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Wild Play! CEO of Dynasty League Baseball--Mike Cieslinski
219 Plays2 years ago
Graeme sits down with CEO, and sole game designer of Pursue the Pennant and Dynasty League baseball, Mike Cieslinski, to talk about the origins of his game, his pickup hoops skills, the impact his concept had on statistics in baseball, the upcoming SABR 51 convention, and much more.
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Transcript
Setting the Scene: 1987 Baseball Game
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to the Crawling Around My Brain podcast. I'm Graham Brown.
00:00:18
Speaker
It's June 25th, 1987. The Los Angeles Dodgers are in Atlanta to face the Braves. The Braves are losing 2-1, but they have runners on 1st and 3rd with two outs, and Ted Simons stepping to the plate. Simons is facing Oral Hershizer, the Los Angeles Dodgers ace, but one year away from his Cy Young year of 1988.
00:00:43
Speaker
Simons hit 291 verse writeys that year, although he had poor power.
Exploring 'Pursue the Pennant': Realism in Board Games
00:00:48
Speaker
I know that because I'm looking at his pursue the pennant card right in front of me. Simons notably was also a terror in the clutch. One of the details that is provided on all pursue the pennant cards. One of the most realistic sports games of all time and definitely the most realistic baseball board game and online game of all time.
00:01:12
Speaker
In that scenario of real life, Ted Simons hit a line drive between first and second that would have tied the game for the Braves, but unfortunately the ball struck the runner Glenn Hubbard moving from first to second and the game was called on that play. That was in 1987. Let's see how it plays out here.
00:01:34
Speaker
Pursue the pennant, for those of you who don't know, was an ultra-realistic baseball board game that used real statistics to generate true outcomes of a baseball game and was an absolute passion of mine as a kid. I would play with my brother and my friend Danny and other kids in the neighborhood. So again, in 1987, in this exact same scenario, Simons lines out between first and second. Let's see how he does today.
00:02:04
Speaker
980. Hard ground or to second base at the game ends, Hirschheiser wins 2-1. While not a line drive striking Glenn Hubbard, that role just speaks to the realism of this beloved board game. I'm excited to talk to CEO and soul
00:02:23
Speaker
designer of the pursue the pennant game and dynasty league baseball online.
Meet the Creator: Mike Zyslinski
00:02:28
Speaker
Mr. Mike Zyslinski. Mike will talk to us about the origin story of the game, some of the interesting folks he's met along the way, and he will weigh in on whether or not my brother cheated every time he rolled the dice. So stick around. This is a great conversation. I felt like it was a real privilege for me to get to talk to Mike. So I hope you enjoy it.
00:03:03
Speaker
All right, I am very excited to welcome to the program Michael Syslinski. Michael, welcome. Well, thanks for having me, Graham. This sounds like this is going to be a lot of fun.
00:03:15
Speaker
Absolutely. As I mentioned before, we hit the official record button. I'm a huge fan of your work. And for those that may not be as familiar, you are the CEO and game designer for Dynasty League Baseball, powered by Pursue the Pennant. And you're also the sole designer and creator of Pursue the Pennant, which is how I became familiar with the game and what led me to you. So I'm just super excited, Pursue the Pennant.
00:03:45
Speaker
was a huge part of my childhood growing up in Connecticut. I used to play it with my brother who is two years older than me and our friend, Danny, who is about the same age. And we would buy the cards and do drafts and have seasons. And basically any downtime that we had during the summers in Connecticut was played, was spent, excuse me, playing pursue the pennants. So just a thrill to have you on the pod.
00:04:13
Speaker
That's awesome. I love hearing those stories. Yeah, it's, you know, again, for those, I assume most people that are listening will have some inclination of what Pursuit dependent is, but it's essentially a hyper-realistic board game at the time and has all the players and you roll dice and there's all sorts of variables, including weather and wild plays and
00:04:35
Speaker
and errors and range and it was really the most realistic board game about baseball that I've ever played and as a huge baseball fan growing up it was just a great outlet to have that feeling of
00:04:49
Speaker
being able to control a team and really feel like a general manager and a manager at the same time. And so I spent a lot of time doing that.
The Origin Story of Pursue the Pennant
00:04:58
Speaker
And then recently I've gotten into the Dynasty League Baseball online game, which has some of that retro feel, which I wanted to talk to you about a little bit. But again, just to continue, I don't know, it feels so real to play the game. And so I guess I just wanted to start by asking you,
00:05:15
Speaker
you know, how did this come to be? Can you take us a little bit into the origin story of pursue the pennant? How did it get started? Kind of how did you have the idea? And then how did you how did you execute it? Yeah, well, this is a long story, we're going to be going on our 40th anniversary, if you can believe that. Wow. Incredible. Yeah, so it really started. When I was at University of Miami, this is the
00:05:45
Speaker
Hurricanes University, not the one in Ohio. I did a self-directed internship and ended up doing an internship also with the Baltimore Orioles in their PR department. That was the first that I really put together a business plan and was starting the original game design.
00:06:11
Speaker
These are all prototypes, of course, because this is not a commercial enterprise. This is just something that I had hoped to do. The experience with the Orioles was great. I actually worked with the minor league Miami Marlins, not the major league Miami Marlins before that, and they promoted me. I should explain, this is spring training.
00:06:38
Speaker
So they promoted me during spring training to work with the Orioles. And so I got to check, I was in the PR department, so I sit in the press box, learned how to score the games, and I'd sit like next to Larry King in the press box.
00:06:57
Speaker
Wow, you know we these different people that would come in and I would check everybody in so I would check in With the broadcaster Chuck Thompson. I don't if you remember him. He was one of the original Orioles broadcasters Brooks Robinson He was broadcasting this was this was 1982 so that of course was a really Wow dating season. Yeah
00:07:22
Speaker
So I had this design for the game and later on I was actually able to play test my game with Dennis Martinez. Dennis was a lot of fun play testing because
00:07:40
Speaker
He, well, he's just a fun guy, but he would, uh, when he's rolling the dice and, uh, as you, as most people know, if you have a number between zero and four 99, it's on the hitters card 500 through 99 on the pitcher's card. Well, Dennis is literally throwing curve balls with the dice, you know, to it, you know,
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah. So that was the start of it.
00:08:13
Speaker
Did you have like a statistic, sorry, did you have like an interest in statistics or like how did you? Yeah, so that's so that's next. I was going to exactly what's next. So 1982 was also the time that the first Bill James abstract came out. Okay, got it. It was the 1982 abstract and it was all based on the 1981 season.
00:08:40
Speaker
That was a complete eye opener for me. And subsequently, I always was buying the baseball abstracts. And I learned so much from those abstracts. And what I decided in terms of the game design, I want to take everything I learned from baseball abstracts and put it into my game.
00:09:06
Speaker
And that's how, you know, like the ballpark effects came into play. And a lot of these things that were just coming out, you know, weren't at all in simulations at that time. We were, when we finally came out, this was like cutting edge because we, you know, basically no one had ballpark effects. Right. And, uh,
00:09:32
Speaker
So that's where a lot of the statistical information or design, I should say.
00:09:41
Speaker
came from was from that era. And it was just time perfectly, right? Because those abstracts had just come out. And it was kind of like a revolution. Everyone was like, wow, what is this? All these new ideas about baseball that go beyond batting average and some of the just basic statistics at that time.
00:10:03
Speaker
So I've got the game, I've got this prototype. And the next thing is like, okay, like, how do I, how do I, you know, how do I get this started?
Finding Investors: From TSR Hobbies to Topps
00:10:16
Speaker
You know, I need money. You know, I'm in the Y, I'm in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
00:10:23
Speaker
You know, this isn't like Silicon Valley, you know, where you're going, you know, there's venture capital flowing out. And there was a lot of impediments to getting started. It's a lot easier to just start a game doesn't mean you're going to be successful. But I'm looking to do this on a large scale. I'm thinking big, you know, so
00:10:47
Speaker
So finally what happens, and I had gone all over trying to get investors, going to different publishers,
00:11:00
Speaker
One of the publishers that probably is notable, a couple. So I went to TSR Hobbies, and they were right in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and they're famous for the Dungeons and Dragons game, if you've heard of that. And I even drove, not even fly, I drove my car from Brookfield
00:11:26
Speaker
to Brooklyn, New York to meet with Cy Berger of tops. And I was looking to see if they were interested in my game. Um, so yeah. And he met with me. I met with cyber and he's like kind of like the,
00:11:44
Speaker
almost like the godfather of baseball cards. We had a meeting with him. Yeah. So, I mean, I was just, you know, going to the ends of the earth trying to get this started. So how it finally got started is I am an avid pickup basketball player. And it just so happened that at the Wauwatosa YMCA,
00:12:09
Speaker
a lot of the Milwaukee brewers from kind of like the Harvey's wall bangers era, off season would play. And I'd be playing with the brewers and Jim Gantner, Bob McClure, Paul Molitor.
00:12:30
Speaker
Robin Yount never played, or at least I never played with him. And that was at the Wildtow, so why? Later on, I also played at Carroll College, and Dan Plisak would play there, BJ Serwhoff, Bill Wegman. Yeah, so like all you do is, so I went and I asked Paul Molitor, because you get to be friends with him, right? Because you're playing with him. I asked Paul Molitor,
00:12:57
Speaker
if he would appear with me in a story that the Milwaukee Business Journal was going to write. And at the time, he was injured. He had an elbow injury. I think it was actually like Tommy John surgery. This is the 1984 season. And this is July. This article appeared July of 1984. And it was on the cover of the Business Journal.
00:13:27
Speaker
And there and they take photos of us and that photo that you see of myself and Paul Mulder is on the on the dugout roof or yeah roof of Mark in Milwaukee County Stadium. That was during the shooting.
00:13:43
Speaker
of that cover story. Okay. So that's why I have that photo everywhere. Cause it was so important and so iconic in starting a company. So that, um, that, um, article hits and I had been in contact with a venture capital company and there weren't many of them in Brookfield, Wisconsin. We can really venture capital is there more investor company, right? Okay. And, uh,
00:14:09
Speaker
I had contacted them and really they weren't that interested. As soon as this front page cover story hits, I get a call and they want to talk to me. So literally I sit down and a deal has been had and away we go. And so from July through like,
00:14:36
Speaker
that through that fall, we're getting ready to launch this. And so the game comes out like,
00:14:44
Speaker
spring of 1985, you know, but we had to go and create and everything. So that's a story of how it all launched with the help of the Milwaukee Brewers. And some of it, the investors were interesting. We had Jim Gantner as investor, Bob McClure, Craig Council's dad, John, who worked with the Milwaukee Brewers was also
00:15:07
Speaker
And Craig, incidentally, also kind of grew up a little bit playing the game. So, you know, here we got like the senior manager, you know, had started out playing my game. So that's, that's the long story of how it all got started. That's unbelievable. I have a lot of questions about that timeline in there. A couple that are
00:15:32
Speaker
just out of my curiosity. So actually, I mentioned briefly that I played minor league baseball for a little bit. And my pitching coach was Bill Champion, who was an old Brewers player. Not sure that I played pickup hoops with you at all. I don't know. He was like from more like the 70s. He brought that 70s energy to our bullpen sessions for sure. But he had some really good stories. And then secondly, I was gonna ask you who your pickup basketball game would, who's your who's your comp?
00:16:02
Speaker
who's your NBA comp for your pickup hoops game? NBA comp or similar comp to a one of the Brewers? No, NBA comp. Oh, that's a great question.
00:16:16
Speaker
I think of like today, more like Chris Middleton. Cause my game was always like the mid range games, mid range, jump shots, creating my own shot. And I had really good elevation. I could dunk like six foot one, you know, my favorite, my favorite moment almost, I think of playing the Brewers. Uh, I'm, uh,
00:16:43
Speaker
first time I'm playing with Paul Molitor in a game. Peter Slides, he's gonna guard me. I'm like, oh, jeez. Paul Molitor's guarding me now. So I don't remember, it was pretty early in the game.
00:16:58
Speaker
And I just, I bring the ball to court and I decide I'm just going to take this jump shot. It was easily a three point shot. I don't know, you know, how deep of a deep of a three point shot it was, but I go up and I'm elevating. I've got a lot of lift.
00:17:18
Speaker
kind of like zeroing on the basket, let it go, goes right through it. At the same time, Mulder had this unique defensive style where he would jump with both hands.
00:17:33
Speaker
Like a vertical jump, both hands extended. You know, normally when you defend, you go up with either one hand or the other, right? You would go up with both hands. And he also had a great vertical jump. But thankfully I jumped ahead of him, so I can actually see the basket, right? And it went right in. And I'm just like, oh my gosh.
00:17:53
Speaker
That's great. I still remember that. Like that was yesterday. So that was one of my favorite moments. Another favorite moment was later on. This was a few
Connections Through Basketball: Securing Investment
00:18:06
Speaker
years later. I'm playing BJ Surhoff. And he always, you know,
00:18:16
Speaker
had a temper, right? And he's a tough guy. He was a stronger guy, tough guy. And he decides he's gonna guard me. So I'm like, okay.
00:18:30
Speaker
So I just went off though. And I'm just like getting jump shot after jump shot against him. I'm just like taking, yeah. I mean, he's just getting, you know, he's getting upset. Yeah.
00:18:47
Speaker
So funny. You didn't like take me out or anything but just the it was funny just seeing the frustration because you know here's someone who you know has that kind of a temper and it was fun for me because here's this professional baseball player and you just can't stop me so that was that was
00:19:08
Speaker
Did you add that into his card at all? I had another elevation of my jump shot and enough where I could fade away that it was very difficult to stop if the shots were going in. I'm not shooting set shots, right? They can't just get close to me, it's not going to work.
00:19:27
Speaker
Oh, those are two of my favorite stories and memories that I had. But Pat Hughes, who's the Cubs broadcaster, he also played with us. So it was really a fun, fun time. And it went on for
00:19:42
Speaker
pretty much that whole decade of the 80s. I think I started playing, or the Brewers started coming there, maybe like 83, something like that, that I remember seeing them. So yeah, it was a fun era. So- That's amazing. I asked a question there, but I was thinking it'd be funny if you built into BJ Serhof's Pursuit of the Pennant card, something about his like fiery- Yeah, we have that hot rating, right? Yeah, right.
00:20:10
Speaker
you know, that I have the important on that and al the game, you know, havin one of the things that b
00:20:24
Speaker
He was always, you know, he wasn't the most skilled basketball player, but he was like really ultra competitive. And that's kind of like, you know, what the kind of player he was, but his skill was the quickness in his hands. You can really see the hand quickness. And then I thought about how good he is in turning into double play. And there you go.
00:20:48
Speaker
So you could see that baseball skill of turning double play as he was playing basketball. And Wilder was probably the best athlete, other than, let's say, Bill Wegman, who could dunk. And he was a really good athlete. B.J. Surhoff, you know, he was a good athlete. But Dan Plissak probably, I hope he's not listening to this, Dan Plissak probably, you know,
00:21:15
Speaker
one of the the lesser skilled uh he's tall too it just yeah he's a big guy right he's big tall guy yeah
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. He was pretty filthy on the mound. So that's okay. He had his. Yeah. He picked the right sport with baseball. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, a couple of questions for you about, as you're making the games, when you're talking about this time when you're, you're creating it and you have this, you know, this kind of first, this first version that you've created, did you already have stuff like
00:21:53
Speaker
specifically the idea to make the box into the ballpark with the stadium. So again for people haven't played it's a square box but you have what could be turf or grass on the bottom this this kind of paper that flips over so you have that realism and then you have all the stadiums
00:22:10
Speaker
that looked very similar to how they look in real life that would go up or around the outside of the box and then you'd roll the dice onto the field but like that alone was very cool that it was you know we'd gone vacation and we didn't need to bring anything else it was like we had the box we had all the stadiums we had all the cards and the dice so did you have input into like
00:22:29
Speaker
that creation or like the red, white, and blue dye, how hands-on for those things for you? Was that all your concept? The red, white, and blue dye, that was my concept because I wanted to have percentile dyes and that's how the design of the card making
00:22:46
Speaker
program was. The ballpark effects, that was all something that I did. The idea for the inserts though, was something that was developed by some of the other people in our team. And they came up with that and it turned out to be very popular.
00:23:05
Speaker
And it kind of gave the, it took the research that I had done with the ballparks and made it more visual, right? And you could see, you know, how many, you know, all the differences in the ballparks. So that ended up being a really fun thing.
00:23:25
Speaker
A lot of people have mentioned that they'd like to have those, and we're trying to find out, and you're getting the scoop here, we're trying to figure out a way to bring back that second edition. So what you just showed me, we're trying to see if we might be able to do a second edition reissue, and that was the second edition.
00:23:49
Speaker
Oh, got it. So the first edition had the county stadium game five celebration on the cover, right? And I'm not sure if you have saw that version. And that's the version that we're currently selling for the board game. Okay. And then only one year later, we came out with the idea
00:24:10
Speaker
for the ballpark wall inserts. So of course they weren't updated. That was back in the 80s. So if we can come out with the ballpark wall inserts, you'd have all the new ballparks, which would be great, right?
00:24:27
Speaker
It was great, though, because we would not necessarily match up the teams with the fields, right? So if we wanted a lot of home runs, we'd like a full county stadium, because it was like four or five to the left. Yeah, or if it was we bought it, it was going to be, you know, I don't know, it was like the Astrodome. I'm trying to remember some of the ones that were harder to hit it out.
00:24:43
Speaker
But, you know, you could pick a different stadium and be more of like a pitcher's stool or a defensive base game. So we just, I don't know, it was crazy. I mean, I'm from a small town of Connecticut and this game just like would transport us to these different places that we'd only see on TV, which was wild. And I did have a question, my, my brother, when I told him that I was speaking to you.
00:25:00
Speaker
We played this game a lot. He asked me and
Game Development: Realism and Statistics
00:25:03
Speaker
I don't know how much into this you want to get But he asked like how long did it take to build the model? And test like the dice roll distribution to come up with what you ultimately ended on to have it be so realistic So as you mentioned
00:25:19
Speaker
again, for those that may not be as familiar, you have three die, they're nine-sided die, I believe, and you roll, and if it's zero to 4.99, you look on a player's card and it gives you a bunch of different outcomes, some are hits, some are outs, some are hard grounders, whatever, trike outs, walks, and then if you have over 4.99, it goes in the pitcher's card, and there's a bunch of different outcomes there, but how long did it take you to build that model so that it was so good, so that it was actually realistic?
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, so it was really about four or five years in the making because 1981 was really the first year that I started working on it. Okay. And we launched in 85.
00:26:01
Speaker
So during that period, you know, was the initial work. And then subsequently, even after that, when we did the second edition, there was new things that came on board. But that theme of the Bill James baseball abstracts, you know, I just learned more and more as they were coming out. And yeah, so but I think I got all
00:26:25
Speaker
so many things right from the beginning, which I think was really important. You know, there weren't like wholesale changes, you know, and I've always tried to keep the design pretty stable and try to test things as much as I can before releasing to the public rather than trying to have, you know, wholesale changes every year, right?
00:26:48
Speaker
Right, right. Well, what's cool about it is, you know, you can get as, like, in depth as you want to get, right, you have all sorts of stuff, like if someone only played 40 games in a season, there's limitations, same way with pitchers, maybe they can only pitch a certain amount of innings and stuff. But, you know, when we were first starting, and I'll be honest, even when we get together today, we bring our games around, we found this is kind of a
00:27:11
Speaker
a rebirth if you will because we um I think it was our birthday or Christmas my brother found one on eBay and got me the set and then my friend had his set so we've kind of started just getting back into it and you know you don't have to necessarily get into all of that detail if you don't want to you can play the games a little bit maybe faster or if you wanted to without doing that or we used to have these guys that were kind of
00:27:35
Speaker
They were limitations, but if you didn't play with them, they were kind of a great find. If you drafted them, like a guy who just hits 600 versus left-handed or something like that. So those are always fun guys, just games against each other when we play. But yeah, that realism was incredible. And then I kind of want to ask you, so we were playing it, not everyone in our town, but a lot of our friends had it and they were playing it. And then I was wondering, there's this moment where we just found this real recently.
00:28:04
Speaker
where the game appears in Home Alone, the movie. And I was just curious, was that something that you had any idea about? Or how did that happen? It's like, it's a pretty quick shot, I believe, like in Kevin's living room or something. You see the game there. But did you have any idea that that was happening? Because I mean, Home Alone might be the pinnacle of 1990, right? For many years after. So that's pretty important.
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, so one of the other people that I worked with there at that time, he actually set that up. It was Jim Van Erden. And they did the product placement. So we knew perfectly that this was going to happen. Of course, they could have cut the scene, right? Right.
00:28:51
Speaker
But yeah, that was placed there. And Jim just always told me I was just good product placement. I said, yeah, it was. And to be in a movie like that, you'd have to be looking for it or know the game probably to spot it, right? But it's definitely there. So it's a really cool thing to think that you're at home alone, right?
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah, I just I just if you were, you know, coming from college and you pitch this game and you start making it and then literally five years later, it's in one of the most popular movies probably of the decade, even it is again, it's a brief shock, but still, I just think that that's super cool. And then I guess I would just ask like, you know, at some point, pursue the pennant. I guess maybe you can explain the rationale, but so pursue the pennant,
00:29:45
Speaker
kind of ends and then Dynasty League begins.
Transition to Dynasty League Baseball: Impact of 1994 MLB Strike
00:29:49
Speaker
And was there always a continuation of Dynasty League as a board game or was it just like an online video game for a certain period of time? Has it been a board game the entire way through with an online?
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah, so, uh, Dynasty Baseball started in 1994 is when it was released with the worst possible timing because like two months into our marketing campaign, the players go on strike and there's no world series. And then not only that, but the next season they're still on strike.
00:30:31
Speaker
So yeah, it couldn't have been worse in terms of the timing for launching. But we did have the original board game for Dynasty Baseball starting at that time. And it was based on the original Pursuit of Pennant game engine. And I wanted to make it like next gen Pursuit of Pennant in terms of the game design focus.
00:30:54
Speaker
And I guess to make a long story short, I actually ended up acquiring the rights to pursue the pennant. So we actually now are dynasty baseball powered by pursue the pennant. And, you know, we're trying to bring more of the pursue the pennant aspects into play. As far as the
00:31:15
Speaker
We had a Windows version that launched at the same time.
00:31:24
Speaker
It was out longer than our online version. It was out quite a while. It was meant to replicate the board game, just like the online version, but it came up a little bit short in terms of like it never had a computer manager, which for some people actually like it because they like to play both sides.
00:31:50
Speaker
But we, what we want to do with the online version, which I don't know if you want to jump into that right now. Yeah, I had some questions about that. I had some questions just about like statistics and baseball and as well, and then maybe some other questions for you, but I'd love to hear a little bit about the online.
Online Gaming Evolution: Retro Feel in the Virtual Space
00:32:07
Speaker
So, yeah, so.
00:32:11
Speaker
It has a retro feel, I would say, which I think is super cool. If you go now to sign up to play Dynasty League Baseball, it like immediately brought me back to playing the game. So obviously I would imagine that's intentional. Definitely. To the degree that it works. It connects perfectly. So the next important moment in Dynasty League Baseball powered by pursuit of history, 2008
00:32:39
Speaker
And I had known Jamie Hall for a while. He originally had written into us an actual physical letter that people mailed. This is almost like pre-internet, right? 1994. Right, right. No, he had mailed us a letter saying he wanted to play test the game. And I thought, great. So I actually got to knew Jamie over the while. And we had a short-lived
00:33:05
Speaker
Fantasy basketball software and it was Don Nelson fantasy basketball This goes back to my why basketball and I knew Donnie Nelson who is Don Wilson's son and Donnie is the was the GM of the Dallas Mavericks. I remember that. Yep Yes, and he just left that you know within like I don't know a year or two ago. He left the Mavericks but So
00:33:35
Speaker
So 2008, we decide, okay, Jamie had worked for Microsoft and he was leaving the company. And he was going to go on to change careers at that point, but he had a lot of time. And we decided we want to do something
00:34:01
Speaker
totally different in terms of taking our Sunday Night Baseball League, which is a draft league, and be able to play online face to face against each other. So what we want to do is have it so that you didn't have to, for example,
00:34:23
Speaker
import and export files to a central commissioner because that ended up being a real pain and you never could have like real time stats or standings or leaders. You had to wait until you had everybody send you the files to the commissioner, right?
00:34:43
Speaker
And being online would mean that it would be really easy for you to play other people because we were trying to do it with the older Windows version that we had and it was just a nightmare. You have like these third party software programs you had to put in the various codes and it never worked right. And it was only
00:35:12
Speaker
You had to share the screen with the player that you were playing.
00:35:19
Speaker
We wanted to have it be true multiplayer where you had your own screen, the other player had their screen, and all you had to do basically is click the join button and that was it. You were connected, away you go. The technology behind the scenes was not quite ready for the vision that you had.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, so well, this was going to be the first of its kind, and it still is. No one else has that feature where you can have a draft league and play live games against each other. There's other online games that you are maybe like the general manager, and you send in, you know, your moves or whatever.
00:36:11
Speaker
or you're the manager and you send in your moves, but as far as playing a live head-to-head game, no. So if you want to have like a live head-to-head
00:36:26
Speaker
a building bay live head-to-head games, we're the only ones that allow you to do that in your draft league and then update the stats and standings in real time. So you can do scoreboard watching, right? So if you're in September, you can watch your other league members and you see their scores and you can actually go into their box scores and the box scores are changing in real time.
00:36:55
Speaker
So you can look at the game summary and also see who's at bat. So just like as if you're going to the MLB app, right? You can do the same thing with the online version. So that's great fun, being able to see the other score, see what's happening in your league. And as soon as your game is over and you've played live,
00:37:20
Speaker
all the standings are updated, all the league leaders, you know, all your stats. So it's fabulous. You know, we used to do it with the board game. And if you have all the people locally, great, it's great fun. And there's something about the board game playing face to face that can't be replaced, right? Because you're there in person, kind of see their expressions and you have that.
00:37:46
Speaker
a fun sense of being there in person. But we have a 2014 league now and we have players in New Zealand, we have players across the country. It's unbelievable. And if you had told me that we were going to have this online version where people, you know, all across the country
00:38:12
Speaker
would be able to play live games against each other. Back when I first designed the game at University of Miami back in 1981, I just would have had no conception at all about that that was going to happen.
00:38:31
Speaker
So it's funny how things turn out and how things evolve, but to actually have the board game turn into this new platform and be able to play what now you can play on Mac, you can play on Windows, you can play on your iPhone, which is, you know, you can play on your Android phone, you can play on your iPad.
00:38:59
Speaker
It's, you know, and that was the hope when we first designed, is that you'd be able to play on Windows, Mac, and we thought, at 2008, iPhone was just coming out. So that wasn't even so much of a consideration, but as it turned out, mobile became really important.
00:39:19
Speaker
and we were able to do a mobile version as well. So if you're in a league, for example, you might be at home and you might be playing in your Mac and then you might say, okay, I need to leave right now. Let's go play when I get to my friend's house and I'll play you game two at my friend's house and I'll play you on my phone.
00:39:49
Speaker
So you can switch devices and it will still all be part of...
00:39:55
Speaker
the same league. If you're at work or at home, during the lunch hour, you could play on your iPad and not have to worry. And you can't do that with a standalone game, right? Because if you're playing on your computer in a season replay, that's it. That game is locked into there. You can't go and play on your phone and continue the replay or on an iPad. So I think that's a really cool feature to have as well.
00:40:25
Speaker
Oh, it's amazing that the phone piece is a great unlock. That's actually how I know that my brother plays and that's also if I'm just exactly what you described on a lunch break and I want to play. There was a guy and to your point, there's people everywhere. There was a guy who was playing against
00:40:40
Speaker
and he lived in Atlanta and so I'm in the west coast he's a little ahead of me but you know he would just shoot me a note and be like you want to play at best of three and he was a big Braves guy and I'm a Mets fan so we had some great battles and I will say the one thing and this is a good and bad thing is that you know you were describing
00:40:59
Speaker
playing with Dennis Martinez back in the day and kind of the way that he threw the dice.
Cheating Stories and Childhood Memories
00:41:02
Speaker
And I almost wrote into you as a 12-year-old to say, hey, my brother is cheating when he drops the dice because he would kind of do a drop and not a roll. And I was like, there's got to be some rule about
00:41:14
Speaker
the needed rotations on each die when they hit the board game. Like pitch revolutions, right? Yeah, exactly. They're exactly correct. There needs to be some stats on that because I'd be like, Oh, what a surprise you rolled to 250 again in the Albert Bell at a home run. But anyway, um, so, you know, I know
00:41:34
Speaker
I could talk to you for hours. There's a couple of things I definitely wanted to connect with you on that while I have the opportunity. And one of them is you were so far ahead of time. I mean, yes, Bill James, as you said, was a huge influence. And so Bill James obviously rightfully gets a ton of credit for bringing statistics into baseball. But the fact that there was this generation of folks who grew up playing your game, and then we don't really get to
00:42:02
Speaker
see statistics really super involved in baseball until I guess maybe more on the money ball time and that there's a big movie and Brad Pitts in it and that's a big story and then you have it now it's it's everywhere and I feel like it's as much of a discussion um nowadays as sometimes the game itself right is about how statistics have impacted the game so I guess I would just say one that's pretty cool that you were part of that statistical revolution and I guess I would ask just for personal note how do you feel like
00:42:33
Speaker
the use of statistics and some of the stuff that you're doing to create this game, how do you feel like it's impacted
The Role of Statistics in Baseball and Game Design
00:42:39
Speaker
the game? Do you think it's, has it been all positive? Do you have any personal thoughts about it or do you just think it's just a natural evolution? Well, when I started, there was just
00:42:56
Speaker
hardly any statistics that were available. There were some printed statistics, but things like, let's say, lefty-righty splits, which are essential to the game,
00:43:11
Speaker
you just couldn't find them. It was like an archeological dig. And I tell people, I felt like Indiana Jones on these archeological digs. I contacted the Hall of Fame. I contacted Pete Palmer and John Thorne. I contacted Bill James, trying to get all these different pieces of statistics, and much of which is now available, like a baseball reference or fan graphs.
00:43:41
Speaker
None of that was available back then. It's just home runs, RBIs, stolen bases, average, right? But if you go back to like the 70s, it's kind of when I grew up following baseball in the late 60s, the sporting news was like the source for baseball. And you wait for that weekly edition to appear.
00:44:08
Speaker
And you would know everything about baseball at that point. And it was so important. But the statistics were very basic compared to the stats that are here now. But I'd like to think that we've always been ahead of the curve. For example, when we came out with the next gen version of pursue the pennant, which is dynasty baseball,
00:44:38
Speaker
had things like a catcher handling rating, which included catcher framing. Well, you never even heard of that in 1994, right? And we were already doing ratings for that. Now that's a huge deal. You'll be like, why is this catcher hitting 200 playing in a major league? So I'm like, well, he has a great
00:45:02
Speaker
you know, frowning ability for pitchers and he gets X percentage of strikes more than your average catcher, right? Things like that. Exactly. So, and we, the...
00:45:12
Speaker
That debuted in 1994. So think about how long it had taken for the rest of baseball to catch up, right? That's the same as when we debuted in 1985. We had all these advanced, we were doing things with ballparks
00:45:35
Speaker
with the seven different outfield locations and we had special home runs that I know you know about like on to Waveland Avenue and on to Sheffield Avenue and over to Green Monster and you know really fun stuff you know where it wouldn't just be a home run but you know the in many cases like the iconic
00:45:57
Speaker
locations of all these special home runs. I think that's also one of the things about the game that is great is the visualization. Because it's not just a single, right? You have like ground ball signals, you have
00:46:12
Speaker
line drive singles, you have doubles in the gap, doubles off the wall, and then the range plays or you can't quite get to it. So there's this visualization there that's there and that translates into the
00:46:32
Speaker
the online version, but those are actual plays from the board game version. So the online version is a direct translation of the board game. So all those same plays that isn't just text that was made up, those doubles off the walls are actually results that come directly from the player cards or the game charts, right? Yeah. So it's not like we're trying to think of the word
00:47:09
Speaker
I can't think of the word, but giving more description to a play that
00:47:21
Speaker
is it really part of the play itself, if that makes sense? Right. It just is the play, but there's so many variations that can come about because of the combinations of cards that you get this realistic to your point. You can see the game kind of unfolding. And it's wild. Again, there's going to be something I've never played this game, but then those games against this gentleman in Atlanta, I was so fired up. It was like this close game, and then all this interesting stuff was happening. And I was like, this is crazy. It's so...
00:47:50
Speaker
I don't know. It really brings you into the game. I felt like I was walking a game, but I'm going to participate at the same time.
00:47:58
Speaker
It's really incredible. The live games online, there's something about playing online live where it's different than playing against computer manager, right? Playing against computer manager is fun. Something about playing against another live person, especially like in a tournament or like one of your friends or in a draft league, there's an extra amount of juice.
00:48:27
Speaker
It's part of that game that makes it just extra, extra fun. I like playing solitaire, but something about our league games, I get really excited to play against other live opponents. And these are all my friends, too. So it's just fun. That might be the only time that I really get together, in a sense, with them, right, is when we play our series.
00:48:55
Speaker
So it becomes a social thing too, where there's this glue to the league and people getting together through the game, which is great. You get a chance to see your friends and play with your friends.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's, that is a great part of it. And that's part of the reason that was so exciting to kind of get back into it is to connect, you know, again, with my, my brother and our buddy, Danny. Is your brother living near you or he's far away?
00:49:29
Speaker
He does. He's only like 45 minutes away. So, but we both have, you know, kids and busy work lives and everything else. So it's, it's more of, you know, we got together in spring training this year in Arizona and our buddy, Danny lives out there. So we got together and everyone just gave us time to go in and run like a mini tournament, you know, while we're, while we're in town. And it was just, it was a blast. And you know, to your point, the online version with this, even though I don't know this person at all, right? This guy in Atlanta.
00:49:57
Speaker
He was like the O3 Red Sox. I was the 86th match for playing in one of those tournament like best teams ever tournaments. I wound up winning, but it's something about the game itself is like it doesn't, I don't know anything about him, but I know he's into this game. There's already like shared experiences.
00:50:13
Speaker
I asked him he grew up playing it by himself you know he would play so he was kind of he was really interested to hear my experiences playing as my friends and doing these drafts in person cuz he grew up playing it all himself but still just playing the game there's like this connective tissue that you know just allows you to hop right into it so
00:50:30
Speaker
It's so, and I have a question at the end for you around that kind of feeling that people have about this game and how personal it is to folks. But I want to ask you quickly, I'd be remiss. It's so detailed and lifelike. And I read a little bit about this, but I would imagine there's been interest from actual baseball franchises to maybe speak to you to learn more about this, especially the statistics
00:50:59
Speaker
within baseball work just kind of ramping up because you had already done all this to your point, you know, being Indiana Jones and pulling a lot, unearthing a lot of this stuff, but can you just tell us some stories about maybe working with teams or how teams that wanted to work with you?
Interacting with MLB Players and Managers
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah, so just early on, because I had worked with the Orioles, I had a chance to
00:51:23
Speaker
get access to maybe players and managers that I normally wouldn't have been able to. So one of the early stories is, and this goes back, I want to say 1983. I think this is before the game even came out in 1983. I'm playing with the prototype of our game
00:51:50
Speaker
in the Milwaukee County stadium, visitors, clubhouse with Dennis Martinez, Tippie Martinez, Len Sakata. And we're, we're playing, play a game right at the middle of the Orioles clubhouse. All of a sudden or a Weaver walks in and I can't remember which Oreo player, uh,
00:52:15
Speaker
it was, but he went up to Earl and he was trying to explain what we were doing. And Earl just kind of like looked at us like we were like from outer space. Yeah, he just didn't get what we were doing. And he just kind of walked on. Um, I had another experience with another major league manager. I'm doing a, uh, the Detroit free press writer was doing a story for the Detroit free press.
00:52:46
Speaker
And we are playing a 1968 Tigers versus 1984 Tigers game in the lobby of whatever hotel we were in suburban Detroit. Okay. We're playing, guess who walks in?
00:53:04
Speaker
none other than Sparky Anderson. Out of the blue, I mean, it wasn't the team hotel or anything. I don't know what he was doing there, but Sparky Anderson all of a sudden appears. So obviously this is a great chance for the writer. It was Mike Betzel was the writer.
00:53:24
Speaker
Uh, to ask Sparky, which, you know, which was the better team, the 68 tigers of the 84 tigers. And Sparky said, Oh, definitely the 68 tigers. No question. So, um, yeah, so yeah, I mean, just like stuff like that. Um, it's then starting, you know, in terms of getting like more into the analytics, I have all this information and.
00:53:50
Speaker
back home in Brookfield, Wisconsin. I would go to a lot of the Brewer games. And Tom Treblehorn was the manager, you probably remember, late 80s. And I had all this information about stolen bases against
00:54:08
Speaker
the various pitchers, and that was, of course, one of our ratings is, you know, you can obviously steal off the pitcher versus the filter, and there's two different kinds of ratings, like how often they steal and then the actual percentage, and then there's the pick-off rating as well, so it gets really detailed in terms of all the, just from that sense. So I go into Tom Troublehorn's office that I had this invite,
00:54:36
Speaker
And I show him everything that I have and he's pouring over this and he said, we don't have any of this stuff. And I was kind of amazed, you know, like I have all this stuff and you're the major league team and you don't have it. So yeah, I was sharing this information with the Milwaukee Brewers and Tom Treblehorn. So that was incredible part. Yeah. And then more recently,
00:55:04
Speaker
I've met with quite a few front office people, but our co-friend and teammate we learned of yours, Dan Kentrovich, who used to be the GM or assistant GM of the Oakland days, and I think he had work he overlapped with Billy Bean, right?
00:55:25
Speaker
I believe so, yeah. And he, so for Flisser's Dan was short stop at Brown when I was there and has gone on. Yeah, he worked for the A's and I believe he works for the Cubs now. So incredible. That's our shared LinkedIn connection. So it's amazing that you met with him. What did you,
00:55:43
Speaker
What were you talking today? I mean, I imagine it was about statistics, right? Yeah, so we wanted to know what we were all doing and how they might be able to use some of our information and simulation. And Dan, by the way, is now the scouting director of the Chicago Cubs, right? Right, right. That's where he is right now. And yeah, so I got a chance to spend, oh, maybe
00:56:09
Speaker
Oh, good hour with him in their spring training site in... I'm trying to think of where... it was at the A spring training site, wherever that was. It's in Arizona? Yeah, it's in Arizona. I'm trying to think of the city and it's not coming to me right now.
00:56:32
Speaker
But yeah, he was very impressed by the simulation and particularly impressed because I had brought the actual charts for the board game. And that's where you really can see what's happening and how the results are resolved, right? I'm not just showing him this computer and you don't really see where these results are coming from. You can actually dig in a lot more granularly
00:56:59
Speaker
and seeing, for example, like the different range charts that we have that show the gradations of the various ratings from A+, which, you know, at shortstop would be like Ozzy Smith, like best of all time, you know, when F might be like a player, like totally out of position, right? Maybe,
00:57:22
Speaker
D.H. playing shortstop or something like that. So he was particularly impressed just seeing the depth and the realism of the simulation. And yeah, he said he was extremely impressed by it. So that in a way just made me feel really good that someone from a front office would have that kind of positive reaction.
00:57:50
Speaker
to it so yeah it doesn't it doesn't surprise me and yet it's so awesome because again much of yourself i would have ever imagined sitting in my locker room floor playing this game that somehow which felt surreal to me right was so real that not only were you
00:58:08
Speaker
were people interested in it that were in baseball. But you were actually ahead of the curve in that regard. And Dan, similarly, we were at Brown in the late 90s.
Statistics in Sports: From Board Games to Reality
00:58:19
Speaker
And he, after, went to Sloan for statistics and then got into baseball. But even then, he was still probably ahead of the curve a little bit in terms of just being all in on statistics in baseball and in sports. And we've seen that now across a lot of sports. But baseball, really, I think, was the first one.
00:58:38
Speaker
to get deep into it and people like yourself are really to thank, I think, in a lot of ways. Regardless of what you think about shifting and some of the different rules and everything else, it helps you understand the game more. And also, I think that that's what made the board game and that's what makes the online dynasty baseball
00:59:04
Speaker
so much fun to play is that those statistics lead to this gameplay that feels like a real game. So I mean, just incredible, incredible stories. I wanted to, I know we're kind of up against time, so I just wanted to ask you something. So I was reading
00:59:23
Speaker
I wanted to ask you something and i want to talk about the saber 51 pretty clear at the end and i have a conference coming up so i asked about that but i was doing some research for this and i came across this article and it was this this man who was talking about how he played pursuit dependent all the time back in the day and he found you know years later
00:59:42
Speaker
this game that he had already begun, but he had not completed it. And then he did like a blog where he basically said, hey, this is gonna be my last game. And he talked all about like why it was so important. And then he went inning by inning in detail what happened with the game. And it, you know, it struck me as like this, this kind of, obviously this passion project, right? He just wrote a blog about this experience. It's very unique to him, but I found it really touching. And I was wondering, why do you think that your game
01:00:11
Speaker
has resonated like this with so many people. What is it about it that makes it not just a game? Like I look at it as more of like a part of my childhood and now an adult as well, but what is it about that makes it resonate with people like them? Well, I think a big part of it is the game that you grew up with, right? So I think that there's an affinity
01:00:40
Speaker
with the first game that you play and just the level of realism really helps to immerse you in the game.
01:00:54
Speaker
And the playability is there, right? I mean, it's not like it gets bogged down. It flows well, even with all the realism. And that's a huge design goal, because it's one thing to have all this realism. But if the game gets so bogged down, then forget it. It's going to be too complicated. And you can play a complete game
01:01:21
Speaker
in about 25, 30 minutes. But yeah, there's something about, like you were saying, you're playing with your brothers and your friends. You'll remember that. Those are life moments, right? And I remember, we've done a lot of tour tournaments. We'll actually,
01:01:42
Speaker
have players from various parts of the country and we'll get together for a tournament live with the board game and we'll travel by train to a ballpark and see a game. I've done a lot of these.
01:01:58
Speaker
I have to do this whenever the next one is, if they're still happening. Maybe even more than that. But yeah, these are moments that people remember for the rest of their lives. They're life moments.
01:02:14
Speaker
And it's just great seeing that. And the people on the tour tournaments have become my friends. And we stay in contact.
Fostering Friendships Through Gaming
01:02:27
Speaker
And it's really great. It becomes a part of your life, right? And an important part of your life. Yeah.
01:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, no, I'm just gonna say it really, it really has.
01:02:46
Speaker
some of the things that you did intentionally and some, and maybe others, like things like the wild plays, right? Like things like that that really, or some of these attributes for like specific players. And I mean, those like those really specific kind of details and flourishes, I think are what make it like just a genuinely incredible game to play. And then to your point, it also, especially, you know, now I said, I'm like,
01:03:15
Speaker
you know old guy get off my lawn but in this time where everything moves so fast and there's like not a lot of connectivity it's just an opportunity right for a 0.25 minutes.
01:03:26
Speaker
30 minutes to really connect, have some one-on-one time and play the game. You don't really find a lot of reasons to do that anymore. And so it's great to be able to still do it and have it still be all the new statistics, all the new players, up to your point, ahead of or on top of all the new statistical components of baseball.
01:03:50
Speaker
Yeah, in an era where you see so many people that in a social situation, they're looking at their phones, right? They're just so into their phone. Or at least now, they can be on their phone and playing their friend and interacting in a live game rather than just kind of being off on their own, right?
01:04:14
Speaker
Or, you know, even better, like if they're both on their phones together, you know, in the same physical location, you know, playing against each other, that might even be more ideal, you know, if you both were together playing.
01:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing. And I can't thank you enough for creating this amazing game and for continuing with it and continuing to iterate on it to make it.
01:04:44
Speaker
to your point, viable now online and have it be easy to play, but yet keep that kind of old school feel to it that makes the gameplay so fun. So yeah, can't thank you enough. And I know, I wanted to ask you quickly, I know we're over here. So I wanted to ask about
Upcoming SABR Convention: Events and Tournaments
01:05:01
Speaker
Saber 51. I know you have a convention coming up.
01:05:03
Speaker
So Sabre Convention is July 5th through 9th at the Palmer House, Hilton in Chicago, Illinois. Actually, I stayed recently in a business group, nice place. And it's the Society for American Baseball Research. And I just quickly give a bunch of speakers and
01:05:18
Speaker
It looks like a really interesting convention. Can you tell me a little bit about the SABRE convention and your role with that? So July 6th, which is Thursday, we are going to have a panel discussion and talk about some of the same topics that we've talked about here on the podcast.
01:05:37
Speaker
More so on the draft leagues for the online version because Jeff Reese is going to be there and he's in my draft league and Rob Neier from Sabercast that does the Sabercast pods. He's going to be the moderator.
01:05:53
Speaker
Derek Bain, one of the co-hosts from SABRE, he's going to be there. So yeah, if you're going to be at the convention, yes, stop by and say hi. And then that's at noon on Thursday. And it should be a really fascinating discussion, you know, talking about some of these same topics. At 4.30,
01:06:18
Speaker
Central time we are going to have a greatest teams bracket tournament And we didn't touch too much on the bracket tournaments, but they're live real-time tournaments that where the brackets are updated real-time single elimination and It's like every game is a game seven right you win or go home, right? It's March Madness with the greatest teams of all time and
01:06:46
Speaker
right right so and that starts it's going to be a 64 team tournament so half the people are going to be eliminated in the first half hour right right round so then if you're luckily lucky enough to continue you know you're going to be able to play longer but uh yeah so
01:07:04
Speaker
Is that only for people that are in attendance or can you play? No, that's the thing. If you're listening to this podcast, you can join.
01:07:18
Speaker
The SABR committee people have been sending out the information on how to sign up, but all you have to basically do is just sign up at dinasleepbaseball.com for a free month subscription. There's a code that's up at the site.
01:07:38
Speaker
And you can go ahead and play in the tournament. So you just, there's, I think about 20 spots left of the 64 right now. So probably should sign up pretty quickly because I got to get in there. Yeah. I got to give their 86 nuts. Hopefully no one has them yet. That's why. Yeah. That's going to be a popular team. You might have to take a second choice.
01:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, all right, that's fine. I can go through the other... I'd love to say I could go through all the other great Mets years, but that would be a pretty short list, unfortunately. But that's awesome. So Saber 51, yeah, check it out. I think that's great. If there are open spots left, that's how I got back into it online. I played one of those greatest teams ever, Brackets, and it was a ton of fun. So can't recommend that enough.
01:08:27
Speaker
Thank you again for just your innovation and for following your passion and then turning it into something that has impacted a lot of people. It's been a big part. It was a big part of my childhood and as I mentioned earlier.
01:08:40
Speaker
just continues to be a part of my adulthood now and a great way for me to connect with friends and stay close to the game. So thank you for all that. And also thank you for taking your time today. I really appreciate it. And yeah, hope to stay in touch. Maybe I'll get to go to one of those one of those conventions or times where you take people to ballpark and play some games and sounds like a blast.
01:09:01
Speaker
That would be fantastic. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Great to hear all your stories and enthusiasm for the game. That's amazing. It just, it's kind of a feel good thing for me because I get to hear all these great stories, you know, about all the people that enjoy the game. And so that's, that's part of their reward, I guess, for doing it. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, well deserved. And thanks again. Thanks. I appreciate it. Okay. Great.
01:09:33
Speaker
you