Pursue The Pennant

Last week I was cleaning out my basement and I came across my old Pursue the Pennant game. For those of you not familiar with PTP, it was a baseball game played with cards and dice available for purchase at the Games by James location in Calhoun Square circa 1988. You can imagine how cool I was at the time. The game featured all the major league teams and the majority of the players that made up the rosters. The general gist of the game was you set your lineup, pitching rotation and 24 man roster. The game play involved rolling 3 10 sided dice (I am sure that I had extras from Dungeons and Dragons). One die was 100s , one was the tens and one was the ones. 0-499 was listed on the batters card and 500-999 was on the Pitchers card. Roll the dice and see what the card says. It is pretty elaborate with every player having their own card for batting or pitching plus error rankings, range rankings, different jump, stealing and base running, arm strength...I spent many a summer day playing against my non-Blake friends and even by myself. I have the 88 and 89 teams. My goal as a kid was to play a out a full tournament, 64 teams with the top teams getting byes to round out the bracket. I never accomplished that. I am not sure if I ever made it down to 32 teams.

I brought the game upstairs and decided to play a 4 team tournament. I took the 88 Twins and matched them up with the 88 White Sox. In the other bracket I matched the 88 Braves against the 88 Cubs. The Cubs took the best of 3 series 2-0. The White Sox did the same to the Twins with Melido Perez out dueling Alan Anderson and "Black" Jack Mcdowell taking down Frankie "Sweet Music" Viola. In the finals the Cub took the tournament 2-1. Yes, my wife thinks I am a nerd. The game itself was tedious at times. I really wanted a sweep in the finals and was not thrilled having to play the 3rd game, but what the heck I had the All star game on in the background. What was cool about the whole thing was going down memory lane with the Twins. Sure we all remember Kirby, Hrbek and Gaetti. What about Mark Portugal, Randy Bush and John Moses? Here is where the real appeal of the game comes, who do you start in RF Bush or Moses? If I have one of those guys DH I have to put Larkin on the pine. Decisions decisions decisions. Do I let Viola pitch even though he only spent half the year with the Twins and the other half with the Mets? Doug Baker hits .270 against righties, I will put him on top of my reserves so I don't forget to pinch hit him late. I know you can feel the excitement.

It was a piece of my childhood. It still has some fun value to it. I am still a nerd deep down inside. It is now time to put it back in the basement for another 20 years.