[Bunktown Ballers]

Originally Posted by rolltyed

I don't know why, but I wanted to share this. So, I played Little League ball as a kid (All Stars twice) but when I got into junior high my football coaches pushed me to abandon baseball and focus on football. Big mistake, suffered leg injury my sophomore year and never managed to get my speed back.

Back to baseball as a kid. I remember when I was 9 or 10 being obsessed with the game and collecting the cards. This was the late 1970's and I don't remember how much the packs were (for some reason, 35 cents is stuck in my head) but I DO remember skipping lunch at school several days so that I could use the money to buy them.

Fast forward to this past weekend. I have had an urge to try out a baseball sim lately and decided that OOTP would be a good choice. The idea of managing a team and trying to make it better appeals to me and I was ready to give it a shot. What I was NOT ready for was Perfect Team. The pack opening animations and creating a team from the cards took me back to 9 years old. You see, on rainy days when I couldn't play outside, I would lay out my cards on the floor in my room with players at each position and 'play' baseball with them. I don't remember the specifics, but I know that I used dice to determine outcomes. I also remember idolizing the players (Rod Carew!) and memorizing their stats printed on the back of the cards. And how weird is this? When the first pack of Perfect Team cards was opened, I immediately had a Pavlovian anticipation for the piece of nasty gum that came in the packs all those years ago (nasty or not, I still chewed it).

Anyway, OOTP is just a game, but it provided me with a magical Sunday afternoon and I look forward to spending a lot of time with it going forward. Thanks for letting this 50+ old dude get that story out of me, now I have to get ready to play ball in OOTP 21!

From a 60 year old I've always felt privileged that I got to experience the collecting of baseball cards from the love of baseball & not the monetary value as it's been for a few years now. I still have many many of those old cards & wouldn't even consider selling them. I wish everybody could have experienced the joy we had at collecting baseball cards (even with the gum) stuck to them from back in the old days....Happy PTing to all