[OldFatGuy]

The very first serious baseball I played was in the 1960's (lol I never even knew of all the options available in the 60's) with a baseball game I got free at McDonalds (or Burger King or one of the fast food joints).

All it was a piece of paper with a legend on it. You used a deck of cards, and each card meant something. Ace=Home Run, King=Triple, Queen=Double, etc. etc.

Made up teams using basball cards, and kept stats and standings. Flipping a new regular card got me the result, then I'd flip to the next basball card to see who was up to bat, flip the next playing card to get the next result, etc. etc.

Played that for a looooong time. Looking back it was sooooo lame, and I discovered there were really great other options available, I just didn't know it.

Then the board game I played the most was Avalon Hill's Superstar Baseball, again keeping stats and everything. I went through I don't know how many sets of dice on that one.

On the computer, I played several early ones, including LaRussa, Weaver, The Sporting News Baseball (actually not bad), but then found Front Page Sports Baseball 94 and thought I'd found the game I waited my whole life for.

Turned out it wasn't, and OOTP is closer to being that game. In fact, if OOTP had FPS graphics, I'd be in heaven. It was sooooo fun playing out your games on that because it was pure physics based, so when the ball was hit you had no idea what it was going to be. You had to watch the action to find out.

Great times, cause it would be a deep fly and you're wondering if it's deep enough, and then sometimes the player jumps over the fence to make a great catch, etc.

It had too many AI and other flaws (the physics model wasn't great). All in all though, I still prefer that one on strictly playing it out. Prefer OOTP in every and all other aspects though.