I have Strat and have played both the board and computer versions. However, I play DiamondMind baseball in a pair of online leagues. One is in it’s 18th year of play, the other in it’s ninth.

No real great stories, other than my friend who was an Orioles fan and I playing some great games with terrible Cubs and O’s teams from the late 1980’s.

Instead, I spent my rainy days as a kid flicking the spinners around while playing Ethan Allen’s All-Star Baseball by Cadaco. Poring over those discs, staring in awe at the size of the 1 slice (home runs) on guys like Jimmy Foxx, Ralph Kiner, and Hank Greenberg. Likewise, the size of the 10 slice (strikeouts) on some of those pitchers – not the throwing kind, but the flailing miserably at the plate kind. Dick Raditz always sticks in my mind as the worst – he struck out 67% of the time in some of those seasons.

Anyway, a lot of my familiarity with the old-time players came from playing that game. And when I was bored with the player discs that came with the game, I’d flip them over, and using baseball cards from my collection and a protractor, I’d create discs for my favorite current players – mostly Pirates… ;-)

I played in a Pursue the Pennant league, which was the card and dice forerunner of Diamond Mind. We were a six team league that drafted out of the NL East and the Minnesota Twins, to appease our Twins fan player. I won the World Series when in the ninth inning I pinch hit Doug DeCinces for Darryl Strawberry, who had played every inning of every game for me up until that point. DeCinces hit a pinch-hit home run off the left-hander my opponent had brought in and he said “I never thought in a million years you’d pinch-hit for Strawberry.”

There was also a night of heavy beer drinking that resulted in a series of jokes (too convoluted to go into here) that led to a game of nine Fred McGriffs against nine Marty Barretts. The nine Fred McGriffs won and McGriff was named the greatest player in the universe ever. (Sounds like a mismatch in retrospect, but McGriff was a rookie in Toronto at this point, so it was pretty fair.)

This one used three dice and pages with color-coded charts for batters and pitchers….we had a league one year when I was in school playing with the all-time greats from the different teams. I had the Cubbies, naturally, and got quite a lesson in some of the historical holes in our lineup (LHPs, for example, and leadoff hitters).

It was a great way to learn about some of the old-time players – and to see just how many great players teams like the Pirates and (sorry…) Cardinals have had. And to understand just why the Yankees have been so incredibly dominant – their second-string lineup was better than most teams’ starters.

I began playing All-Star Baseball when I was young. I actually remember as a 8 or 9 year old writing Cadaco and offering them a terribly small amount of money for any other seasons they may have ever made. They sent me back the full brochure and I promptly ordered 8-10 old years. And Ballhawk, I made my own cards, too. It was awesome.

I played PtP and Strat as well, but my real love ended up being APBA (another board & dice game). I played their baseball, football, hockey, and bowling (yes, I was a nerd, so what?) games religiously for years. I still whip out the baseball game (I ended up buying several old seasons of APBA cards as well) every now and then and play a game against the wife. Mostly though, I’m keeping it all so maybe my kids can get into it, or at least share in the experience with me a few times before firing up their PS2, Wii, etc.

I’d be interested in hearing more about the Diamond Mind game people have mentioned above. What’s that about? I’d played APBA on PC years ago, but since I haven’t given too much thought to this stuff. Good times though. Wow. These games were my childhood.