Creating The World’s (Best?) Table Top Baseball Game
Paper football and shuffleboard meet baseball. Magic ensues.
The tension was high during the final moments of the inaugural game at Callahan Stadium.
I clung to a narrow 1–0 lead.
Bottom of the ninth, runner on first, with two outs.
My wife swings.
I watched the ball scoot across the board, my heart pounded. It stopped on the “home run” strip just outside the playing field.
Just like that, my wife had snatched victory from the claws of defeat.
Final score: 3–1.
It’s official. My wife is better than me at the game I created.
The Origin
This tabletop baseball game has been a brainchild of mine since 2003. I created the first “board” out of a piece of notebook paper in my algebra class.
I’ve always loved ballparks, and I knew that a shuffleboard-esque tabletop version would be fun. (Sneaky side note: I’ve been able to teach my wife a lot about baseball through playing this tabletop version)
I’ve always loved ballparks, and I recently built one of my own — sort of. It’s a tabletop baseball game that’s similar to the classic paper football game where you nudge the “ball” across the board.
The basic premise is that you flick a wooden puck (the ball) across the board, which has regions designated for outs, double plays, sacrifice flies, singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. There’s also a die, which can be rolled head-to-head with your opponent for stolen bases. To give you an idea of how it works, here’s a short video of me hitting a home run:
“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.” -Ted Williams
I first got the idea for this game in 2003, while sitting in algebra class. I created that first “ballpark” out of a piece of notebook paper, and I’ve developed the idea further since then.
Unfortunately, I no longer have that original piece of notebook paper, but I do my first prototype board, from 2015, which I made using Pages for Mac (and probably most of the ink in our printer):
The Stadium
That was a decent starting point, but I wanted more. Initially, I wanted to use a fancy wood, like mahogany or cedar, to create a new game board. But my wife, an artist who works with wood, recommended that I choose a wood that’s easy to manage and carry around with minimal alterations, so I went with particle board. I asked an employee at Home Depot to cut it to size.
Once I had my piece of wood, I began marking it up to create the game board. I love stadiums that have odd dimensions, so I included as much variety with the outfield dimensions as I could while keeping it fun to play:
If you look closely, you’ll see lots of small dots scattered across the layout. That’s because I batted and recorded over 100 hits to make sure the hit-to-out ratio was reasonable. (.330 batting average on this stadium)
The next steps were to apply the first coat of acrylic paint, with the help of a LOT of painter’s tape:
Then I added a second coat and a matte finish, and boom — I had a stadium.
The Players
Now that I had a ballpark, I needed players to play in it. In the early days, we used Clue game pieces. But it didn’t feel right having Colonel Mustard stealing third when he was supposed be murdering Mr. Boddy, so I decided to create my own players.
I purchased blank game pieces from a craft store and thought about how to paint them. I knew I wanted the players to reflect the uniform element I love most: the socks. I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan, so I designed one team with a stripe pattern based on the Redbirds’ classic socks and stirrups:
For the second team, I used a navy/orange color scheme. I’ve always loved how teams like the Tigers and Colt .45s have looked when wearing those colors on the field.
Getting the stripe pattern on these small pieces was difficult. I used electrical tape, which worked really well.
Final step was to paint the wooden puck/ball to look like a baseball. With that step completed, I was ready to play ball.
What’s next for Table Top Baseball?
- Classic stadiums?
- Laser cut masterpieces out of mahogany!?
- A Kickstarter?
- Shark Tank?
Maybe.
For now, I’d like to take you on the journey. Enter your email below and stay updated when I make new stadiums and live stream games:
One last thing
If you like baseball and boardgames, click the 💚 so other people can enjoy this too.
A version of this story originally published at www.uni-watch.com on January 27, 2017.
