Nostalgia Is A Helluva Drug!

Everyone that reads card blogs, frequents card-related forums, or checks out the various hobby publications has seen these lines many, many times:

"That's the first set I remember (collected/opened packs of, etc)!"

"I loved that set growing up!"

"My father (or older brother) had that set"

And so on. If I had a buck for every time I've read those, I'd own a '52 Mantle. Heck, If I had a buck for every time I've said something along those lines I'd own the whole '52 Topps set. No doubt nostalgia for things that bring back fond memories drives a segment of this hobby. For me, it drives about 90% of what I collect. What I collected and enjoyed as a kid is largely what I collect today.


Which brings me to this latest Net54 purchase of mine. I sprung for some cheap Challenge The Yankees cards. I wrote about this game previously, particularly in this rundown of all the card/dice/electronic baseball games I've owned through the years.

Challenge The Yankees was the simplest of them all. You rolled the two dice and read the results off the hitters' card. Who the pitcher was made absolutely no difference. Hank Aaron's chance of a homer was the same against Marshall Bridges as it was against Whitey Ford. But that didn't matter to my friends and I. We liked it more than the Cadaco All-Star Baseball game of the era that used a spinner. Dice never 'landed on a line' like the spinner could, which always led to 'debates'.

There were some cards to pull when you rolled a 'ground ball' result and some other enhancements. But for the most part, it was just you, the dice, and the player cards. 

CTY was issued in both 1964 and 1965. Many of the same players appeared both years but the rosters did change a bit. I had the '64 edition. I remember that the aforementioned Marshall Bridges was included.

The players' cards were all the same format for both editions. The Yankees had blue at the top.

The Yankees of this era liked catcher/outfielders. Johnny Blanchard, an aging Yogi Berra, and Elston Howard all fit that mold in the early 60s.

After the days of Joe Dimaggio and Allie Reynolds, my father latched on to some of the lesser Yankee regulars. He was a Hector Lopez guy.

The All-Stars were green.

A few years back someone tried to revive the Challenge The Yankees game with a crowdsourced edition through Indiegogo. I backed the project but it failed to make the minimum, and we were refunded. I was pretty disappointed. Sports Collectors Daily had a story about the game and the folks behind the attempted re-boot. The rosters from both editions of the game are at the bottom.

The cards of some of the star players from the game, Mickey Mantle in particular, can get pretty pricey. My originals are long gone. These 'commons' will serve to remind me of the hours I spent with my father and my friends playing this (and the other) baseball board games.

Games People Play

I wish I had back all the hours I spent playing sports (mostly baseball) board games. What you see above are the games I still have on a shelf high up in a closet at home.My game of choice, as you can probably tell, was Strat-O-Matic. From my first purchase of the game in 1967 until I finally put it away in the mid-80s I wasted more time playing Strat than I care to remember. But it sure was fun.

The box in the lower right, the one with the stickers on it, is more or less my original Strat game. Through the years I purchased a couple of replacements but I kept (and kept repairing) the top cover of the original box.

Here is my view of baseball as I knew it for almost 20 years:

That playing field with all the glued-on pics is original as well. I had a cardboard 'platform on the right where the stacks of teams are now but other than that, it hasn't changed. I saved a piece of the original box bottom, that's the 'Hot Corner' taped to the right front of it.

The Strat box at the top of the picture is one of many 'replacement' games I bought and that box know holds spare charts, game cards, playing pieces and scoresheets. The white Strat box is my 2011 50th Anniversary edition. It's a replica of the original 1961 edition. I haven't played it.

I played 'season' after 'season' with a six teams playing 80 game schedule. My teams I used were almost always American League clubs. The Orioles were always included of course The other teams were usually the Red Sox, White Sox, Tigers, Senators and Twins. If you look at the charts in the pic you can see that over time I felt I knew more about the game than the folks in Glen Head, NY and I modified them somewhat. The one on the left was my 'Injury Chart' which covered thing like rain delays (I would go get a soda if that occurred), rain outs, ejections and injuries to defensive players. That wasn't something found in the actual game.

I always played the basic version, I couldn't be bothered with the advanced or super advanced versions. Mostly I played to accumulate stats. They were kept by hand and calculated with a slide rule. That's the object you see below. Only the more senior of you will remember them.

(Note: that photo and most of the others below are from the internet)

After a few years of that I wanted more accurate numbers and discovered the Sporting News Averages Book which contained page after page of charts which allowed you to find batting averages and ERAs. Eventually I got a pocket calculator and life was perfect.

Strat wasn't my first game though. When I was about ten I got a copy of Cadaco's All Star Baseball, the famous game with the spinner and player disks. It's the game that started me down the path of board gaming.

A bit later it was Challenge the Yankees. Game play was pretty basic and the players available were pretty limited. I only wish I still had the player cards. They can pull in big bucks nowadays. I played this one a lot with my Dad. He was always the Yankees, I as always the All Stars.

When I got my first desktop computer I thought I'd try computer baseball. APBA's version made by Miller and Associates for DOS (youngsters should look "DOS" up) was the most popular at the time. I found it boring and cumbersome. I hated not having those player cards and dice in my hands. Here is a screenshot from the net:

Then I gave Earl Weaver Baseball a shot. It was more of an arcade game. I bet I played it twice.

About five years ago I came across a copy of a book written about the Star-O-Matic game company (it's much better than it sounds LOL) and I got the game playing itch once again. 

But I knew I didn't have the time for setting up a dice based game so I did a bit of homework and read really good things about Diamond Mind Baseball. It was pretty costly but I really enjoyed it. I've been on a break from it for about a year but I played 15 'seasons' in the four years I have owned it. I have hundreds of teams and I even 'homebrewed' a few. I'll get back to it one of these days.

I've owned and played a few other sports-related board games over the years. My dorm buddies got caught up in Oscar Robertson Basketball one semester. We skipped a lot of classes for this one.

I had All-Pro Football which was a combination of checkers and football strategy. I remember it but I don't think I played it very often.

Up top in the original picture you see Strat-O-Matic Football. I think I played it with my Dad once. The box is beaten up by time (and repaired using pieces of Strat baseball boxes) but the game parts are pristine. I don't even remember buying the APBA Football game. I'm sure it's never been opened. And that Pursue The Pennant game box is untouched. The game parts are still wrapped as they were when I bought it. I was attracted by the hype but about the time I bought it my game playing interest was evaporating.

Finally here is my own Strat-O-Matic card. You sent them some cash and your 'stats' and info and you got back a card to put yourself into the game. I bought it for fun. I never used in in my 'league'. I'd pretty much quit playing by the time I bought it. I only 'enhanced' my running ability. In no way was I a 1-14. 1-9 would have been more like it.

Oddball Orioles, Milton Bradley Game Cards and Dell Stamps

These first two 'cards' are from what was the Dell Stamp albums issued in 1971. I don't know much about them other than the fact that each team had an 'album and these 'stamps' or cards were what made up the pages of the albums, 12 to a page. There was also an All Star Album and from what I understand these two Orioles were part of the AL All Star album. The team name under the player name of the reverse is the distinguishing factor in determining that these were All Star album stamps.

It's hard to tell in the individual scans but these two are laminated. That seems to be very common but why they were laminated or who did that is unknown to me. The lamination is easy to see in the picture down the page that I took with my camera. You can see in that shot that the lamination surrounding the Robinson has rounded shoulders while Powell is inside square plastic. Again, I'm clueless as to why. 

I found some photos of a page from the Orioles album as well as the cover. Including the All Stars the checklist for this set runs 600 pieces!

Next up we have some Milton Bradley game cards. From the 1969 game I have Moe Drabowsky and Steve Barber. Of course by 1969 Barber had left the Orioles and was pitching for the Seattle Pilots but hey, Once an Oriole....  The truth is I probably just saw it was Barber and bought it without thinking of the time line.

I never owned the Milton Bradley game but a look at the card backs tells me that a pair of dice were rolled to get game results.

Here is a pic of the game box (supposedly the 1970 version) from eBay where the asking price is about $60.

I also have a 1970 Boog Powell MB card. It's similar to the 1969s but not quite the same. The size is closer to a standard playing card. Here is the '69 next to a regular Topps card. The 1970 Powell is as tall as the Topps card but about a quarter inch narrower.

EDIT: I meant to include the scan of the 1970 Powell but for some reason it didn't stick. Here it is:

I searched and found some pics on the net of the game. The game looks very familiar now that I see these but I don't think I owned it. By 1970 I had been a devoted Strat-O-Matic fanatic for quite a few years.