baseball-based board games?

[denismurf]

My grandson and friends have great baseball skills, but can't decipher all those rules.

Can anyone recommend a baseball based board game suitable for kids about 7 or 8 years old? When I was in grade school/middle school a few decades ago, we played a game called Red Barber Baseball. It was great fun, but did require a minimum knowledge of baseball rules, which we learned painlessly along the way and used when we played real baseball.

I did a current online search, but no Red Barber game. There are plenty of others, but I can't tell which are the best, in the sense of fun and accessible to kids 7 - 8. The Red Barber game must have come out about 1950 and just used dice and cards to advance the game; very low tech; nothing electronic.

Any recommendations?

[daveatca]

Maybe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statis_Pro_Baseball

[WethersOriginal]

I LOVED playing Strat-o-matic baseball when I was a kid. I don't recall how well it taught rules, but we would play this HOURS at a time.

http://www.strat-o-matic.com/products/baseball

[bengal22]

I LOVED playing Strat-o-matic baseball when I was a kid. I don't recall how well it taught rules, but we would play this HOURS at a time.

http://www.strat-o-matic.com/products/baseball

I vote for Strat-O-Matic as well. But nothing beats going outside and playing the real thing. The rules will come.

[hulburt1]

I still have 300 Strat-o-matic baseball teams and board game. I pull it out once a year and play a little. I have a computer game that I love. I play it every morning before anyone is up. Out of this park baseball cost about $40. You can learn allot about baseball and history. I'm 63

[miles monroe]

another old strat-o-matic fan here. played it for a couple years in high school. i'm surprised its still around, given its video game competition today.

[downshiftme]

Strat-o-Matic is the king of baseball games. The play is pretty simple and the variations are endless. If you have several teams you can also run a draft with your friends and even mix and match players from different eras.

[MGBGTV8]

This one is time intensive, but reviewing the daily highlights and thinking through the scenarios involved with them is the traditional way of passing down game knowledge. If you have MLB TV, I think they offer different field view perspectives so we can see the defensive alignment and the runners simultaneously. That is insightful, but again, requires time spent together. You can even talk on the phone if you are both watching a game.

During team practices, we would let innings develop during at bats (rather than just BP). Then get guidance before each batter as necessary, and corrections when we threw to the wrong base.

As for a board game? Well, we could make flash cards that could drive a scenario, but it sounds like we need a tutorial add on to the stratomatic game.

[MGBGTV8]

Also- think of the applicability of "buy and hold" to baseball. You do the right thing, and over time you win more than you lose. Just like our buy and hold philosophy. Great sidebar to inculcate proper financial habits into everyday baseball watching.

[WasabiOsbourne]

something i've thought of getting back into as well...

i used to play the sports illustrated board games... like paydirt for football..... can't remember the others names but there was baseball, basketball and, believe it or not, decathlon............... hope i'm not mixing and matching, but i never had a really fancy version of the games like strato-matic.

i would love to get back into anything as long as i don't have to get down to serious minutaie like calling pitches.

a friend and i used to play APBA baseball alot..........

what really intrigued was the electronic football where the players moved around with vibrations............. also, subuteo sp? for soccer. i thought that was a really good game. more moving pieces around than pure strategy.

[WasabiOsbourne]

i see on A.com that stratomatic has a cheap, kids-oriented baseball game...

http://www.amazon.com/Strat-O-Matic-Bas ... tratomatic

this is really nitty but i don't like the idea of managing all-stars... i think getting the most out of your scrubs is the real fun of the game. see if my 1976 Montreal Expos (Pepe Mangual leading off) can beat the Big Red Machine.

[SailorJerry]

APBA is a GREAT game. My brothers and I learned it from our dad and played it almost every day during summer vacation as kids. We would play full seasons of it with "all star" teams that we drafted from the current season. It isn't too difficult to figure out and it loads of fun.