Dice baseball,whether it be Strat-o-Matic, APBA (my favorite) or any of the myriad other board games out there (NOT computer or- Horrors!- fantasy leagues) is better than real baseball for at least all of the following reasons:
First, with a good dice game you can retreat from the grotesque offensive charade that today masquerades as the genuine article. You can ride a cosmic time machine back to baseball's true fields of dreams - the great old parks of Crosley, Forbes Field, Shibe Park, etc. You can replay the old greats, see Musial line a double off the wall at Ebbets Field, watch Willie Mays race to deep center in the Polo Grounds, feel the tension as Ryne Duren squints in at the batter and lets fly a heater that will go who knows where?
Second, with dice ball you'll never have a players' strike, you'll not be subjected to ear-splitting rock music, you'll never be stiffed for parking, hot dogs, or watered-down soft drinks. For the price of 60 bucks or so (about what you might pay for ONE night at the park) you can buy an entire season's worth of admission to the diamonds of APBA or Strat plus a cardboard ballpark or two. (We play under the lights each night on the pop-up book version of Fenway Park, but other ballparks are available in various forms, even the late, great ones).
Third, you can play an exciting match in 30 minutes, doubleheader in an hour, stopping by the fridge anytime you get dry (there are no concession lines in APBA). You can bring Koufax vs. Gibson back to life and watch the K's pile up on a scorecard that needn't get mustard smeared or Coke dimpled. And, I suppose if you must, you can play 21st century and watch pitchers HIT three home runs in a single game, see skinny utility guys pop them 400 feet. The point is, you can do it as you please.
Besides, real baseball never produced a novel to equal Robert Coover's dice-inspired "Universal Baseball Association, "Shoeless Joe" notwithstanding.
Above all, when all you guys are crying in your Coors after this summer's strike, I'll be cooly sipping my grape Nehi and smugly announcing, "There's a drive, way back there! Holy Cow! I don't believe it! Mickey's done it again!"
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Posted June 3, 2002.
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