MLB Showdown: A nostalgic look back at my favorite pastime

MLB Showdown was a great baseball simulation game (think dungeons and dragons for baseball nerds) that came out when I was 11 years old.  It came out at the perfect time in my childhood and with one of my best friends and my brother hooked, it became our favorite pastime.  It combined baseball, easy-to-learn difficult-to-master rules, card collecting, and trading.  We went to tons of sports card shows to buy cards (I know, I know, we huge geeks) and get the best deals.  We were always trying to improve our teams and playing all the time.  I recently finished reading Bill Simmons book about the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 and I was inspired to take out my Showdown cards.  We played a few games and I'm planning on going to the sports card show next weekend to look for some players I never got (yes I haven't grown up at all).  I decided I'd take a look back at what made the game so great and why I still enjoy it more than any baseball video game.



      A starter pack 

 

                  A 20-sided die


Showdown was a fairly simple game involving cards for batters and pitchers, a 20-sided die (see above), and strategy cards.  The general rules are as follows: 9 hitters with every position filled, 4 starting pitchers, a total of 20 players per team including relievers and bench players. 

The Advantage:

Each pitcher has a control rating.  The player playing defense would roll the dice and add that number to the pitcher's control.  If that number was more than the batter's on-base rating, the pitcher would have the advantage and the outcome of the at-bat would be determined using the pitcher's result box.  If the defense's roll added to the pitcher's control was equal to or less than the batter's on-base, the batter would have the advantage and the outcome would be determined using the batter's result box. 

Pitchers:

Each pitcher has a control rating, number of innings they can pitch, and a results box that determines what the outcome of the at-bat is when the pitcher has the advantage.  Example:  Greg Maddox is a 5 control (6 is the highest), that can pitch 7 innings (8 is the highest), and gives up a single on a 16 (19 is the highest).  Maddox is a pretty good starting pitcher, but not one of the elites (I'll mention them below).  



Greg Maddox


Batters:

Each batter has an on-base rating, a speed, hitting side (R,L,S), a fielding rating, and a results box that determines what the outcome of the at-bat is when the batter has the advantage.  Example:  Manny Ramirez is a 10 on-base (10 is the highest for the 2000 collection, 11 was introduced in 2001), speed c (lowest), +1 fielding (highest for OF is +3), roll of a 4 to get on base (best is a 3), and roll of a 17 for a home-run (best is as low as 13, but with an on-base as high as 10, the best is 16).  Ramirez is one of the best hitters with great on-base and power (I'll mention the rest below).   



 Manny Ramirez


Strategy Cards:

So those are the basics of the game.  You take turns batting and pitching like a real baseball game and follow the outcomes on the person who has the advantage.  In addition to those basics, there are strategy cards that make each game more exciting and unexpected (like a real baseball game).  Some examples are shown below:









They're pretty self-explanatory, but they add complexity and help each team a great deal if used properly. 

In addition to everything else I've explained there are a few other keys rules.  The player on defense can attempt double plays if the situation is possible and a ground-ball is rolled.  The player then adds their infields total fielding to a dice roll and checks that the total beats the 2nd runner's speed, if so, the runner is out, if not the runner is safe.  The player on offense can also send runners from 2nd base home on a single and tag-up on sac-flys.  The defensive player then adds his total outfield's fielding to a dice roll and tries to beat the runner's speed.  Same rules apply as double-plays.  Steals work the same way with the catcher's fielding, but a strategy card is needed to attempt steals.  You start with 4 strategy cards and draw 1 every half-inning.  That's basically the entire rules of the game. 


Best Cards from 2000


 
 Randy Johnson



Pedro Martinez (My favorite card)



 Mark McGwire  (in all his steroid glory)



 A-Rod



 Sammy Sosa



Curt Schilling



 Billy Wagner


Best Cards from 2001



  Barry Bonds (while his head was growing 5 cap sizes)



 Carlos Delgado



 Jason Giambi


       
 Robb Nen



 Kevin Brown



 Mariano Rivera


Obviously I can't show all of the great cards, but those are a few.  The best player cards were holographic and called foils.  Each team had at least 1 foil, but usually many more.  Example: the Braves had 7 (Tom Galvine, Greg Maddox, Kevin Milwood, John Smoltz, Rafael Furcal, Chipper Jones, and Andres Galaraga). 


We were immediately hooked and we started collecting entire teams.  We ended up choosing what teams we wanted, trading, and eventually between the 3 of us, we had every team.  We didn't have every player for every team, but we were pretty close (I'm trying to fill a few holes this weekend).  The other strange wrinkle to our showdown collections was the addition of the 2001 cards.  We only ended up collecting 2000 and 2001 cards, but we combined players from both years on our teams.  We the trades and free agent signings, as well as the changes in stats from one year to another, we ended up with a very strange collection of players on our teams.  Manny Ramirez is on the Indians and the Red Sox (one example) and I always debate between using the A-Rod that has a 8 on-base and 15 homer and the A-Rod with a 10 on-base and 18 homer on the Mariners.  We only allow one version of a player to be used per team, but we allow the same player to be used on different teams.  Combining the best players on a team from the 2000 and 2001 collection has allowed us to have some really great, not entirely possible teams, but it's much more fun.  It made every team better combining the 2 years.  Every team now had multiple foils and had chance to beat any other team.  With closer stats and strategy cards, upsets were more common.

We played entire playoff series and no baseball video game I've ever played has captured the excitement of Showdown.  It was the perfect mix of my sports card and Pokemon card (yes I'm one of those kids) collecting hobbies and my obsessions with sports and stats.  It's the reason why I know every player from the 2000 and 2001 seasons, the reason why I can tell you Brad Fulmer's (no idea what happened to him) stats (8 on-base 17 homer for the 2001 season) and Rusty Greer's stats (10 on-base 18 homer for the 2000 season) as well as a ton of other players totally unknown to anyone now.  Showdown is still so great I want to keep playing it and wished they had cards for today's stars (A Justin Verlander card would be amazing, see my Verlander post).  It's the reason I'm going to the sports card show to look for an Ichiro and a Larry Walker foil to improve my teams (I feel really lame writing that).  Anyway I just thought you should know how great of a game it is and how much more of a nerd I am than many of you realize.  Maybe the real reason I'm writing this is to try and get someone (cough Max cough) to try playing Showdown with me.  My brother is leaving for college and my other Showdown friend lives in New York.  I'm just a grown man looking for someone to play a baseball card game from 10 years ago, is that so weird?  Dont' answer.


- Matt