Welcome to “Baseball Gaming” the official blog of SABR’s Games and Simulations
Committee. This blog is the brainchild of our newest member and the new co-chair
of the committee, Richard Bergstrom. Richard brings extensive experience with
computer and online games to the committee.
Originally from Chicago and after an extensive tour of most of the western United
States, Richard has resided in Denver. since 2004, and attends quite a few Rockies
games, especially Rockies fireworks games! When not writing about baseball, he
enjoys karaoke downtown, a bit of poker, and a bit too much of his iPad.
Not only will this blog take the place of a newsletter, but we hope it will also
facilitate more regular communications. (Note: even the more accessible desktop
publishing capabilities of Apple Pages proved daunting.) Also in the interest of
keeping communications open as broadly as possible, Richard has set up a gmail
account (sabrbaseballgaming@gmail.com). You can also follow us on Twitter at
@sabrbballgaming.
That said, the results of the questionnaire distributed earlier this summer showed
that most members were interested in which games/simulations were most
‘realistic.’ So here’s the response: tell us and tell us why. That’s what this blog is for.
Is realism predicated on duplicating overall league stats, individual stats, final
standings? Does realism relate to the options you have as ‘manager’ of your team?
How finely would you want to position your infield? Or outfield? Where do umpires
fit in? Moods? Streakiness? How much do ball parks affect actual play and final
results? How much do you want them to in your gaming experience?
Depending on your response, you may want to cite final stats from a replay you’ve
done. Or you may want to detail how taking the 1979 Pirates through their schedule
in Forbes Field instead of Three Rivers affected your outcomes.
For those who attended the session at last year’s convention, we heard Hal Richman
detail the labor involved in creating what he termed his most important card set, the
Negro League All-Stars. His talk was thorough and gave testimony to the effort that
goes into creating statistical realism in every Strat-O- Matic set.
We also heard Keith Avallone discuss his orthogonal approach to creating a realistic
baseball simulation, one built on the narrative of the individual games and the
overall season or series rather than the re-creation of individual and team statistics.
Another important consideration that number of respondents raised dealt with how
these games teach us about baseball, how it is played, the ‘puts and takes’ a manager
has in the myriad situations he faces. Is this another aspect of ‘best,’ or a whole
separate topic that focuses on how we can use games to teach our kids and our
friends about the game we love. In my own experience, APBA and Strat expanded
my interest in baseball, which fed my curiosity about the better ways of simulating
the feel and excitement of actual baseball games and seasons.
So let’s start the conversation.
Send your responses to us at sabrbaseballgaming@gmail.com.
