All Star Baseball - Game Play

Game Play

The game board for ASB has two spinners on top of a diagram of a baseball field. A hole for a baserunner peg is cut at the location of each base. A cardboard back panel is inserted into cut-out slots in the board, displays the key to the game cards and cardboard wheels that can be turned to display the correct inning, the number of outs and the score.

Each circular player card has a series of lines and numbers arranged in a circle around its center. The card is placed on a spinner, which the batting player spins. (Aficionados would spin the metal pointers with rubber bands to avoid blisters.) Once the spinner came to rest between two lines, the number for that section defined what happened to that batter.

If one or more runners were on base, the pitching player would spin the other spinner, which displayed zones that defined whether runners advanced, scored or were out on the play.

Some special plays, as well as attempted steals, required the use of two special pink situation cards, which went on the pitching player's spinner and indicated the result when spun.

There were no pitching cards nor fielding cards, although pitchers' batting statistics were present on their cards. This made the game inherently less mathematically accurate than its older-audience rivals.

The chart for the meaning of each number on the cards is below. The earliest versions of ASB utilized this list:

• 1 Home Run
• 2 Ground out, double play with runner on first base
• 3 Runner reaches base on error
• 4 Fly out, all runners advance
• 5 Triple
• 6 Ground out, all runners advance
• 7 Single, runners advance one base
• 8 Fly out, runner on third base scores, others hold
• 9 Walk (Base on balls)
• 10 Strikeout
• 11 Double
• 12 Ground out, runners advance if forced
• 13 Single, runners advance two bases
• 14 Fly out, runners hold their bases

Later versions featured a simpler chart, augmented by second spins on the fielding player's side (presumably to give that player more to do), with only the "3" section fundamentally changed:

• 1 Home Run
• 2 Ground out
• 3 Fly out (Formerly Safe on error)
• 4 Fly out
• 5 Triple
• 6 Ground out
• 7 Single
• 8 Fly out
• 9 Walk (Base on balls)
• 10 Strikeout
• 11 Double
• 12 Ground out
• 13 Single
• 14 Fly out

For the 1975 release, the batting chart was reduced to the eight possible results:

• 1 Home Run
• 2 Triple
• 3 Double
• 4 Single
• 5 Fly Out
• 6 Ground Out
• 7 Base on Balls
• 8 Strikeout

All other rules of the game match those of regular baseball.