Jack Kerouac would have loved OOTP

[Thundercrack]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/bo...?_r=1&ref=arts

[Cryomaniac]

I once did something similar with a fantasy soccer league. Sadly I lost that notepad ages ago.

[khucke]

Paul Auster also created a baseball game of his own and published it in his autobiography "Hand to Mouth, a Chronicle of Early Failure".

[Goody]

Very cool discovery! I wish they had more pictures of the stuff he used with his game.

[Mike Donlin]

I just came over here to post this.

Fascinating stuff. Be sure to check out the slide show.

Kerouac seems to have been a living J. Henry Waugh. Very cool.

[Raidergoo]

I think it would have been priceless to watch him work with the recap editor.

[canadiancreed]

I remember doing that with first a precursor to Earl Weaver baseball on the old c64, then EWB when it came out. Good times.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

I think it would have been priceless to watch him work with the recap editor.

Yeah, that would have been epic.

[Assos]

Next thing you know they will find odd typed pages from the 1950s with PbP written into them and some of it will be hard coded.

[DreamTeams]

Who would have known? This is great. See, there are a lot of us.

[Tycobbler]

Originally Posted by DreamTeams

Who would have known? This is great. See, there are a lot of us.

..and that's what makes this a beautiful experience.

I remember using bottle caps as teams, in a league of my own creation. While other kids were outside playing i spent most of my time creating a world of my own in baseball.

[thamolas]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Yeah, that would have been epic.

Yeah, what a game it would be be! Heh.

[Cryomaniac]

I've decided to redo the soccer league I mentioned before, using random.org and a name generator this time instead of just making it up off the top of my head . I might post the results in the dynasty forum later tonight or tomorrow.

[BPS]

I'm more of a Ginsberg man, as he might have written:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Markus, starving hysterical naked,
playing themselves through the negro league until dawn looking for an angry fix,
stathead simmers burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo of OOTPX at night…

[VaCubbie]

Great post/link...Somewhere in my parents house is a boxfull of paperwork from the countless late night hours I spent playing Statis Pro baseball as a kid. I would love to stumble on that stuff again to see how much imagination and creativity I've lost. I love the computer sims, but there was something magical about pencil and paper that I sort of miss.

[jrnoble]

Great article, I did a similar thing when I was young with Cricket in Australia. I found all my stats in the back of a cupboard when i visited my parents last month. My wife just didn't understand.

How things have changed with computers.

[Siv]

I also played Statis pro baseball endlessly. One thing i did though was to collect all the baseball cards for the 1983 season and pasted them onthe back of the card. It was fantastic. I collected endless amounts of statistics. One thing I did to replay a season was to remove the wins and losses from all the teams I played against (I was the Twins). Then I would replay the season and see if I could do better.

I too love the computer sims, but the sheer nostalgia of the pen and paper baseball days are wonderful.

I also played APBA and Strat o Matic religiously.

[Assos]

I read this last night and pulled out my old Stat-O-Mat 7 seasons in the run down folder. Oh, the memories....

[masoo]

Kerouac describes playing the game in his book Desolation Angels.

[Malleus Dei]

With apologies to the late, great W.H. Auden:

Though mild clear weather
Smile again on the shore of your esteem
And its colors come back, playing OOTP has changed you:
You will not forget, ever,
The darkness blotting out hope, the slump
Prophesying your downfall.