Players
Until about 1980 ASB had a mix of current Major League stars and Hall of Fame players. As more athletes (and their estates) asserted licensing rights over the use of their names the old-time players were dropped from the game, although a handful of individuals were included occasionally in an annual set.
Each of the then current players were asked to sign off on a release form granting permission to include their batting statistics in the game. This practice continued for almost 50 years after the introduction of the game. Although a few declined, most agreed despite the fact that they were not compensated for being included.
In 1995 the game came under the MLBPA license, which made the design of the game cards more sophisticated but also added significantly to the cost of production. Since the change in its business model to absorb the MLBPA royalties Cadaco has stopped issuing regular annual updates to the game, and its publishing future remains unclear.
Although numbers have varied, the typical ASB boxed set contained 40 player cards for early sets, and 63 player cards for later sets.
Read more about this topic: All Star Baseball
Famous quotes containing the word players:
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“The players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out [a] line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand.””
—Ben Jonson (c. 1572–1637)
“Yeah, percentage players die broke too, don’t they, Bert?”
—Sydney Carroll, U.S. screenwriter, and Robert Rossen. Eddie Felson (Paul Newman)