Butch & Co (Tabletop Baseball) interviewed Bruce Whitehill about the Championship Baseball game he developed in 1983 while working for Milton Bradley Co.

Butch & Co:

>  Among your many other credits as a designer, collector, and historian of games
is your work on Championship Baseball, first produced by Milton Bradley in 1984.
If you wanted to explain, *in a nutshell,* how Championship works and why it’s a
good game to play, you’d say…

Bruce Whitehill:
The game uses the actual stats—outs vs. hits, and the relationship between singles, doubles, triples, and home runs—for each baseball player. So, over time, the way these individual stars played would show up in the game. I began by working it out manually, using the individual numbers on the dice to represent the various outcomes during a time at bat. Then one of the computer programmers took my system and developed a program so that we could enter the stats of a particular baseball player and wind up with a list of outcomes for that player depending on the dice roll. After that, we checked all the records and re-did those that seemed too strange or were too close to the same dice rolls of another player. By the way, the one thing that makes the game less realistic than many players would like is that the pitcher has absolutely no effect on the outcome!

The system worked so well that I suggested to the marketing department that they offer buyers of the game the chance to send in a list of stats and a head shot (for a fee), and we would be able to provide a baseball card with the person’s picture on it and the dice rolls that fit those stats, allowing anyone to make up a dream team or add their own player’s card to the game.

>  This is as personal as we’ll get, but what’s your background in *actual* baseball –
as a player and/or as a fan?  And which MLB team can count you as a fan?

I was a Yankee fan in the 1950s and ‘60s, and became even more of a fan when the Brooklyn Dodgers left New York (signaling the beginning of the end of baseball as we knew it!). I enjoyed playing baseball. I would usually pitch—because it was the only place on the field from which I could reach all the bases on a throw without the ball bouncing. I wasn’t a good batter, and I couldn’t catch very well, either. And you know what they do with players in school who aren’t very good: they stick you in the outfield (sometimes there were four or five of us out there!). The longest moments of my life while growing up were those spent waiting in the outfield for a high fly ball—that had just been hit—to land, trying to figure out where it was going to land, and getting my mitt under it in the right place at the right time; I often miscalculated. It wasn’t long before I realized I was much better at swimming and soccer.

>  We know you’re an avid collector of vintage and antique games.  Does that include
any antique *baseball* games at all?  Which collectible games, in any genre, would
you consider the gems in your collection?

Over the years I had Ethan Allen’s All-Star Baseball, of course; Aydelott’s baseball game from 1910; The Great American Game Baseball, from Henry Peck of Boston, from the early 1900s; Parker Brothers’ very popular Peg Baseball; St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Card Game (Ed-u-Cards, 1964; I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, where I lived for four years); and a host of unusual and generic and small paper pocket games. My favorite was McLoughlin Brothers’ Game of Base-Ball, from 1886.

I had the Jim Prentice Electric Baseball (Electric Game Co., 1940s). I met Jim Prentice, and that was far more exciting for me than meeting a professional baseball player would have been.

I’ve sold most of those games, and I’m not even sure what I have left. I still have an early- to mid-1900s game from Milton Bradley called Baseball & Checkers. Not a very interesting game, but I kept it because the two halves of the board divide the baseball diamond right through home plate and second base, but my game has two left halves, one of which was turned upside down to form the right side of the board.

>  What was your experience with tabletop baseball — as a kid or as an adult –
before you designed Championship?  Which if any other tabletop baseball games
had you played, what was your impression of how they performed, what had you
liked or disliked about them?

All the baseball games I had were games I collected—as a collector, not as a player. I may have played All-Star Baseball a few times, but that’s about it.

>  What other baseball games, if any — antique or modern — do you *now* rate highly?
or poorly?

Personally, I like the odd games, and the ones that have interesting illustrations and such. There have been a lot of graphically wonderful baseball games produced since the late 1800s, but unfortunately, the generic ones don’t seem to attract much attention—only those games that mention teams or actual players.

>  Have you played any *other* tabletop baseball since you designed Championship,
and if so, which games?

I haven’t even played Championship Baseball since I invented it! Always too busy, and looking to move on to other things.

>  What was your background in game design prior to developing Championship Baseball?
Championship Baseball was one of my first games. I had been working at Bradley only about a year.

>  What inspired or motivated you to design and market a tabletop baseball game?
Did Milton Bradley approach you to have you design a baseball game for them,
or did you approach them with your own idea?

I was a full-time employee of Bradley at the time, in the R&D department. All the games I invented were in response to assignments I was given, for which I was told the theme and age range.

>  What were your priorities in designing the game? Which elements were most
important, and how did you weigh the crucial issue of complexity vs playability
(simplicity vs realism)?

Very simply, I wanted to devise a game that reflected how players would normally do in a real game.

>  What was the process of creating the game like?  Did you have a clear vision
from the start of how the game should work — or once you sat down to do the
game-testing, did you find that some things needed a lot more work than you’d
anticipated?

Yes, to the first part, and no, not really, to the second.

>  Why did you go with dice and cards as the game mechanic, as opposed to
spinners, an action game, or some other method?  Topps produced a special set
of player cards for Championship — was Topps involved prior to your designing
the game, or were they brought in later because of your design concept?

The game idea was to use all the combinations that would occur when rolling two dice. Simple elements, low cost to produce. The negotiations had already taken place with Topps, which was the reason Bradley was doing a baseball game with cards. Then there were negotiations with the Teams association and the Players Association, or something like that. I went to one of those meetings. Unfortunately, they couldn’t reach an agreement. Bradley wanted to make 200,000 and up for the major cities that had baseball teams, like New York, but the Players Association, I think it was, wanted an equal number of games produced for each city. Something like that. Bradley didn’t think it could sell 200,000 copies in some of the smaller team cities. In the end, the negotiations broke down and Bradley was not allowed to use any of the team logos on the clothing of the ball players. So we had real names, real signatures, and then real uniforms—but with all the striping and identifying emblems and symbols rubbed out! I thought this would make the cards highly valuable after a while, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case—collectors want the identifying marks on a player’s uniform.

> What was the most difficult element to get right — that is, what gave you the
biggest problem in making the game both realistic and playable?

The most difficult thing was developing a way in which the pitcher could affect the outcome, but then the game became too complex, and I couldn’t come up with anything, so I just left it out.

>  Did you have creative control over Championship, or were you asked or obligated
to make modifications to it at MB’s request?

I think it worked the first time through.

>  Please tell us about your experience in the production and marketing of the game
– how involved were you after the concept/design phase was complete?

As I said, I was an employee of Bradley at the time. Once I was done, I was on to other things. I checked the final box copy and instructions, and that was about it. I had no say on the graphic elements or 3-D design of the game.

>  Were you satisfied with the way the game was packaged and promoted?

Packaged, yes; promoted, well….

>  We’ve heard some tabletop gamers say they really liked the concept, the
mechanics, of Championship, but were frustrated by the short run of cards,
by the small rosters.  Was there ever any thought or plan about Topps or MB
adding more cards down the road?

I thought that was the plan. But I guess once the negotiations with the Players Association went awry, that killed any new editions. It was a shame, too, considering what we’ve seen with the collectible card game (CCG) craze.

>  What kind of feedback have you had from people who’ve played your game?

They like it—unless they’re avid fans looking for more pitcher involvement.

>  On what other game-related projects are you currently at work?

I’m living in Europe now—Germany—and my first game for the European market, “Change Horses,” is due out at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in February (2008). It’s just a coincidence that it’s also a sports game. But in this game, the horse that comes in last, wins! Players don’t know who owns which horse, and if your horse gets too far ahead, you can always change horses. Hopefully, the game will be released in the U.S. as well.

The idea came from an old verbal puzzle in which a wealthy merchant decides to do something special for his village, so he holds a horse race—with only two horses. He finds two riders and, just as the race is about to start, he announces that in order to make the game more interesting, the horse who comes in last wins. He fires the starting gun and, naturally, the horses don’t move. Nothing happens until one of the spectators walks up to the two jockeys and whispers two words. A few moments later, the horses are off and running. What did the man say? “Change horses!”

Also, I thought it would be fun for players who feel they lose too many games they play, to have a game they could win if they lose. Each player has an identical set of cards, with two horses shown on each card. The idea is to play your cards onto the board so that you help propel the other players’ horses while yours moves slowly. Players don’t know who owns which horse, and there is always at least one horse that is not owned by any player.

I also have about nine prototypes of very different types of games that are being playtested now by about eight European companies. The game business is a very friendly atmosphere over here, and not at all paranoid and secretive as it is in the U.S. Inventors even help each other by playtesting each other’s games.

Will I ever invent another baseball game? Sure—as soon as baseball becomes popular over here!