How to Play
Getting started
The two club panels under the banner are the main event, and they are independent: each one carries its own source, so you can draft a club by hand and give it a real 1927 opponent without leaving the mode you are in. Per panel: Choose a Real Team (type “1986 Mets” and click the suggestion), Build My Own Team (start empty and draft it), Random Historical All-Stars, and Random Historical Team, which is a one-shot roll rather than a mode. Clear empties the panel. With both panels empty you are offered one named matchup to try rather than having clubs rolled at you.
Under the clubs, in the order you answer them: What are we playing? — single game, best-of series, or full season; How long? when it is a series; Which team are you managing? — neither dugout, one of them, or both; and Who’s your bench coach?, which is folded away once you have met the four of them. Then Play Ball!, whose action is those two answers together: the format, and who is in the dugout. It is the only gold button on the page, it is dark until both clubs are picked, and it asks before simulating a game nobody is managing. A long roster scrolls it off the screen, so a pinned copy follows you down.
Settings and the Manager’s Office sit below the rosters. The Office holds your saved clubs, games, series and seasons, the thousand-game trial and the real-season door; it opens by itself when it has something on its shelves and stays shut when it doesn’t.
Building a club
Load a real one. Type a year and a club — “1986 Mets.” A suggestion appears; click it. Pressing Enter only leaves the header and an empty roster, which looks like a bug and isn’t.
Build your own. Pick every man yourself, position by position.
All-stars, or a roll. Random historical squads. The dice reroll a single spot.
By name. Type any first name or surname into the club box and field the best club of Martinezes, Griffeys or Willies available. A thin club fills from its own era rather than from strangers.
Any roster can be edited by hand. Drop a man with the ×, send a starter to the bench with the triangle, and fill an open spot from the search box. Dropping somebody always leaves a way to replace him.
Arranging the card. Lineups arrive already arranged the way a manager would set one — on-base and legs up top, power in the middle, worst bat ninth. Use the arrows to reorder, or the position badge to move a man to another spot he can play. Auto-arrange puts it back.
A full club is in the lineup and a -man rotation, and the other are split between the bench and the bullpen the way that club’s own season split them: . men either way. The nine positions and one starter are all you need to play.
Setting up the game
Pitch detail. Three settings, and this is the one that changes the game most.
- Plate appearances — one decision per hitter, with the count played out under the hood.
- Every pitch — you are asked on all of them. The spacebar throws the routine ones.
- Classic — the faster single-draw model, with no count at all.
Pitcher bats. Designated hitter, pitchers hit, or auto. On auto the era decides, the way baseball did it — and a club with no real season behind it has no era to read, so it takes the DH.
Ballpark. Auto follows whoever is hosting. Pick a park instead and it applies to every game, with its own dropdown of the seasons it actually stood. Park factors are measured from the real thing.
Other dugout. How the opposing skipper plays — old school, balanced or sabermetric. This is the dugout question that reaches the engine.
Bench coach. Pops, Coach, the Professor, or nobody. He has opinions about your calls and they are his own.
Matchup options reset when you refresh. Preferences — your coach, the pitch cadence, the other dugout — stay.
Managing a game
On defense. Set your approach, then throw it. You can also hold the runner at first or second, bring the infield in, play no doubles, shift, pitch around him, or walk him outright.
Only your pitch selection is hidden from the other dugout. The shift, the holds, the infield in and no doubles are all announced — because in a real ballpark you can see them.
On offense. Swing away, bunt, bunt for a hit, squeeze, hit and run, slash, or send a runner. Set how hard your runners go on the bases.
Every pitch. In that mode the swing button becomes Step Into the Box and you get the per-pitch calls: take or green-light the hitter, waste or attack from the mound. Everywhere else it says Hit away. The batter’s calls move the at-bat further than the pitcher’s, and the tooltips say so.
What sticks, and what doesn’t. Your approach dials are standing orders — set the pitching or batting approach and it holds until you change it. The alignment calls are one-batter calls: the hold, the infield in, no doubles and the shift stay on for every pitch of the at-bat you set them in, then come off for the next hitter.
Substitutions. Click a man to pinch hit, pinch run or change pitchers, mid-count included. A double switch is one action. Hit for your pitcher and you will be asked for a new arm — you cannot leave a position player on the mound. Anyone left at a spot he has never played fields it at the worst rating the engine can give.
Reading the screen
Fielding. The 20-80 scouting scale: 50 is average, 80 is the best of his generation, and it moves in fives the way a scout’s card does. Graded against his own position and his own era. A dash means nobody is rated there.
Steal bolts say how often he runs. Pull arrows — yellow pulls, blue goes the other way; that is what the shift reads.
tiring on an arm, in red, means what it says.
The matchup card shows what is left from the count you are in. At 3-0 the walk is the story; at 0-2 it isn’t.
Due up marks who leads off next half-inning for the club in the field.
Hover anything for the full line. Your bench coach’s read is in there too.
Between games
Series and seasons both let you set the card before each game — reorder the lineup, move a glove, start a bench man, arrange the rotation and pick tonight’s starter.
Starters need rest. In a series a man goes games ; in a season . Arms that worked hard yesterday carry it into tonight, and the bullpen says so.
Series and seasons
A series is best of 3, 5 or 7, hosted the way the real formats do it.
A season puts you in a real one — the 1986 Mets in the real NL East, against a real schedule, with the other clubs playing their own games around you. Standings by division, league leaders, every club’s book, and an October bracket that matches the era.
A round robin plays your saved clubs against each other.
Saving
Series, seasons and games in progress save themselves. A game saved mid-inning comes back mid-inning.
Finished and abandoned games land in the Manager’s Office, where you can review them, keep them or throw them away.