarating days. There was nothing fictional about the commitment and passion we put into it. 

More than a hobby, this is equal parts competition, entertainment, relived youth, mental exercise, camaraderie, and creativity. It’s an investment of mind, heart, and soul … and about $12.95, too.