All I had was the 1989 season, when the Giants beat the A’s. I can remember sitting in my room, rolling the dice in those yellow plastic cylinders, rubbing a white divot around the base path with the red bingo markers, and keeping an incredibly inaccurate statistics log in a red notebook. I didn’t ever manage to recreate the whole season - that would’ve been an entirely overwhelming project - but I loved playing against my childhood friend.
The statistics were amazingly realistic, and it was simplicity at its finest - just like the game it attempted to reproduce. Graphics were nothing, imagination was everything. Rolling a 1-1 or a 6-6 was the equivalent to hearing the crack of the bat, and watching Jose Canseco trot around the bases. Dennis Eckersley’s A&B rating, with an X,Y, and Z to boot was incomprehensible - you wanted to start him for every game, but you knew you had to reserve him as a relief pitcher, just like real life.
You heard stories of George Brett playing right field for just one inning, just so you could utilize him, Mark McGuire, AND Will Clark all in the same All-Star team, without using any of them as a pinch hitter.
I’ve left my flat, blue and yellow cardboard box at my mother’s house, and now I want to play.
