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BASEBALL
GAMES
HOMEPAGE
 .... 
  DICE BASEBALL  
 A Tabletop Tradition

 -- text copyrighted 2016-19 by the Baseball Games front office staff --
....
BASEBALL
GAMES
FORUM
 




  "Dice baseball" -- now there's a great American tradition.  Yeah, what ever happened to that?  

        Well, there's a story there, or possibly several stories.  Bear with us for just a few moments 
  while we sort those out.  We're talking about the "home version" of dice baseball here, not a boxed, 
  commercially-produced game -- although commercial games were undoubtedly the source of the 
  many different home versions, and their influence and historic connections are an important part 
  of the discussion.  That is, y'know, if we're going to have a discussion and not just jump right in 
  to playing.  
        Dice baseball, for any visitors here who may not be aware, was played by untold thousands 
  upon thousands of kids -- and a few adults too -- over the course of more than a century, and 
  seems to have faded as a popular pastime only since around the early 1980s.  Sadly, any version 
  of this delightful game is utterly alien to almost every youngster nowadays, and even most gamers, 
  among the throngs of tabletop baseball enthusiasts today who avidly enjoy far more sophisticated 
  baseball simulations involving dice, are oblivious to the debt their games owe to a simpler form 
  of dice baseball.  

        A pair of standard dice.  A scoresheet and a pencil.  A little imagination (the more the better).  
  That's all you need.  Fun ensues.  Adults, you can teach it to the kids.  Kids, you can learn it here 
  yourselves.  
        Pull up a chair.  We're going to give you a little background on all of it, and then we're going 
  to show you how to play it. 
  

The Professional Game of Base Ball -- Parker Brothers, c1896
  The Professional Game of Base Ball,
      Parker Brothers, c1896 
The Game of Base Ball -- Parker Brothers, 1890s
  The Game of Base Ball,
      Parker Brothers, 1890s 
The College Base Ball Game -- Parker Brothers, 1906
  The College Base Ball Game,
      Parker Brothers, 1906 

        A word, first, if we may, about the disappearance of tradition, and, in particular, traditional 
  entertainments...  we interrupt your regularly-scheduled programme for a brief rant...  

        The cranky old buzzards who run this website and Forum also frequent many other game, card, 
  antique, and sports memorabilia forums -- and when we see a post in any of them, as we often do, 
  titled something like "Question about ancient baseball game" or "Help me identify antique card," 
  we naturally get a little revved up, expecting that we can either provide the answer, or that someone    
  else will have an answer we don't and that we ourselves will thereby actually learn something.  
        Most of the time, the "ancient baseball game" or "antique card" turns out to be something from 
  the 1980s or '90s, which makes the cranky old buzzards here feel just a little older and crankier.  
  We're all bifocal-wearing longtime AARP members here, but down deep we're just superannuated 
  adolescents.  That may go some ways toward explaining our fascination with tabletop baseball, 
  which we first encountered as boys back in the 1950s, and with "dice baseball" in particular, to 
  which we were introduced in the 1960s.  You know, the '50s and '60s, which for most Americans 
  under the age of 40 means the Dark Ages, something around the time General Washington and 
  General Lincoln led the US and our Japanese allies to victory over President Hitler of England 
  during the Civil War.  
        Hey, now before you jump to the conclusion that this is just another tired, cliche-filled "why, 
  back in my day..." dirge about how things nowadays ain't the way they usedta be, by cracky, and 
  that we're completely out of touch with anything that's happened since Coolidge was President, 
  well, hold yer horses there, missy.  Dag nabbit.  No need to send us telegrams or ring us up on 
  our rotary-dial phones to complain.  We're presenting dice baseball, but we'll stipulate that we 
  have in fact played computer baseball games, and sports games on the Wii, and the latest version 
  of Halo and whatnot, and we've quite enjoyed them, amongst ourselves or playing with our 
  nephews and nieces and grandkids.  There's a great deal to be said for the graphics and sound 
  effects and the bells and whistles and blinkenlights.  We would contend, however, that whatever 
  entertainment they provide -- and that's no small thing, of course -- they all lack the intellectual 
  stimulation offered by a good boardgame.  But then again, why wouldn't kids prefer to spend 
  their entire afternoon all alone playing Warcraft on their iPads instead of wasting as much as 
  two minutes listening to family stories or insights from grandpa or grandma, let alone half an 
  hour playing some boring old game with them...  
 
        Beyond that, we find a disturbing ignorance of, even an active contempt for, anything that 
  happened longer ago than last week among too many otherwise intelligent young people, raised 
  on computers, babysat by video-game consoles, and miserably addicted to texting and twittering.  
  Forget events and figures of world history -- even major pop-culture icons of sport, music, film, 
  and television might as well be unrecognizable 18th-century obscurities if they didn't make 
  headlines in the past year.  And that, sadly, extends to the modern disregard for traditional 
  pastimes, and in particular traditional games.  
        Kids and young adults today have so much access to, and so much familiarity with, so much 
  high-tech entertainment, most young people, tragically, are wholly unacquainted with boardgames 
  of any sort and regard the very idea of boardgames and paper-and-pencil games as impossibly dull, 
  fusty, and unappealing.  The very idea that boardgames were, for generations, an enormously 
  popular activity for kids as well as adults -- and especially for kids and adults together, as a family 
  entertainment -- is something they find literally difficult to picture, indeed difficult even to believe.  
  But it turns out -- we've discovered to our astonishment -- that if you can lasso the young'ns and 
  actually get them to sit down for a good boardgame, they will in fact enjoy it and yes, want to 
  come back for more.  For kids who already have an interest in "real" baseball, dice baseball can 
  be a revelation -- something so simple, yet replicating the sport right there on the tabletop, and 
  providing some pleasurable exercise for those woefully atrophied muscles of imagination. 

        Pardon our digression.  We now return to the matter at hand...  
 

Double Game Board -- Parker Brothers, 1926
Double Game Board ~ Football Baseball and Checkers, 
      Parker Brothers, 1926
The National-American Base Ball Playing Field -- Parker Brothers, 1926
Baseball Football and Checkers -- Parker Brothers, 1957
         Baseball Football and Checkers ~ 3 Games in 1,
               Parker Brothers, 1957 

        Dice baseball was our absolute favorite as kids -- despite growing up in households full of 
  commercially-produced boardgames, most of them highly entertaining, well-loved, and repeatedly 
  played.  Dice baseball, though, wasn't a store-bought tabletop baseball game from a big-name 
  game publisher, no -- no need for that.  All we needed was a pair of dice, an easily-memorized 
  table of results, scoresheets, and a pencil.  
        The game was handed down to us in the 1960s from our dads and uncles, who'd played it as 
  boys themselves in the 1930s.  Whence they got it will never be known -- none of them knew of 
  any source other than another boy at the time, one of their neighborhood pals, who'd taught it to 
  them.  Decades later, as we became fascinated with antique tabletop baseball games and busy 
  developing our own game, we wondered about how that 1930s game came to be.  The source of 
  the game, its true origin, became something of a Holy Grail quest for us -- because the game's 
  history, its lineage, its geneology if you will, was a thread that ran through time and place and 
  connected generations....  Depression-era boys on the front porch of a home in their urban 
  neighborhood, on a rainy summer day when they couldn't play sandlot ball, or in the cellar on 
  a winter afternoon, imagining Ott or Mize or Foxx or DiMaggio at the plate with each roll of 
  the dice...  years pass, and the boys, now men, teach the game to their sons and nephews in 
  their pre-fab suburbs and play it with them, and those kids teach it to their friends and play it 
  on patios and in rec rooms, visualizing Mantle or Killebrew or fictional players from their own 
  imaginations as the dice bounce on the table...  and the years roll on, and those kids of the '60s, 
  now grown as well, try to pass the game along to yet another generation...  and 21st-century boys 
  engage in a pastime among boyhood friends, a father-son bonding ritual, a tradition, learned and 
  played a lifetime earlier by boys who'd learned it from and played it with dads and uncles, all 
  gone now, all gone, who'd played it another lifetime before that, having learned it from...  
        Well, that was the mystery.  Generations connected back, but eventually, far enough back, 
  the ultimate source hid behind some opaque haze.  In the early '90s, we finally tracked down 
  that neighborhood pal of our forebears' boyhood but, alas!, although otherwise still sharp as a 
  tack, he had no memory of how or where he'd learned the game.  

        It's likely, though, that the original source, perhaps through someone of a generation or two 
  even earlier, was one of several Parker Brothers' baseball games published between the 1890s and 
  1920s.  Parker Brothers produced numerous versions of dice baseball, all fundamentally similar 
  to one another, for more than seventy years -- The Professional Game of Base Ball (circa 1896), 
  The Game of BaseBall (circa 1899), The College Base Ball Game (1906), The National-American 
  Base Ball Playing Field in their Double Game Board (1926 and 1948) and Baseball Football 
  and Checkers (1957 and 1962) game medleys, and the last three editions (1954, 1957, and 1961) 
  of Game of Peg Baseball. 
 

Game of Peg Baseball -- Parker Brothers, 1954
    Game of Peg Baseball, Parker Brothers, 1954
Game of Peg Baseball -- Parker Brothers, 1957
    Game of Peg Baseball, Parker Brothers, 1957
Game of Peg Baseball -- Parker Brothers, 1961
 Game of Peg Baseball, Parker Bros, 1961

        All these games were themselves derived from Our National Ball Game, designed in 1885 
  by Edward K McGill.  That game is a landmark in the development of tabletop baseball.  It was 
  not the very first baseball game to employ dice for play results -- League Parlor Base Ball by 
  R Bliss Manufacturing preceded it by a year.  But the Bliss game was an odd, rudimentary thing, 
  using only a single die (we'll show you that one, too, in a few moments).  A handful of single-die 
  games followed in both commercial and folk versions in later years, and McLoughlin Brothers, 
  with their 1886 Home Base Ball, was the first of many companies to produce a two-dice game 
  using just the eleven totals produced by a pair of dice (many a "homebrew" version also uses 
  that method).  McGill's game, however, obtained results from the 21 different combinations 
  possible with the dice.  This made for a larger variety of play results -- including "strike," 
  which added a bit of suspense to each roll and some pacing to the game -- and a much more 
  satisfying game overall.  
        In the 130 years since Our National Ball Game made its debut, dozens of manufacturers 
  have produced hundreds of other dice-driven baseball games, with varying degrees of simplicity    
  and complexity, among the more than a thousand different tabletop baseball games employing 
  cards, spinners, miniature implements, spring-loaded mechanical elements, electronics, and any 
  number of other methods and devices in various combination ranging from the ingenious to the 
  inane.  But it seems certain that McGill's creation was the basis for many of the hugely popular 
  folk-versions of dice baseball as well as for the far more complicated dice-based baseball 
  simulations that evolved through the years -- and it's somehow deeply pleasing to know that 
  some version of McGill's invention thrived for so long as a homemade entertainment, and still 
  survives more than a century and a quarter down the road.
Our National Ball Game -- McGill & Delany, 1886Our National Ball Game -- McGill & Delany, 1886Our National Ball Game -- McGill & Delany, 1886

      Many folks we've encountered who played dice baseball in their own childhood or 
  adolescence remember playing a version very similar to the one we knew.  That may lend  
  some credence to our guess that a popular commercially-produced game had provided the 
  basis for so many homebrew versions of dice baseball.  Dozens of other versions can be 
  found on the internet, and in any number of books titled something like "Games for Kids" 
  and "Games You Can Make at Home" -- but the traditional, most widespread version has 
  become curiously tough to locate.  Full marks, to be sure, to those many clever boys who 
  devised a dice baseball game on their own without having had the benefit of an older 
  game taught to them by a family elder, and we'll include several such inventions below.  
  But it's the versions of dice baseball handed down through one or more generations, and 
  the stories they hold, that most intrigue us.  
      Most "folk-game" variations of dice baseball use two standard dice, but we should 
  mention that while most entries on the 130-year-long long list of commercially-produced 
  dice baseball games likewise employ a standard pair, there have been and are others that 
  use a single die, some that use three, and still others have involved four, six, and more, 
  or require ten-sided or 20-sided dice or other "special," uniquely-marked dice, rather 
  than the standard "d6" with which everyone's familiar.  And not only the commercial 
  games, but also a few homebrew versions and several variations available in print or 
  on the internet involve considerably more complex and detailed rules, edging into the 
  realm of simulation games with results individualized for each player in the line-up.  
  We're concerned here with only "basic" dice baseball -- a simple set of rules, no more 
  than three dice, and uniform, generic odds for all players.  A "starter" game, if you will.  

      One last thing before we roll the dice:  any version of dice baseball -- or for that 
  matter, any tabletop baseball game regardless of the method of play -- presents a great 
  opportunity for adults to teach kids the strategies and subtleties of baseball, and for kids 
  to exercise their underutilized imaginations, rather than having the images and results 
  spoon-fed to them by computerized graphics.  We strongly recommend, for you adults 
  who'd like to teach kids how to play any tabletop baseball game, you first take them to 
  see an actual ballgame -- any level of play, major leagues, minors, the local high school 
  team -- or at least watch a game on TV with them, and see if it generates some interest 
  in them.  If it does, then help them picture the action in their minds when you play the 
  tabletop version.  Muster up your best Vin Scully impression!  Be the play-by-play man, 
  announce it and describe the action as play proceeds.  A little hand-drawn playing field 
  with coins or buttons to indicate baserunners helps them visualize the play as well.  
      The kids' line-ups and yours are limited only by the imagination, too.  You and they 
  can insert the names of major league stars past or present, or those of the players on the 
  local minor pro team, or your kid's Little League teammates, or create fictional players 
  out of whole cloth (still more imagination required there, and we think more fun).  
      If you know how to score a game (another lost art -- maybe we should do an article 
  on that) and want to keep a proper scoresheet to record the result of every at-bat (yesss!), 
  rather than just tallying the runs in each inning, it's easy enough to draw your own, or 
  you can just do an internet image search for "baseball scoresheet" and find hundreds of 
  different templates you can print out.  Seriously, how else can you know who's up next?  

      All right, we've kept you waiting long enough.  Without further ado, then, we're going  
  to present several variations of dice baseball for you right here, with a little additional 
  annotation.  First we'll trot out just a few of the earliest commercially-produced games -- 
  a selection of the most popular and most noteworthy -- and show you how they worked.  
  Then we'll present a variety of homebrew versions, as described to us by the guys who 
  actually played them -- and along with that, we'll provide some of their reminiscences 
  of playing and developing more complex versions of dice baseball.  And we'll conclude 
  with a sampling of dice baseball games we've seen on the internet.  
      For each of them, we'll give you the total of hits and outs to give you an idea of 
  how much offence each game affords.  We feel a game with an overall batting average 
  between about .260 and .290 provides the most realistic and satisfying results, so 
  keep that in mind when choosing a game to try.  
      Let's roll!

League Parlor Base Ball -- R Bliss Mfg, 1884 


League Parlor Base Ball.
 R Bliss Mfg, 1884 

  The first tabletop baseball game to 
  use dice -- well, one die, anyway, 
  a unique die marked 1, 2, 3, and 4 
  and on the two other sides "O." 
  Rolling an O ends the half-inning.  
        You can give this stunningly 
  simple game a go just by using 
  a standard d6 and counting a roll 
  of 5 or 6 the same as O.  
        The printed rules suggest the 
  option of having the O represent 
  two outs or just one, which would 
  boost the offence to .500 and 
  .667 respectively.  

  Special thanks to Tom Shieber, 
  Senior Curator at the Baseball 
  Hall of Fame and Museum, for 
  providing us the rules sheet.  


  1 -- single 
  2 -- double 
  3 -- triple 
  4 -- home run 
  O -- three outs 
  O -- three outs 
  ------------------ 
  4 H, 6 O -- .400  




Our National Ball Game
 McGill & Delany, c1886 
 A G Spalding & Bros, c1887 

  This is really the one that started it all, the first 
  tabletop baseball game to utilize the 21 different 
  combinations possible with a standard pair of dice, 
  the inspiration for hundreds of both commercial 
  and homemade dice baseball games that followed.  
        It's still seriously heavy on offense, although 
  not as insane as the Bliss game, and the seven 
  strikes will add a few more outs in gameplay.  
  One oddity: it's twice as easy to hit a triple as it 
  is a double.  Never mind!  McGill and Delany 
  were geniuses to realize you could make a pretty 
  good ballgame with just two dice, and for what 
  their invention bestowed upon tabletop sports 
  gaming, they belong in the Hall of Fame. 

  1 / 1   double 
  1 / 2   single 
  1 / 3   single 
  1 / 4   single 
  1 / 5   base on error  
  1 / 6   base on balls 
  2 / 2   strike 
  2 / 3   strike 
  2 / 4   strike 
  2 / 5   strike 
  2 / 6   foul out 
  3 / 3   out at 1st 
  3 / 4   out at 1st 
  3 / 5   out at 1st 
  3 / 6   out at 1st 
  4 / 4   fly out  
  4 / 5   fly out  
  4 / 6   fly out  
  5 / 5   double play  
  5 / 6   triple  
  6 / 6   home run 
  ---------------------------
  10 H, 17+ O -- <.370 





The Professional Game of Base Ball
 Parker Bros, c1896 
 The Game of Base Ball 
 Parker Bros, c1899 
 The College Base Ball Game 
 Parker Bros, 1906 
  
  Game publishing giants Parker Brothers began producing  
  their own two-dice game, clearly derived from McGill's 
  design, perhaps as early as 1890, although 1894 or 1896 
  dates are more reliably ascribed to The Professional 
  Game of Base Ball.  The same game, retitled simply The 
  Game of Base Ball in order to disassociate itself with the 
  unsavory gambling scandals that riddled 19th-century 
  pro ball, debuted around 1899, and, with only the subtlest 
  changes to gameplay, was reintroduced with an even purer 
  amateur cachet in 1906 as The College Base Ball Game.  
        The game(s) enjoyed widespread popularity for years 
  thanks to the engaging method of play and the massive 
  reach of Parker Brothers' distribution, and influenced 
  the creation of even more homebrew versions.  Hitting 
  was only a bit less torrid than in McGill's original.  The 
  dice results for the first and last editions are at right, the 
  only revisions changing both the 3/4 fly out and the 5/5 
  double play into strikeouts.  One unwelcome feature, 
  common to so many tabletop baseball games over the 
  years, is the inclusion of a "rare play" -- here, the balk 
  -- as a frequent occurrence among the play results. 


 The Professional 
Game of Base Ball 

  1 / 1   strikeout 
  1 / 2   out at 1st 
  1 / 3   out at 1st 
  1 / 4   out at 1st 
  1 / 5   out at 1st 
  1 / 6   base on error  
  2 / 2   double  
  2 / 3   single 
  2 / 4   single 
  2 / 5   single 
  2 / 6   single 
  3 / 3   triple 
  3 / 4   fly out 
  3 / 5   fly out  
  3 / 6   fly out  
  4 / 4   double play  
  4 / 5   walk 
  4 / 6   balk 
  5 / 5   double play 
  5 / 6   foul out 
  6 / 6   home run 
  ---------------------------
  11 H, 21 O -- .344  



 The College 
 Base Ball Game 

  1 / 1   strikeout 
  1 / 2   out at 1st 
  1 / 3   out at 1st 
  1 / 4   out at 1st 
  1 / 5   out at 1st 
  1 / 6   base on error  
  2 / 2   double  
  2 / 3   single 
  2 / 4   single 
  2 / 5   single 
  2 / 6   single 
  3 / 3   triple 
  3 / 4   strikeout 
  3 / 5   fly out  
  3 / 6   fly out 
  4 / 4   double play 
  4 / 5   walk 
  4 / 6   balk 
  5 / 5   strikeout 
  5 / 6   foul out 
  6 / 6   home run 
  ---------------------------
  11 H, 21 O -- .344

Parlor Base Ball -- American Parlor Baseball, 1903
Peg Base Ball -- Parker Brothers, 1908 


Parlor Base Ball
 American Parlor Baseball / 
 American Play Games, 1903 
Peg Base Ball
 Parker Brothers, 1908 and 1936 

  In 1903, Frank Honeck introduced Parlor 
  Base Ball, a graphically gorgeous if 
  childishly simplistic and utterly awful 
  single-die game.  A specially marked die 
  indicated 1 (single), 2 (double), 3 (triple), 
  H (home run), and on two faces O (out).  
  That was the whole game.  It remained 
  inexplicably popular for over a decade.  
      Parker Brothers countered in 1908 
  with their own single-die game, Peg 
  Base Ball, likewise a beautiful thing to 
  behold and only slightly less awful as a 
  game.  The roll / counter-roll method of 
  play debuted with Peg -- gamers alternate 
  rolling the die, and the team in the field 
  gets a chance with each throw to negate 
  a successful throw by the team at bat.  
  A popular item into the late 1920s, this.  



 Parlor Base Ball 
  1 - single         4 - home run 
  2 - double        5 - out 
  3 - triple           6 - out    
  ------------------------------------
  4 H, 2 O -- .667
 

 Peg Base Ball 
  Team at bat (offense) rolls once, then 
  team team in field (defense) rolls once 
  to allow or negate roll by offense. 

  1 - single if defense rolls 2, 4, or 6, 
        out if defense rolls 1, 3, or 5 
  2 - double if defense rolls 2, 4, or 6 
        out if defense rolls 1, 3, or 5 
  3 - triple if defense rolls 2, 4, or 6 
        out if defense rolls 1, 3, or 5 
  4 - home run if defense rolls 2, 4, or 6 
        out if defense rolls 1, 3, or 5 
  5 - foul out if defense rolls 2, 4, or 6, 
        strike if defense rolls 1, 3, or 5 
  6 - ball if defense rolls 2, 4, or 6, 
        strike if defense rolls 1, 3, or 5 
  ---------------------------------------------
  4 H, 5+ O -- <.444

The Champion Base Ball Game -- New York Games Co, 1913


 The Champion Base Ball Game 
 New York Games Co, 1913 

  Prior to World War I, inventors and 
  game companies seemed still to be 
  having trouble figuring out how to 
  design a baseball game that yielded 
  realistic results using only dice.  The 
  unusual formula in The Champion 
  Base Ball Game, using the eleven 
  totals possible with a pair of dice, 
  did not get them any closer. 

   2   stolen base if runner on;  
        batter out if bases empty 
   3   strikeout 
   4   foul out 
   5   sacrifice, runners advance 
        if less than two out;  
        if two out, batter out,  
        no runner advance 
   6   runner on 1st picked off; 
        if no runner on 1st, 
        batter grounds out 
   7   fly out 
   8   single 
   9   double 
  10   triple 
  11   home run 
  12   base on balls 
  ------------------------------------
  14 H, 11-21 O -- .400-.560

Armstead's Play Ball -- J I Austen, 1920s 


 Armstead's Play Ball 
 J I Austen Co, c1920 

  And... closer, but still no cigar, for 
  this effort.  It's a safe assumption, 
  though, that many companies aimed 
  less for realism than they did for 
  overheated scoring, ostensibly to 
  entertain younger gamers.  
        Armstead's provided unique dice 
  marked with one bat, two bats, a pair 
  of crossed bats, four bats arranged 
  in a diamond shape, a baseball, and 
  a glove, which easily translate to 
  the 1 through 6 spots, respectively, 
  on standard dice.  The game was also 
  produced in spinner format, titled 
  Armstead's Play Ball Junior, with 
  all 36 combinations represented, 
  accurately replicating the dice.    

  1 / 1   single 
  1 / 2   strike 
  1 / 3   hit by pitch 
  1 / 4   ball 
  1 / 5   out 
  1 / 6   out 
  2 / 2   single 
  2 / 3   strike 
  2 / 4   out 
  2 / 5   out 
  2 / 6   out 
  3 / 3   single 
  3 / 4   strike 
  3 / 5   ball 
  3 / 6   out 
  4 / 4   double 
  4 / 5   out  
  4 / 6   single 
  5 / 5   triple  
  5 / 6   out 
  6 / 6   home run 
  ------------------
  8 H, 16 O -- .333 




Double Game Board
 Parker Brothers, 1926 and 1948 
  Game of Peg Baseball 
 Parker Brothers, 1961 
  Baseball Football and Checkers 
  Parker Brothers, 1957 and 1962 

  In 1926, Parker Brothers revived, and significantly revised, 
  their earlier two-dice game, reissuing it as part of their new 
  Double Game Board medley.  Just four changes to the 21 
  original results turned a slugfest into a pitchers' duel -- the 
  2/4 and 2/6 singles and the 4/6 balk turned into outs, with a 
  lone out replacing the 4/4 double play.  Identical play results 
  saw the offense remain stifled on "The National-American 
  Base Ball Playing Field" despite revised graphics (1948) 
  and a title change (Baseball Football and Checkers, 1957 
  and 1962).  
        The single-die Peg Base Ball was revived in 1936 as 
  Peg Baseball Game, retitled Game of Peg Baseball for new 
  editions in 1954, 1957, and 1961.  The 1936 reissue uses 
  the 1908 rules, as do most examples of the 1950s editions, 
  although a few instead contain the 1926 rules for two-dice 
  play.  The 1961 edition plays according only to the Double 
  Game Board two-dice rules.  

 Double Game Board / 
 Baseball Football 
 and Checkers 

  1 / 1   strikeout 
  1 / 2   out at 1st 
  1 / 3   out at 1st 
  1 / 4   out at 1st 
  1 / 5   out at 1st 
  1 / 6   base on error  
  2 / 2   double  
  2 / 3   single to LF 
  2 / 4   strikeout 
  2 / 5   single to RF  
  2 / 6   foul out 
  3 / 3   triple  
  3 / 4   strikeout 
  3 / 5   fly out  
  3 / 6   fly out 
  4 / 4   out at 1st 
  4 / 5   base on balls 
  4 / 6   infield fly 
  5 / 5   strikeout 
  5 / 6   foul out  
  6 / 6   home run 
  ---------------------------
  7 H, 27 O -- .206 


 Game of 
 Peg Baseball 
 (1961 edition) 

  1 / 1   strikeout 
  1 / 2   out at 1st 
  1 / 3   out at 1st 
  1 / 4   out at 1st 
  1 / 5   out at 1st 
  1 / 6   base on error  
  2 / 2   double  
  2 / 3   single to LF 
  2 / 4   strikeout 
  2 / 5   single to RF  
  2 / 6   foul out 
  3 / 3   triple  
  3 / 4   strikeout 
  3 / 5   fly out  
  3 / 6   fly out  
  4 / 4   out at 1st 
  4 / 5   base on balls 
  4 / 6   infield fly  
  5 / 5   strikeout 
  5 / 6   foul out  
  6 / 6   home run 
  ---------------------------
  7 H, 27 O -- .206 




 The Great American Game ~ 
 Pocket Base Ball 
 Neddy Pocket Game Co, 1920s 

  Someone finally devised a 
  pretty satisfactory system here 
  -- alas, the little-known Neddy 
  company did not generate much 
  in sales, the game languished 
  in obscurity, and only a very 
  few examples of it survive. 
 

The Great American Game ~ Pocket Base Ball -- Neddy Pocket Game Co, 1920s
 

  1 / 1   strikeout 
  1 / 2   out 
  1 / 3   out 
  1 / 4   out 
  1 / 5   bunt single  
  1 / 6   out, runners advance 
  2 / 2   double 
  2 / 3   single 
  2 / 4   single 
  2 / 5   hit by pitch 
  2 / 6   out, runners advance 
  3 / 3   triple  
  3 / 4   fly out 
  3 / 5   fly out  
  3 / 6   fly out  
  4 / 4   double play, batter and 
            most advanced runner out 
            -- if bases empty, strikeout 
  4 / 5   base on balls 
  4 / 6   strikeout 
  5 / 5   double play, two most advanced 
            runners out, batter safe -- 
            if only one runner or none, 
            strikeout 
  5 / 6   foul out  
  6 / 6   home run 
  ---------------------------------------------
  9 H, 23 O -- .281 




  And there we're going to cut short the parade of early commercial dice games.  
  There were, of course, many others we've left out, but the games above were 
  among the earliest and either most influential or best designed.  Now, though, 
  it's time to move on to the real point of this exercise -- showcasing some of 
  the many homebrew games undoubtedly derived from those early commercial 
  efforts... and, we hope, encouraging you to give one or two of them a whirl, 
  and teaching them to some young baseball fan of your acquaintance... 






dice baseball as we were taught it

  This was the Sacred Formula handed down to us by the Ancient Ones 
  -- er, no, sorry, got carried away there for a second.  But it was indeed 
  the system taught to us by the previous generation of our family, the 
  game they'd played as boys in the 1930s.  We, as boys in the 1960s, 
  were immediately fascinated by it and played it incessantly well into 
  our teens.  
        In many aspects, it's an amalgam of several of the commercial 
  games we've shown.  One thing we particularly liked about it was the 
  presence of balls and strikes among the dice results, an element seen 
  in only the McGill and Armstead games above -- for us, those added 
  more suspense to each roll and each at-bat, and a more baseballesque 
  flow and pace.  Some gamers prefer the instant gratification of hit 
  or out with each roll and hate balls and strikes as unnecessary 
  time-killers.  They are wrong.  
        As the months and years rolled along, we did on occasion become 
  annoyed with some results, and, having no grasp then of the laws of 
  permutations, we tinkered ignorantly with the outcomes, a subtle 
  tweak or two blindly changing, for a few games here and a month or 
  two there, the overall BA from as high as .353 (6 H, 11 O) to as low 
  as .211 (4 H, 15 O).  Two variations that did work are at far right.  




original 1930s
dice baseball

  1 / 1   home run 
  1 / 2   strike 
  1 / 3   double play  
  1 / 4   fly out 
  1 / 5   ball 
  1 / 6   stolen base 
  2 / 2   triple 
  2 / 3   ground out 
  2 / 4   foul out 
  2 / 5   strike   
  2 / 6   ball 
  3 / 3   double 
  3 / 4   ball 
  3 / 5   ball 
  3 / 6   strike 
  4 / 4   single 
  4 / 5   strike 
  4 / 6   ball 
  5 / 5   walk 
  5 / 6   ground out 
  6 / 6   base on error 
  ------------------
  4 H, 11+ O -- <.267 




1960s
variation 4

  1 / 1   home run 
  1 / 2   strike 
  1 / 3   double play  
  1 / 4   walk 
  1 / 5   ball 
  1 / 6   strikeout 
  2 / 2   triple 
  2 / 3   ground out 
  2 / 4   foul out 
  2 / 5   strike   
  2 / 6   ball 
  3 / 3   double 
  3 / 4   ball 
  3 / 5   ball 
  3 / 6   strike 
  4 / 4   single 
  4 / 5   strike 
  4 / 6   fly out  
  5 / 5   single  
  5 / 6   ground out 
  6 / 6   base on error 
  ------------------
  5 H, 13+ O -- <.278 






1960s
variation 9

  1 / 1   home run 
  1 / 2   single 
  1 / 3   double play  
  1 / 4   fly out 
  1 / 5   fly out 
  1 / 6   strikeout 
  2 / 2   base hit * 
  2 / 3   ground out 
  2 / 4   foul out 
  2 / 5   strike   
  2 / 6   ball 
  3 / 3   double 
  3 / 4   ball 
  3 / 5   ball 
  3 / 6   strike 
  4 / 4   single 
  4 / 5   strike 
  4 / 6   strike  
  5 / 5   base on balls 
  5 / 6   ground out 
  6 / 6   base on error 
  ------------------
  6 H, 15+ O -- <.286 

  * roll again -- single 
    if total 8 or less, 
    triple if 9 or more 




Baseball Games basic dice baseball
Kerm, Fred, Butch, & Win

  The game we'd played as kids had evolved, 
  in fits and starts, into a more involved and 
  more frustrating thing, and was set aside 
  for many years.  We blame the distracting 
  presence of young women.   
    A lifetime or so later, after a long hiatus, 
  our fascination with tabletop baseball was 
  rekindled, and we set to work designing 
  and playing the rather complex homebrew 
  game we now play, which involves pitcher, 
  hitter, and fielder ratings, lefty-righty splits, 
  multiple charts and so on.  Its foundation, 
  though, is a version of the dice baseball 
  game we learned as kids -- and so we went 
  back to basics, too, putting a fresh coat of 
  paint on the original source material, and 
  turned out a relatively simple version that 
  adds just a few more rules to our boyhood 
  pastime.  We're trying to pass it along to 
  our grandkids.  See if yours like it.  


  1 / 1   home run  
  1 / 2   single * 
  1 / 3   out -- batter out if bases empty; 
            double play if runner(s) on base, 
            most advanced runner and batter out 
  1 / 4   out 
  1 / 5   ball 
  1 / 6   strikeout 
  2 / 2   base hit * -- roll both dice again: 
            if total is 8 or lower, single;  
            if total is 9 or higher, triple  
  2 / 3   out 
  2 / 4   out 
  2 / 5   out 
  2 / 6   out 
  3 / 3   double * 
  3 / 4   ball 
  3 / 5   ball 
  3 / 6   strike 
  4 / 4   single * 
  4 / 5   strike 
  4 / 6   strike 
  5 / 5   base on balls 
  5 / 6   strike 
  6 / 6   ground ball -- roll both dice again: 
            if total is 6 or lower, out;  
            if total is 7 or higher, base on error 
  ------------------ 
  6 H, 15 O -- <.286 


  * With less than two out, 
    runners on base advance 
    by only as many bases as 
    the batter gains on a hit;  
    with two outs, runners 
    advance by as many 
    bases as the batter 
    gains on a hit, plus 
    one additional base.  

  To try for a steal of 2nd 
    or 3rd, declare your 
    intention, then roll 
    both dice -- if the total 
    is 2 through 7, or 12, 
    attempt is successful;  
    if total is 8 through 11, 
    runner is thrown out.  
  To try for a steal of home, 
    declare your intention, 
    then roll both dice -- 
    only if the total is 2, 3, 
    or 4 is the attempt 
    successful;  if total is 
    5 or higher, runner is 
    thrown out.  







Aruba dice baseball

  Longtime Baseball Games Forum contributor 
  Henri Roca remembers a Caribbean version he 
  played as a boy.  Despite using only the eleven 
  totals available from a pair of dice, it looks like 
  it should provide a remarkably good game.  
        Henri recalls:  "I was nine years old and in 
  my first year at St. Stanislaus (Bay St Louis, 
  Mississippi) about to enter the 4th grade... 1944.  
        "The Rodriguez brothers from Aruba taught 
  me [this] dice baseball game." 


   2 - triple
   3 - double
   4 - single (if 2/2, any runners  
         advance two bases) 
   5 - out
   6 - out (if 3/3, base on error)  
   7 - strike out
   8 - out (if 4/4, double play, 
         most advanced runner out)  
   9 - out (if 4/5, sacrifice fly)  
  10 - walk
  11 - single
  12 - home run 
  ---------------------------
  9 H, 23-24 O -- ~.281 


  We posted at the esteemed Net54 Baseball forum, asking the 
  baseball fans, historians, and memorabilia collectors there 
  what experiences and memories they had with dice baseball, 
  and what versions of the game they played. 
Net54
  We were gratified to receive a number of detailed responses, 
  and we now present just a sampling of those here...  



 Dan V 

  Dan V recalled his game, 
  similar to Parlor Base Ball 
  of 1903:  
  "Mine was exceedingly simple.  
  One die.  I used baseball cards 
  to make my teams and would 
  lay them out in their positions 
  each inning.  Had simple little 
  scorecards I kept.  Games were 
  high scoring, obviously, given 
  the possible outcomes.  By the 
  end, I had ten teams playing 
  14-game seasons against each 
  other.  I still remember how 
  dominant this Aaron Myette 
  card was in my 'league.'" 





 
  1 - single 
  2 - double
  3 - triple
  4 - strikeout 
  5 - out 
  6 - home run 
  ------------------
  4 H, 2 O -- .667 



Aaron Myette



 Eric Harrington 
 
   Eric Harrington remembered his single-die game:  
      "My good friends and I would play after school and on 
  weekends in the 1983-1985 timeframe.  Six-inning games.  
  One die.  If a hit, one more roll of the die.  
      "We played hundreds of games and there was one 
  perfect game by Matt Young.  We had some great times. 
      "We used to argue about the legality of dice rolls.  
  One of my friends (we had four in the league) had a way 
  of holding the dice with his thumb and index and middle 
  fingers (kind of like a knuckleball) and flipping it in a 
  way where it would rotate one time and land on a 1 or 
  a 2 (i.e., a hit).  He would do it over and over again.  
  We finally had enough and after one string of hits it got 
  so heated the altercation got physical (the other two 
  quickly jumped in and broke it up).  After that, he went 
  back to a conventional roll.  We took our dice baseball 
  seriously!" 


 
  1 - hit * 
  2 - hit * 
  3 - out 
  4 - out 
  5 - out 
  6 - strikeout 

  * roll again: 
  1 - single 
  2 - single 
  3 - double 
  4 - double 
  5 - triple 
  6 - home run 
  ------------------
  2 H, 4 O -- .333  




 Pennsylvania dice baseball 

  Mike Knapp shared these memories: 
        "My Dad played this game when he was a kid 
  in Pennsylvania in the '40s and '50s.  He was born 
  in 1940.  He said he played the game alone more 
  often than not.  He had other friends who played 
  the game as well.  He said he occasionally played 
  against his friends.  There were four or five of 
  them that all played using the same rules.  He 
  believes one of them introduced him to the game 
  when he was nine or ten.  
      "I was ten and living in Washington State.  My 
  father was in the military so we played it all over 
  Europe and the Middle East.  I was an only child 
  and he spent hours with me playing this game.  
  Ironically I had no idea he was teaching me math 
  by playing dice baseball. 
      "We would select eight rosters and play about 
  50 games.  We saved all of the stats and then 
  would use them to identify two all-star teams and 
  play a best of seven series...  Merv Rettenmund 
  was an absolute beast." 



  1 / 1  single  
  1 / 2  strikeout 
  1 / 3  out * 
  1 / 4  out * 
  1 / 5  out * 
  1 / 6  single 
  2 / 2  double 
  2 / 3  out * 
  2 / 4  out * 
  2 / 5  single 
  2 / 6  out * 
  3 / 3  triple 
  3 / 4  single 
  3 / 5  out * 
  3 / 6  out * 
  4 / 4  home run 
  4 / 5  out * 
  4 / 6  out * 
  5 / 5  walk 
  5 / 6  out * 
  6 / 6  double play / 
           sacrifice fly 
  ---------------------------
  10 H, 24-25 O -- ~.290 

  * fielder's choice 
      if runner(s) forced 

  Runners advance only 
  as far as forced.  
  No base-stealing. 




 New Jersey dice baseball 

  Bruce Garland provided these reminiscences:  
      "We lived just outside Trenton New Jersey.  My 
  father's name was Roger.  He devised the game 
  around 1958 or '59 -- I was nine or ten.  
      "His goal was for a quick, easy game that could be 
  played by a nine- or ten-year-old, by himself or with 
  others, that approximated what might occur in a real 
  game.  My friends and I thought he succeeded and we 
  played thousands of games.  We played constantly 
  with lineups etc., kept stats and everything.  This was 
  mostly late '50s, early '60s, although I must confess 
  there were a few games in college also. 
      "I still marvel at how real the games and stats 
  seemed.  Believe it or not Vern Law once pitched a 
  perfect game.  I still associate dice rolls with the 
  baseball game meaning. 
      "I think what made it so great was you could play 
  alone, against a friend, or as a tournament.  We've 
  passed it on to our families, but it is not played as 
  religiously.  We even had a football version.  Fun 
  memories." 


 
  1 / 1  home run 
  1 / 2  double 
  1 / 3  single 
  1 / 4  pop out 
  1 / 5  ground out (double play 
           if a force available) 
  1 / 6  strikeout 
  2 / 2  single 
  2 / 3  pop out 
  2 / 4  ground out 
  2 / 5  strikeout 
  2 / 6  ground out 
  3 / 3  single 
  3 / 4  strikeout 
  3 / 5  ground out 
  3 / 6  fly out 
  4 / 4  walk 
  4 / 5  fly out 
  4 / 6  fly out (sacrifice fly 
           if runner on 3rd) 
  5 / 5  base on error 
  5 / 6  single 
  6 / 6  triple  
  ---------------------------
  10 H, 24-25 O -- ~.290 

  Runners advance only as far 
  as forced.  No base-stealing. 


  Interesting thing to note, perhaps, about the last two games 
  described above:  despite differences all throughout in what 
  each throw of the dice indicates, the hit and out totals match 
  exactly -- in two games both from roughly the same general 
  region.  Eh, maybe just coincidence.  

      Some guys had less crystalline memories of precisely 
  how their games played, but shared nonetheless highly 
  entertaining recollections of it all.  Still others provided 
  some fascinating insights on their own efforts to refine the 
  generic game they'd begun playing and develop a far more 
  detailed simulation game, with results individualized for 
  each player, a la APBA, Strat-O-Matic, and many other 
  commercially-produced dice-based sims.  
      Those are included next, below, and we can't let it go 
  without mentioning (and strongly recommending, in case 
  you haven't read it) The Universal Baseball Association, 
  J. Henry Waugh, prop., the staggeringly brilliant novel 
  by Robert Coover.  Grand -- indeed universal -- themes 
  play out within and against the backdrop of the tabletop 
  world created by one man's obsession with his self-made 
  dice baseball game.  Magnificent.  



 Bob McCartha 

  "My brothers and I played dice baseball during 1963-64, sometimes against each other, 
  sometimes individually.  We used three dice.  The game was simple, and lots of fun. 
      "I was 11 in 1963 when the only big league games I ever saw -- in black and white 
  -- were courtesy of the Saturday TV Game of the Week.  So, there was plenty of time 
  during the week to be creative with the love of baseball. 
      "We pencilled lineups onto index (score) cards... kept score and stats.  A doubleheader 
  could be played in about 30 minutes.  The dice game was entertaining even when playing 
  alone.  My favorite team back in the day was the Chicago White Sox and I pitted them 
  against the mighty Yankees, Tigers, or Twins.  Best as I can remember, rolling 18 was 
  a homer and rolling 3 was a triple.  I think rolling 17 or 4 equaled a double; 16 or 5 
  a single;  base on balls and K's -- can't remember those;  all other numbers were outs. 
      "For some of my favorite players (like Pete Ward), I'd give him a 'mulligan' roll, 
  or two, hoping to roll an 18.  Somehow, the Sox always won those dice games.  For me, 
  the dice game was simple but lots of fun.  Once or twice, I pretended to be a broadcaster 
  and recorded the 'game' on a portable tape recorder." 





 Doug Chamberlain 
 
      "Got the idea from my neighbor back in high school -- pair of dice with the rolls 
  meaning the same result for everyone (e.g., double 4's = HR). 
      "When he mentioned that his current HR leader was Mark Belanger I thought, 
  well, that ain't right! 
      "So I eventually took the idea a bit further, creating eight A.L. team rosters with 
  each player having their own results for each possible roll of the dice. 
      "Drawing vertical lines on steno pad sheets (just happened to be about the perfect 
  size), I created a table for each team's roster with the table headers being Player, 
  1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc, thru 5/6 (double 6's was reserved for 'miscellaneous'). 
      "It took some time, but filling out the table allowed you to increase the odds of, 
  say, Jim Rice leading the league in HR's as opposed to Mark Belanger.  In this case 
  (yes, I still remember) a roll of 1/5 was a HR for Rice.  For Belanger to hit a HR, 
  a roll of double 6's and then a second roll of one die with a 5 or 6 (3 or 4 could be 
  a triple and 1 or 2 reached on error ... whatever you wanted to make it). 
      "The table also allows you to add an extra single in the possible rolls for the better 
  hitters, maybe replace one with an out for the 'glove only' type players.  Add an extra   
  K in there for those who fan a bit more than average, etc, etc. 
      "Tweaking over time led to a third, different colored die for pitchers, that overrode 
  the other pair if applicable.  This helped separate the better pitchers from the others. 
      "Next to the pitcher's name would be one, two, or no asterisk.  No * (average 
  pitchers) meant the single die was to be ignored.  One * (above-average pitchers) 
  meant if the single die came up a 1, the batter was automatically out, ignore the other 
  pair of dice.  Two * (Cy Young-calibre pitchers) meant if the single die came up a 1 
  or 2... same as above.  If that single die came up a 1 for, say, Nolan Ryan, then the 
  out was a K." 
 



 Todd Schultz 
  
  "Ah yes... I devised a three-dice game when I was ten and then revamped it to four dice 
  when I was 12 or 13.  I wish I knew where the 'codes' were these days -- I had them 
  memorized down to each play, but had them written down so the two or three neighbor 
  kids who challenged me could either test my honesty or look for themselves.  Outs 
  were simply listed as groundout, fly or foul out, and line out.  
      "In the three-dice game walks and Ks had to be earned one roll of a ball or strike 
  at a time, with no HBP that I recall.  In the four-dice game I used three red dice and 
  one white die, and I had a few changes if the white die came up a specific number -- 
  for example, 1-2-3-4 was an infield single, but if the white die was the '1' it was 
  a strikeout.  All I remember about the three-dice game was that 1-1-1 and 6-6-6 were 
  home runs and the other threes of a kind were extra-base hits.  It was all random, with 
  no weight for greatness.  Mays could bat .125 and Gus Gil .300. 
      "My game was tied to baseball cards -- you had to field a team at each position using 
  the Topps cards, and no multi-player cards were allowed.  Guys like Bobby Heise were 
  especially valuable, because his card just said 'infield' so you could plug him in 
  throughout the various positions -- a few guys even had the designation 'inf-of,' which 
  of course was a manager’s dream.  I also remember the 1973 Yankees having four 
  3rd-basemen -- Allen, Sanchez, Nettles, and Lanier, which greatly hampered their 
  bench.  Lanier and Allen were not true 3rd-sackers, but had played there the year 
  before because Nettles had not yet been acquired.  Thanks, Topps.  What also was 
  really cool was that one of the neighbors had only 1968 cards, so it was possible 
  through trades that we would have the same guy playing for each side.
      "I remember that Joe Foy led my league in homers by a landslide in the three-dice 
  game.  Foy was on the ‘69 Royals, who also had Luis Alcaraz leading off for me just 
  because I liked his card.  I kept a written account of all games, but again there was 
  no recording of defensive outs, just 'O' for out.  I remember a star was used for RBI, 
  a check mark for run scored, and X for SB -- symbols I still use today if scoring 
  a game.  Same for the four-dice game, which used all my 1972 Topps, and where 
  the Brewers beat the Cardinals in the World Series, led by sparkplug Brock Davis 
  (I remember I hated playing 'capless' players, but didn’t have outfield depth at the 
  beginning and Davis just kept hitting all season).  
      "Great memories." 




 Mark Satterstrom 

      "When we were about ten years old, living in a suburb of Minneapolis, we came up with a simple game -- 
  our own invention -- that used one die.  We made a chart on a piece of paper with batting average / at-bats 
  combinations.  The idea was that a guy with a ton of at-bats who hit .300 was better than a guy with only 200 
  AB.  For each combo we had the result line.  So, for example, 500-550 AB and .250-.299 BA might be: 
         1 - single 
         2 - ground out 
         3 - strikeout 
         4 - double 
         5 - fly out 
         6 - pop out 
      "Obviously there was very little precision, so the next increment (either more AB or higher BA) might just 
  turn a double into a homer, or an out into a walk. 
      "For stealing bases, another chart was simple, with outcomes based on a player's SB total, like 0-5, 6-10, etc.  
  If a player had more than 50 SB, die rolls 2-6 were safe, only one was out. 
      "When we used 1971 cards, with 1970 stats, Lou Brock was the beast.  He had over 650 AB, hit over .300, 
  and had over 50 SB.  So when he got on base, the general strategy was to clear the bases in front of him (even 
  if it meant stealing Harmon Killebrew into a certain out) and then stealing Brock all the way around. 
      "What was nice is that all we needed was one die, a piece of paper we could easily fold into our pockets, and 
  we could make a new one whenever necessary, and our baseball cards.  Once, at the lake, we didn't have a die, 
  so instead we used a deck of playing cards, just the A through 6s, and the guy batting would choose a card 
  after the other shuffled.  
      "What was really fun, when I got older, was making baseball cards of myself and all my teammates.  Using 
  the APBA method that uses two dice and gives 36 equally likely outcomes, I went through our game scorebooks, 
  compiled detailed stat sheets, and then correlated every plate appearance to an outcome.  When a player had 
  fewer than 36 PA, I'd put a dash next to that dice roll, meaning the dice needed to be re-rolled.  So in my game, 
  if a kid had 4 singles, a double, and 6 strikeouts in 25 plate appearances, I could replicate those odds exactly. 
      "When players had more than 36 plate appearances, I divided the stats by 2, and when there was an odd 
  number, I put two outcomes with a "/" which meant another roll was required -- a single die and 1, 2, 3 meant 
  the first result, 4, 5, 6 the second.  So it looked like: 
         2 / 1  fly out 
         2 / 2  strikeout 
         2 / 3  single 
         2 / 4  double / ground out 
         2 / 5  walk 
         2 / 6  strikeout 
         3 / 1  --- 
      "And so on.  It was neat because it was a precise statistical representation of the batting stats.  However, 
  pitcher strength wasn't factored in, or defense, and I don't think stolen bases had a very sophisticated mechanism.  
      "I contacted a couple of coaches of other teams to see if they had well-maintained scorebooks, but none did.  
  That would've been cool, to have cards of all the kids in the whole league. 
      "This concept stayed in the back of my mind and later, in graduate school (software engineering) I played with 
  the idea of developing such a program to basically determine optimal batting lineups.  In other words, run 1,000 
  simulated nine-inning 'games,' rotate the lineup to the next configuration, run a thousand games with that lineup, 
  and so on.  Kick the program off before going to bed, and in the morning see which lineup produced the highest 
  number of runs. 
      "I pitched (that's a pun) the idea to the baseball coach at the school, and right away he said:  'Some of my guys 
  get hot, some can't hit left-handed pitching, some can't hit the good fastball, some can't touch a curve...  so I have 
  to weigh factors like that into setting my lineup on any given day.' 
      "And... I realized he was right.  A manager has to set his lineup based on the people on his team, not just their 
  stat lines. 
      "Also, with college teams in Minnesota, the dataset is just too small to be reliable.  At the major-league level, 
  when guys get 500 at bats, it's a different story.
      "Anyway, statistics-based simulated baseball is a fascinating topic, and really the only way that Rod Carew 
  can take some cuts against Grover Alexander... " 




  It was only in the summer of 2019, long after we wrote and compiled the 
  original version of this article, that we found another memory of homebrew 
  dice baseball written long before -- this 2007 reminiscence (including rules 
  of play!) from someone on the staff of WNST sports-talk radio in Baltimore: 
Dice Basebell -- A Memory
 
  Somehow the 4-6 result has been omitted from the results list there, and 
  since what's shown produces an overall .344 BA (11 hits, 21 outs), we'd 
  strongly recommend making 4-6 an out if you're going to try to play it.  
  Nonetheless, a charming walk around the basepaths of memory lane, 
  thanks to that anonymous WNST intern.    

  There are still more versions of dice baseball to be found on the internet, 
  although one of the reasons we put this page together is because most of 
  those other versions are, in our opinion, markedly inferior to the version 
  we played and to those described by the contributors above -- and mainly 
  that they have a sterile, arbitrarily-concocted feel, devoid of any sense of 
  dice baseball's heritage and oblivious to the vital element of imagination 
  that actually makes any version of the game, y'know, fun.  Several of 
  these other internet versions are presented as lessons or "fun exercises" 
  in math, assembled by math teachers who seem to have little grasp of 
  either baseball or math (our long-ago experiences as students leave us 
  unsurprised).  Nonetheless, merely in the interest of a more complete 
  presentation, we relay a few of the least awful or most unusual versions 
  here...  
    




 "Dice Baseball" 
State of Washington Public Instruction
http://www.k12.wa.us/cisl/pubdocs/DiceBaseballRules.pdf
 
      "What is it:  A long-played math baseball game using dice. 
      "It's a fun at-the-end-of-class or at-home game. 
      "What you need:  Two participants, two dice, four place 
  markers, a sheet of paper with a baseball diamond drawn on it. 
      "Object of lesson:  Having fun with math and giving 
  students a possible math game for the summer. 
      "What they'll learn:  Basic multiplication, decimals 
  and fractions, and baseball rules. 
      "Source:  Special thanks to teacher-advisor Bob Krech, 
  who actually put this game to paper for scholastic.com
  a few years back.  While this dice game exists in many 
  forms, we drew a lot from Bob's version of Dice Baseball." 



  Each player rolls one die.  
  The total shown by the 
  two dice gives the result. 

   2 - strike 
   3 - fly out 
   4 - single 
   5 - ground out 
   6 - strike 
   7 - fly out 
   8 - double 
   9 - ground out 
  10 - triple 
  11 - foul ball 
  12 - home run  
  ------------------
  12 H, 16+ O -- <.429 



eHow Hobbies'
Baseball Dice
 http://tinyurl.com/z45ufcf 

  Runners advance on hit 
  only as many bases as 
  forced.   

   2 - home run 
   3 - strikeout 
   4 - strikeout 
         -- if 2/2, 
         base on balls 
   5 - ground out 
   6 - ground out 
         -- if 3/3, 
         base on error 
   7 - fly out  
   8 - fly out 
          -- if 4/4, 
         base on balls 
   9 - single  
  10 - double 
  11 - triple  
  12 - home run 
  ------------------
  11 H, 23 O -- .324
 

Lots of Kid Games
Dice Baseball 
 http://tinyurl.com/zo7x972 

  "This is not only fun, 
  but kids can hone their 
  math skills as they 
  add up their points 
  each inning." 

   2 - home run  
   3 - triple 
   4 - single 
   5 - out 
   6 - out 
   7 - out 
   8 - walk 
   9 - out 
  10 - single 
  11 - double 
  12 - home run 
  ------------------
  12 H, 19 O -- .387






Jon Simonds'
Dice Baseball
http://tinyurl.com/jlrez2u

  Each player rolls one die.  
  The total shown by the 
  two dice gives the result. 

   2 - strike -- roll again, 
         if 11, foul ball  
   3 - fly out  
   4 - single  
   5 - ground out  
   6 - strike -- roll again, 
         if 11, foul ball  
   7 - fly out  
   8 - double  
   9 - ground out  
  10 - triple  
  12 - home run 
  ------------------
  11 H, 16+ O -- <.407




 


 John Dejong's 
 Dice Baseball Game  
 http://tinyurl.com/jx2jsdz 
 http://tinyurl.com/hn742jr 

  1 / 1  home run 
  1 / 2  three outs 
  1 / 3  single 
  1 / 4  three outs 
  1 / 5  single 
  1 / 6  three outs 
  2 / 2  home run 
  2 / 3  three outs 
  2 / 4  single 
  2 / 5  three outs 
  2 / 6  single 
  3 / 3  home run 
  3 / 4  three outs 
  3 / 5  single 
  3 / 6  three outs 
  4 / 4  home run 
  4 / 5  three outs 
  4 / 6  single 
  5 / 5  home run 
  5 / 6  three outs 
  6 / 6  home run 
  ------------------
  18 H, 54 O -- .250 



dice baseball
  The Official World Encyclopedia of Sports and Games  
  © Diagram Visual Information Ltd 1979  
http://www.diagramgroup.com/diagram_sport.htm
  
  One-die Baseball  
  1 - single 
  2 - double 
  3 - triple  
  4 - home run 
  5 - out, runners do not advance  
      a) if one man on the bases, he is out;  
      b) if men on all bases, the man on base 1 is out;  
      c) if he has men on bases 1 and 2, the man on base 2 is out;  
      d) if he has men on bases 1 and 3, the man on base 1 is out;  
      e) if he has men on bases 2 and 3, both are safe. 
  6 - strikeout 

  Two-dice Baseball  
    2 - home run 
    3 - triple 
    4 - single 
    5 - out, all runners advance one base 
    6 - out, no advance 
    7 - double play, runner nearest home is out  
    8 - out, except 4/4 base on balls 
    9 - out, no advance 
  10 - single 
  11 - double 
  12 - home run 
  ------------------------------------
  12 H, 24 O -- .333 

  Three-dice Baseball
  Each player throws the dice in turn, scoring one run 
  for every 1 that is rolled.  When he fails to throw a 1, 
  a player's half-inning is ended, and his opponent takes over. 



 Simple Baseball Dice Game 
 http://www.sportsreplays.net/downloads5.htm 

  Play with two dice of different 
  colors, or play as roll and 
  re-roll.  

  First roll, or die one:   
  1 - 2  batter safe 
  3 - 6  batter out 

  Second roll, or die two: 
  if safe:  
    1 - walk 
    2 - single 
    3 - single 
    4 - double 
    5 - triple 
    6 - home run 

  if out: 
    1 - strikeout 
    2 - ground out, 
          all runners advance 
    3 - ground out, 
          forced runners advance 
    4 - ground out -- double play 
          if runner on 1st, 
          all others advance 
    5 - fly out, runners hold 
    6 - fly out, runners on 
          2nd and 3rd advance 
  ---------------------------
  10 H, 24 O -- .294 

  steal of 2nd or 3rd: 
  1 - 2  out 
  3 - 6  safe 




  One last version of dice baseball must be mentioned here, although copyright concerns, 
  as well as its relatively lengthy rulebook, filled with specifications on baserunner 
  advancement, dissuade us from presenting it.  That game, though, is semi-legendary -- 
  titled simply "Dice Baseball," it's a chapter in The Second Fireside Book of Baseball, 
  the thoroughly excellent 1958 anthology edited by Charles Einstein.  The game is the 
  creation of Einstein, writing rather coyly under his "D. J. Michael" pseudonym.  Ask 
  your local library to obtain a copy if they don't have it on their shelves -- it's a fine 
  and worthwhile read.  

  There ya go.  A little history, a little nostalgia, and, hopefully, somewhere in that mix, 
  the recipe for some fun you can have with your kids or your grandkids or your friends 
  or all by yourself.  Give one a try!  And if it doesn't satisfy, pick one that yields a 
  different proportion of results and try that.  And of course, you're totally at liberty to 
  customize to your own taste any of the systems presented and alter what any roll of 
  the dice means.  Make it your own!  Make it a tradition.  



  Thanks again to Doug Chamberlain, Robert Coover, Bruce Garland, Eric Harrington, 
  Mike Knapp, Bob McCartha, Dave Newman, Henri Roca, Mark Satterstrom, Todd 
  Schultz, Tom Shieber, Dan V, and Ed Voss for contributions large and small, up front 
  and behind the scenes.   




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