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called it a single. If we left the other red "hit" cards in the deck, you would also get a single for those on a bunt, but only a single, even if you got an ace or king. If you declared that you were bunting for a sacrifice, black meant that you are out but moved the runners over successfully, red meant that you bunted into a force out of the lead runner, but were safe at first, and any hit or walk card meant that you reached first base and all runners moved up a base. Since the odds of getting a bunt hit were much better than getting a hit any other way, you could just bunt the whole game, but this struck us as both boring and against "the spirit of the game", so we never did it.

The general scoring of each card was as follows:
Deuce: Ground ball, pop up, or line drive to second baseman or shortstop; Double play if runners were forced and there were less than two out
Three, Six: Strikeout
Four: Walk
Five: Ground ball, pop up, or line drive to third baseman; the five of diamonds with at least two runners on base and no outs was a triple play.
Seven: Fly ball to leftfielder; Black sevens are sacrifice flies with a runner on
third base
Eight: Fly ball to centerfielder; Black eights are sacrifice flies with a runner on third base
Nine, Ten: Fly ball to rightfielder; Black nines are sacrifice flies with a runner on third base
Jack: Single
Queen: Double
King: Triple
Ace: Home Run

Since this was basically a game of chance, there is absolutely no reason why it would be accurate or reflect the skills of the real life players we were pretending to manage. And yet, it was remarkably realistic. I played hundreds of these games and can recall only two games in which a player hit three home runs. And my precious no - hitters were limited to two or three instances. Scores generally stayed within the range of real MLB games.

Xbox, Playstation and the rest have pushed such efforts into the distant past and I, myself, in my maturing years, have made the switch to the games made available to us through the technology of the twenty first century, but this game, which never went by any name other than "Baseball", is a cherished memory of mine. It was a special time of bonding with my big brother and the only outlet I had in my desire to be one of my heroes in the big leagues.

Learn more about this author, Michael J Link.
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