Old sports board games

[Bubba Wheels]

Recently came across a 1989 edition of the board game 'Pursue the Pennant" that I have had forever collecting dust. May teach my 8yr old how to play it. Made me think of all the great sports board games they used to make that are gone due to electonics these days. 3M had a whole series of them that came in plastic fold-around cases that doubled as the playing board...football, baseball, hockey, horse-racing, golf. Anybody else remember any of these games? I may try to find some on Ebay.

[FBPro]

I've got the 3M hoops game. I used to make up players and keep track of stats on paper using them.

[Mota]

I really liked Pursue the Pennant, had a good feel to the defensive side of the game, it really made you feel how a good defensive player could make a difference.

I also have Title Bout Pro Boxing, Strat-o-Matic Baseball and Strat-o-Matic Basketball. I played in an SOM league for a few years, it was a total blast. The basketball game was really disapointing, it's really tough to simulate the number of exchanges in that sport without getting boring. Dice games and baseball go hand in hand though.

[kingnebwsu]

I have "All-Star Baseball" with spinners on it and different players (old and "modern" from 20-30 years ago). I spun that thing to death back in elementary school. Also, I got "Football" from my grandma's when she died. It was my uncle's, and it's green and is from the early 60's. I bet it's worth some money.

[yabanci]

Recently came across a 1989 edition of the board game 'Pursue the Pennant" that I have had forever collecting dust. May teach my 8yr old how to play it. Made me think of all the great sports board games they used to make that are gone due to electonics these days. 3M had a whole series of them that came in plastic fold-around cases that doubled as the playing board...football, baseball, hockey, horse-racing, golf. Anybody else remember any of these games? I may try to find some on Ebay.

You may know this, but Pursue the Pennant is now Diamond Mind Baseball. I remember the PTP board game, and the early DOS computer versions of PTP, before they even had a computer manager. DMB is still a great game if you are into a coaching sim, but it's not a GM sim. I used to play the Title Bout boxing board game from Avolon Hill. I think I had a couple of sports board games from Avalon Hill, but I don't even remember them anymore.

[Tekneek]

I have "All-Star Baseball" with spinners on it and different players (old and "modern" from 20-30 years ago).

I used to have that. It disappeared during a move when I was in high school. I never saw it again. It was a cool game. We used to draft teams out of the stack of discs, and kept scorecards for the games. It was a good one. I have seen it sold on eBay a lot, including new player discs that have been created since then (presumably by hobbyists).

[Gwalyn]

PayDirt & Win, Place & Show were where the two games that I had that I played to death. I still keep Win, Place & Show in my desk at work so when I get bored and have nothing better to do I simulate a race.

[WSUCougar]

Heh.

I lived and breathed APBA baseball. I also played a lot of Paydirt and Bowl Bound (I think both put out by Sports Illustrated, originally). Face Off hockey. Win, Place, Show and Speed Circuit were Avalon Hill ones I played, too. I still have most of them. Fond memories!

[Sun Tzu]

I had a couple games growing up, although you couldn't really call them board games. I had this one game that back then was pretty high tech. You got these big oversized baseball cards that had little things on the back of them with what I guess was an audio track. You put it in this little thing and you would hear "Hi I'm Mel so and so, and you're listening to BASEBALL TALK" or something along those lines. You could play out entire games by getting complete teams. I think I got the entire 1966 Orioles team with the Robinsons and the awesome pitching staff. Also there was another game that was played physically. It was a small scale model of a baseball park. You sent the ball down this chute in center field and it came down to this little bat at home plate that you twirled around. The baserunners were little plastic guys with pegs on them, and you stuck them in first second and third base depending on where you hit the ball. It was pretty fun. Outside of these games (and another fishing game called "gone fishing") I pretty much played Nintendo and eventualy Genesis/SNES for my sports fix.

[yabanci]

Paydirt was the other one I played. It was my very first sports sim ever, and my brother and I used to play it all the time. I'm glad somebody mentioned it.

[JeeberD]

Not a board game, but my grandparents used to have this AMAZING electronic football game. Basically there was this little record player type thing, and the offense had like ten records or disks that had different offenses on them. The offensive player would select the offense he wanted and and put it into the player vertically (like a toaster). On one side of the disk it had different defensive formations labeled. The defensive player would then rotate the disk and choose his defense. Then the players would press a button and a recording would tell what happened on the play. There was a cardboard field where you kept track of the action, and you would just move the marker however many yards the recording told you to. The game was a blast. I remember that I used to always kick my old brother's butt by always blitzing him. He never seemed to figure out how to counter it... :)

[JonInMiddleGA]

Not a board game, but my grandparents used to have this AMAZING electronic football game. Basically there was this little record player type thing, and the offense had like ten records or disks that had different offenses on them.
That would be Mattel's "Talking Football", which I had too.
Looks like they're still around, here's an Ebay seller with 3 of 'em
http://edenscrush17.tripod.com/matteltalkingfootbal/
(I'm including the linky because I thought you might enjoy the pictures posted with the game)

"Trap up the middle for 10 ... uh-oh, Penalty !"

Good memories.

[JeeberD]

Oh yeah, that's the stuff, Jon. Such a fun game. The entire time we were in Oklahoma visiting my grandparents that's all my brother and I would play...

[yabanci]

I wonder if those of us who started out playing sports sims on those old board games are more easily satisfied by games like FOF and OOTP than those who started out playing one of the Madden games, for example. I mean, a game like FOF with all the data, events, record keeping, etc., would have been way, way, way outside the realm of possibilty in the pre-PC days.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I wonder if those of us who started out playing sports sims on those old board games are more easily satisfied by games like FOF and OOTP than those who started out playing one of the Madden games, for example. I mean, a game like FOF with all the data, events, record keeping, etc., would have been way, way, way outside the realm of possibilty in the pre-PC days.
I'd say that's quite possible. FOF, OOTP, et al, have automated an awful lot of stuff that I remember doing by hand (still have a whole box full of notebooks with entire seasons worth of stats around here somewhere).

[Mota]

Yeah, anybody who ever played in a Strat-o-Matic baseball league with dice rules has to remember compiling all the stats after a series, and someone putting it all together in the database. I had stacks of box scores and kept putting it in Excel spreadsheets to have it in order. Computer is a LOT more fun. :)

[Ben E Lou]

I wonder if those of us who started out playing sports sims on those old board games are more easily satisfied by games like FOF and OOTP than those who started out playing one of the Madden games, for example. I mean, a game like FOF with all the data, events, record keeping, etc., would have been way, way, way outside the realm of possibilty in the pre-PC days.I'd definitely think so. I got my start at around age 9 with Statis-Pro Major League Baseball. Kept batter-by-batter score by hand, scorecard-style, and then wrote stats down in notebooks. I thought the first version of Microleague Baseball, compared with Visicalc to keep stats, was the greatest thing known to man. :eek:

[Alf]

I used to make up players and keep track of stats on paper using them.
As a side note, we are emptying boxes with my wife and I just threw a book full of fictional football standings & statistics.... Talk about being a stats geek !

[RawIsDan]

I've got the 3M hoops game. I used to make up players and keep track of stats on paper using them.

Same here but with Strat's Football board game. I could card my own players back then without a hitch.

[OldGiants]

I'd definitely think so. I got my start at around age 9 with Statis-Pro Major League Baseball. Kept batter-by-batter score by hand, scorecard-style, and then wrote stats down in notebooks. I thought the first version of Microleague Baseball, compared with Visicalc to keep stats, was the greatest thing known to man. :eek:

My Strat-O-matic days date to the 1963 season, which is still in my attic. I kept box scores by hand, totals after game on a three-hole punch sheet of notebook paper that was thin from erasures. Every so often I would calcualted batting averages by hand using long division, pencil and paper. I was not alone in this pursuit, as many of schoolmates also performed this ritual.

Because I did averages and ERAs by hand, I had rather unique pinch-hitting and pitcher removal logic. If a player was say, 8 for 28 for the season and due to come up, he got pinch hit for because I knew 8 for 28 was simply 2 for 7 mulitplied by 4. Thus he was hitting .286 and I would not have to do a long division to come up with his BA. Lots of folks hit .286 or .273 in my leagues. Similarly, I liked my pitchers to have inning totals that were mulitples of '3'.

I am totally convinced that not doing baseball stats by hand is a huge reason boys today have so much trouble with Arithmetic.

[Tekneek]

That would be Mattel's "Talking Football", which I had too.

Oh yeah! I had that one, as well! That one was a lot of fun!

[Tekneek]

I thought the first version of Microleague Baseball, compared with Visicalc to keep stats, was the greatest thing known to man. :eek:

Hahah. That's exactly what I thought about it as well. Was it almost 20 years ago now? We need a double-eek for that one.