Statis Pro

MarlinsFan · 03-26-2002, 06:39 AM

Any of you guys ever play Statis Pro baseball by Avalon Hill. That's how I learned about sim games. Man, I loved that game. Tried APBA and Strat-o-Matic, but always came back to Statis Pro. Pursue the Pennant was cool because it introduced the concept of weather (i.e., wind) effects (at least to me).

Tarkus · 03-26-2002, 06:53 AM

Never played that one but I have some APBA card sets that date back to 1966.

Tarkus

statfreak · 03-26-2002, 07:17 AM

For table-top games, I mostly played Pursue the Pennant, followed by Strat-O-Matic, and then SherCo.

I actually did play Statis Pro on the Commodore 64. Too much offense. Though, I did convert P Rick Behenna (12AB .333 avg 1 hr) to a 3B and watched him tear up the league.

MarlinsFan · 03-26-2002, 08:07 AM

The lefty vs righty, lefty vs lefty, and righty vs righty was comical in statis pro. It affected everyone exactly the same way.

Roy Hobbs · 03-26-2002, 10:18 AM

Statis-Pro was the first sim game I played. I was around 10-12 years old, and really didn't need anything more complicated. One thing I liked was that, as opposed to strat-o-matic, there was not a 50-50 relationship in the batter vs pitcher matchup.

I played that game a lot.

I found a website where some guy has started making cards for the current seasons, along with a bunch of new (more realistic rules, incl. ballparks.)

Now I need more in a sim than I did then, but for a retro-afternoon, a good game of statis-pro will do (and it increases attendance by 20%).

-Palko

MarlinsFan · 03-26-2002, 11:14 AM

Roy- I saw that website you're talking about. I actually finally througout all my old board games, including statis pro baseball, about 2 weeks ago in a pre-move purge of my attic. The next day (after the trash had been collected), I regretted not keeping the baseball game.

Regarding your comment about control between batter and pitcher not being split 50/50, I remember if you went up against a pitcher with a PB:2-9, you had to nickel and dime him to get all his "hit points" (I can't remember what they called them) so he wouldn't be able to control every at bat. Man, I closer with a PB:2-9 was unbeatable.

However, if you got to go up against a pitcher with a PB:2-5, you knew it was a pad your stats game!

Rich Tiger Fan · 03-26-2002, 11:44 AM

It was called reduction!!...I grew up on statis pro baseball..and me and my brothers and friends probably played thousands of games betweeen 1979 and 1990...We got every edition between those years...I still remember waiting for the UPS guy to deliver the game every year....back then it took forever...You got the game and you pulled apart all the cards...oh the memories...and for it's time it was great...We never used the lefty righty chart anyway...I still remember the "Not me blind one" commment the pither would make to the ump before being tossed from the game for doctoring the ball on the Z chart.....Gosh a stroll down memory lane...Me and my brothers still reminace about that game...It was head and shoulders above Strat....it was easy and quick!!!...but yet very real ...in the way it portrayed the stats of baseball.....I could go on forever but you may get bored!

MarlinsFan · 03-26-2002, 12:01 PM

what were the random plays called, the "Z chart" or something. I seem to remember it had a triple play and rainouts. I seem to recall that on the rainout it had a parenthetical comment, like (April games only; ignore if in dome).

I remember waiting for the UPS guy to bring the cards, too. Tearing the sheets apart took forever, but gave you a good opportunity to see how all the players were rated.

Roy Hobbs · 03-26-2002, 01:08 PM

The "Z" chart was the name of the unusual plays and it was great. Strat had nothing like it, and it added a ton of realism. . .rainouts, brawls, suspensions, etc.

The game had a built in fatigue (reduction). Each player was rated and you lowered by one for baserunner (something like that). At the point of zero, your PB had no effect, and all results came off the batter's card.

My FAC barely lasted through the year. I always had to reorder them. Playing outside, in the car, on the beach (how many times I had to chase Jim Rice down before he took a dip.)

Strat seemed better statistically, but I didn't have the Z-chart and you can't roll dice very well in the backseat of a car.

The best board game out there now, I think, is dynasty league baseball. It has all the "intangibles" of baseball made into tangibles. I bought it last year, when I was craving the days of sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by charts and things. Replayed part of the Red Sox season, using ScorePad on my Palm to track the stats. . .man that made a difference. I can remember Sunday evenings when I tabulated a weeks worth of boxscores.

-Palko

CardsRule · 03-26-2002, 03:36 PM

Statis Pro was THE baseball game of my youth. Hours whittled away at playing games and keeping stats. I think the appeal was you could really play games quickly but the game still retained a magic that just felt like baseball to me. The only other game that brings such memories was my first baseball game, I believe it was ALL-STAR baseball where you had round cards of the all-time greatest players that you put in a spinner that gave the play result when the spinner stopped. Spent hours playing that as well. Good memories.

Whistler · 03-26-2002, 05:59 PM

Statis Pro was terrific. I always thought the Z chart was just like the crazy-play charts the guy used in "Universal Baseball Association" ....

I saw one reference here to Sher-Co. THAT was my favorite growing up. If anybody has a copy, along with rules, I'd buy it in a second. You could actually position your fielders for each batter. It was slow, but tons of fun.

Aussie Mark · 03-27-2002, 12:06 AM

Statis Pro was also my introduction to baseball gaming, in 1980. I'd started playing baseball a couple of years before I came across Statis Pro in a store, next to all those cool Avalon Hill war games that I loved. I was already a fan of the AH war games, so I thought I'd give their baseball board game a shot, and from that point on I was hooked. Over the next few years I filled up 3 or 4 accounting ledger books with stats from my Statis Pro games :-)

Mark · 03-27-2002, 01:46 AM

Played Statis Pro for many years and still get it out from time to time. Just the smell of the cards and the board . . . ah memories.

Baseball on the Atari 2600 was the first computerised baseball game for me. Then Baseball on the Intellivision. Earl Weaver on the Amiga. Earl Weaver II. RBI Baseball. APBA Baseball. Baseball Blast. Tony La Russa. Microleague Baseball. Home Run Derby. OOTP2. Baseball Mogul. High Heat 2000. OOTP3. OOTP4. The one I played the most? Earl Weaver on the Amiga. But, then again, I've only had OOTP4 for a month!

coachtim30 · 03-27-2002, 03:04 AM

I never played Statis Pro or Strat o matic because I "cut my baseball teeth" on Sports Illustrated All-Time, All-Star Baseball. What a great game. Each franchise's all-time best players were included together on a colorful, coded sheet which cited their hitting, pitching, and fielding abilities. I bet my brother and I spent thousands of hours playing the game. A couple of years in was picked up by the Avalon Hill game co. and made into a bookshelf game. (Never quite the same because you had to use cards instead of the sheets.)

Does anybody else remember this game?

Admore · 03-28-2002, 04:56 PM

I too remember and miss Status Pro. We had a league at college, and we had these ridiculous teams. I think 12 guys played and we used both leagues. The 1988(?) Orel Herschiser card was amazing, as was the 40-40 Jose Canseco season as I recall. We played a 50 game regular season and a full playoffs. One year I lost more games in the playoffs than I did in the regular season. Thanks for the ramble...

blainer · 03-30-2002, 05:26 AM

Ah statis pro, what a game!

Remember when all you needed was 40 HRs to get a "Clutch Batting" (BD?) rating of 2? The last year I played, Schmidt was the only BD:2 guy. I guess that was probably raised to 50 or 60 now.

With regards to the PB pitching ratings, the rules suggested you draw a card before the pitcher came in. Most of the time the pitchers rating would remain the same, but sometimes the high end would decrease by one or two, and sometimes it would increase by one or two. That's why the PB numbers on the flip card went up to 12. It was supposed to mimic a pitcher having his stuff, or suffering through and off day.

DaCubFan · 03-30-2002, 05:32 AM

I had Statis Pro and Extra Innings. Ah the days of simulations before computers. I kept a hand written notebook full of stats as a kid. Besides OOTP, I'm in a BBW league now with a bunch of APBA board game old-timers. I'm one of the "kids" in the league at age 42. They still talk about cards.

JohnnyReb · 04-01-2002, 08:20 PM

The best memory I have of Statis Pro baseball was Jack Clark's 1991 card. My college buddy made him his number one choice just because of the amount of walksJack could draw!

But do any of you remember the Avalon Hill game Paydirt!, I loved that game. . . They quit making charts after the 92 season. Any games out there on the market like that still? I'd be more than interested.

Roxtar · 04-02-2002, 08:05 AM

WOW!!! And I thought I was an odd kid. Sitting around playing Statis Pro all the time. Keeping boxscores and updating stats. I loved that game. Probably kept me out of a lot of trouble as a kid too. Ahhh the memories...

cubboyroy7 · 04-02-2002, 09:40 AM

Great topic. I recently got psyched about statis pro and bought 3 different seasons via ebay. I used to play this game constantly along with title bout boxing, paydirt, and strat-o-matic football. What a blast those games were. Now i am 35 and trying to get my 9 year old non-sports fanatic son into these games and away from the N64. Oh well i always have my 2 year old son who loves anything to do with throwing a baseball or football at people.

03-26-2002, 06:39 AM	#1
MarlinsFan Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 15	Statis Pro Any of you guys ever play Statis Pro baseball by Avalon Hill. That's how I learned about sim games. Man, I loved that game. Tried APBA and Strat-o-Matic, but always came back to Statis Pro. Pursue the Pennant was cool because it introduced the concept of weather (i.e., wind) effects (at least to me).

03-26-2002, 06:53 AM	#2
Tarkus Minors (Single A) Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 93	Never played that one but I have some APBA card sets that date back to 1966. Tarkus __________________ Winning may not be everything, but losing isn't anything.

03-26-2002, 07:17 AM	#3
statfreak Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 2,435	For table-top games, I mostly played Pursue the Pennant, followed by Strat-O-Matic, and then SherCo. I actually did play Statis Pro on the Commodore 64. Too much offense. Though, I did convert P Rick Behenna (12AB .333 avg 1 hr) to a 3B and watched him tear up the league. __________________ Roll out the barrel!

03-26-2002, 11:44 AM	#7
Rich Tiger Fan Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Wayne,MI Posts: 482	It was called reduction!!...I grew up on statis pro baseball..and me and my brothers and friends probably played thousands of games betweeen 1979 and 1990...We got every edition between those years...I still remember waiting for the UPS guy to deliver the game every year....back then it took forever...You got the game and you pulled apart all the cards...oh the memories...and for it's time it was great...We never used the lefty righty chart anyway...I still remember the "Not me blind one" commment the pither would make to the ump before being tossed from the game for doctoring the ball on the Z chart.....Gosh a stroll down memory lane...Me and my brothers still reminace about that game...It was head and shoulders above Strat....it was easy and quick!!!...but yet very real ...in the way it portrayed the stats of baseball.....I could go on forever but you may get bored! __________________ Crystalis Robins 1904 LBA Champs

03-26-2002, 05:59 PM	#11
Whistler Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 30	Statis Pro was terrific. I always thought the Z chart was just like the crazy-play charts the guy used in "Universal Baseball Association" .... I saw one reference here to Sher-Co. THAT was my favorite growing up. If anybody has a copy, along with rules, I'd buy it in a second. You could actually position your fielders for each batter. It was slow, but tons of fun. __________________ Vancouver Whistlers -- Green Monsta League

03-26-2002, 08:07 AM	#4
MarlinsFan Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 15	The lefty vs righty, lefty vs lefty, and righty vs righty was comical in statis pro. It affected everyone exactly the same way.

03-26-2002, 10:18 AM	#5
Roy Hobbs Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 6	Statis-Pro was the first sim game I played. I was around 10-12 years old, and really didn't need anything more complicated. One thing I liked was that, as opposed to strat-o-matic, there was not a 50-50 relationship in the batter vs pitcher matchup. I played that game a lot. I found a website where some guy has started making cards for the current seasons, along with a bunch of new (more realistic rules, incl. ballparks.) Now I need more in a sim than I did then, but for a retro-afternoon, a good game of statis-pro will do (and it increases attendance by 20%). -Palko

03-26-2002, 11:14 AM	#6
MarlinsFan Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 15	Roy- I saw that website you're talking about. I actually finally througout all my old board games, including statis pro baseball, about 2 weeks ago in a pre-move purge of my attic. The next day (after the trash had been collected), I regretted not keeping the baseball game. Regarding your comment about control between batter and pitcher not being split 50/50, I remember if you went up against a pitcher with a PB:2-9, you had to nickel and dime him to get all his "hit points" (I can't remember what they called them) so he wouldn't be able to control every at bat. Man, I closer with a PB:2-9 was unbeatable. However, if you got to go up against a pitcher with a PB:2-5, you knew it was a pad your stats game!

03-26-2002, 12:01 PM	#8
MarlinsFan Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 15	what were the random plays called, the "Z chart" or something. I seem to remember it had a triple play and rainouts. I seem to recall that on the rainout it had a parenthetical comment, like (April games only; ignore if in dome). I remember waiting for the UPS guy to bring the cards, too. Tearing the sheets apart took forever, but gave you a good opportunity to see how all the players were rated.

03-26-2002, 01:08 PM	#9
Roy Hobbs Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 6	The "Z" chart was the name of the unusual plays and it was great. Strat had nothing like it, and it added a ton of realism. . .rainouts, brawls, suspensions, etc. The game had a built in fatigue (reduction). Each player was rated and you lowered by one for baserunner (something like that). At the point of zero, your PB had no effect, and all results came off the batter's card. My FAC barely lasted through the year. I always had to reorder them. Playing outside, in the car, on the beach (how many times I had to chase Jim Rice down before he took a dip.) Strat seemed better statistically, but I didn't have the Z-chart and you can't roll dice very well in the backseat of a car. The best board game out there now, I think, is dynasty league baseball. It has all the "intangibles" of baseball made into tangibles. I bought it last year, when I was craving the days of sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by charts and things. Replayed part of the Red Sox season, using ScorePad on my Palm to track the stats. . .man that made a difference. I can remember Sunday evenings when I tabulated a weeks worth of boxscores. -Palko

03-26-2002, 03:36 PM	#10
CardsRule Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 3	Statis Pro was THE baseball game of my youth. Hours whittled away at playing games and keeping stats. I think the appeal was you could really play games quickly but the game still retained a magic that just felt like baseball to me. The only other game that brings such memories was my first baseball game, I believe it was ALL-STAR baseball where you had round cards of the all-time greatest players that you put in a spinner that gave the play result when the spinner stopped. Spent hours playing that as well. Good memories.

03-27-2002, 12:06 AM	#12
Aussie Mark Major Leagues Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Downunder Posts: 489	Statis Pro was also my introduction to baseball gaming, in 1980. I'd started playing baseball a couple of years before I came across Statis Pro in a store, next to all those cool Avalon Hill war games that I loved. I was already a fan of the AH war games, so I thought I'd give their baseball board game a shot, and from that point on I was hooked. Over the next few years I filled up 3 or 4 accounting ledger books with stats from my Statis Pro games :-) __________________ Cheers Mark

03-27-2002, 01:46 AM	#13
Mark Minors (Single A) Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Melbourne Australia Posts: 64	Played Statis Pro for many years and still get it out from time to time. Just the smell of the cards and the board . . . ah memories. Baseball on the Atari 2600 was the first computerised baseball game for me. Then Baseball on the Intellivision. Earl Weaver on the Amiga. Earl Weaver II. RBI Baseball. APBA Baseball. Baseball Blast. Tony La Russa. Microleague Baseball. Home Run Derby. OOTP2. Baseball Mogul. High Heat 2000. OOTP3. OOTP4. The one I played the most? Earl Weaver on the Amiga. But, then again, I've only had OOTP4 for a month!

03-27-2002, 03:04 AM	#14
coachtim30 Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: USA Posts: 12	I never played Statis Pro or Strat o matic because I "cut my baseball teeth" on Sports Illustrated All-Time, All-Star Baseball. What a great game. Each franchise's all-time best players were included together on a colorful, coded sheet which cited their hitting, pitching, and fielding abilities. I bet my brother and I spent thousands of hours playing the game. A couple of years in was picked up by the Avalon Hill game co. and made into a bookshelf game. (Never quite the same because you had to use cards instead of the sheets.) Does anybody else remember this game?

03-28-2002, 04:56 PM	#15
Admore Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: TX Posts: 4	I too remember and miss Status Pro. We had a league at college, and we had these ridiculous teams. I think 12 guys played and we used both leagues. The 1988(?) Orel Herschiser card was amazing, as was the 40-40 Jose Canseco season as I recall. We played a 50 game regular season and a full playoffs. One year I lost more games in the playoffs than I did in the regular season. Thanks for the ramble...

03-30-2002, 05:26 AM	#16
blainer Bat Boy Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: DC Posts: 14	Ah statis pro, what a game! Remember when all you needed was 40 HRs to get a "Clutch Batting" (BD?) rating of 2? The last year I played, Schmidt was the only BD:2 guy. I guess that was probably raised to 50 or 60 now. With regards to the PB pitching ratings, the rules suggested you draw a card before the pitcher came in. Most of the time the pitchers rating would remain the same, but sometimes the high end would decrease by one or two, and sometimes it would increase by one or two. That's why the PB numbers on the flip card went up to 12. It was supposed to mimic a pitcher having his stuff, or suffering through and off day.

03-30-2002, 05:32 AM	#17
DaCubFan Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Illinois Posts: 232	I had Statis Pro and Extra Innings. Ah the days of simulations before computers. I kept a hand written notebook full of stats as a kid. Besides OOTP, I'm in a BBW league now with a bunch of APBA board game old-timers. I'm one of the "kids" in the league at age 42. They still talk about cards. __________________ Baseball... It's the only game!!

04-01-2002, 08:20 PM	#18
JohnnyReb Bat Boy Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 19	The best memory I have of Statis Pro baseball was Jack Clark's 1991 card. My college buddy made him his number one choice just because of the amount of walksJack could draw! But do any of you remember the Avalon Hill game Paydirt!, I loved that game. . . They quit making charts after the 92 season. Any games out there on the market like that still? I'd be more than interested.

04-02-2002, 08:05 AM	#19
Roxtar Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 43	WOW!!! And I thought I was an odd kid. Sitting around playing Statis Pro all the time. Keeping boxscores and updating stats. I loved that game. Probably kept me out of a lot of trouble as a kid too. Ahhh the memories...

04-02-2002, 09:40 AM	#20
cubboyroy7 Bat Boy Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 10	Great topic. I recently got psyched about statis pro and bought 3 different seasons via ebay. I used to play this game constantly along with title bout boxing, paydirt, and strat-o-matic football. What a blast those games were. Now i am 35 and trying to get my 9 year old non-sports fanatic son into these games and away from the N64. Oh well i always have my 2 year old son who loves anything to do with throwing a baseball or football at people.