Superstar Baseball – Sports Illustrated Baseball

Sports Illustrated published a baseball game in 1971 that was designed by David Neft, leader of the team who created the first Macmillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia in 1969. The game was made with quality pieces and each team had 25 players on a team sheet. The 1971 season teams were rated for players batting and pitching against left handed and right handed batters and pitchers. This was ground-breaking at the time. The game had three dice that were special dice, a black die that read 1, 2 and 3, a white die that read zero, 1, 2, 3 and 4 and another white die that read zero, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The game rolled first on the pitchers ratings, some would then refer to the batting ratings. A pitcher such as Vida Blue would have some strikeouts on his card and that would be it for the batter. Sports Illustrated rebranded the game as Pennant Race in 1973. Player cards now based on the 1972 season but most teams had only 10 or 12 players. This game lasted for only one year before Sports Illustrated sold to Avalon Hill Games and Superstar Baseball came out. I never played this, but this game features many great players from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Since Sports Illustrated was so popular, sales were strong for the first year before tapering off. By having lefty and right ratings, it spurred Hal Richman at Strat-O-Matic to come out with the advanced game that featured lefty and righty card splits. One can still purchase Superstar Baseball on Ebay and other sources.