Earl Weaver Baseball - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Earl Weaver Baseball is a baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

computer game (1987), designed by Don Daglow

Don Daglow

Don Daglow is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for designing a series of pioneering simulation games and role-playing games, as well as the first computer baseball game and the first graphical MMORPG, all between 1971 and 1995...

and Eddie Dombrower

Eddie Dombrower

Eddie Dombrower is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known as the co-creator of the seminal baseball games Earl Weaver Baseball and Intellivision World Series Baseball...

and published by Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...

. The artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

for the computer manager was provided by Baseball Hall of Fame member Earl Weaver

Earl Weaver

Earl Sidney Weaver is a former Major League Baseball manager. He spent his entire 17-year managerial career with the Baltimore Orioles . Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996.-Playing career:After playing for Beaumont High School in St...

, then manager of the Baltimore Orioles

Baltimore Orioles

The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league...

. EWB was a major hit, and along with John Madden Football
John Madden Football (1988)
John Madden Football is a football video game following the success of Earl Weaver Baseball.-Summary:This video game is the first of the Madden football games developed and released by Electronic Arts. It features John Madden on the cover...

helped pave the way for the EA Sports

EA Sports

EA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...

brand, which launched in 1992.

Daglow and Dombrower had previously teamed together to create Intellivision World Series Baseball
Intellivision World Series Baseball
Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball is a baseball sports game , designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower and published by Mattel for the Intellivision Entertainment Computer System. IWSB was the first video game of any kind to use multiple camera angles, and the first sports game...

at Mattel

Mattel

Mattel, Inc. is the world's largest toy company based on revenue. The products it produces include Fisher Price, Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, and, in the early 1980s, video game consoles. The company's name is derived from...

in 1983, the first video game to use multiple camera angles and the first console sports sim.

Daglow and Dombrower interviewed Weaver in his hotel room in a series of meetings over a period of months during the 1985 season for managerial AI

Artificial intelligence

. Dombrower actually apologized to Weaver at one point for taking up so much of his free time, but Weaver told him that he never had anything to do during road trips and never left his hotel room, anyway. In addition, he loved talking baseball strategy, and he was having a great time.

Innovations

EWB included many features that subsequently became part of most or all computer baseball sims through the present day:

EWB was the first commercial computer sports game to not just play a single game, but to allow players to simulate an entire season of games without actually showing each game play-by-play on the screen. In 1971 Daglow had written the first-ever computer baseball game, Baseball
Baseball (computer game)
Baseball was one of the first-ever baseball computer games, and was created on a PDP-10 mainframe computer at Pomona College in 1971 by student Don Daglow. The game continued to be enhanced periodically through 1976...

, and included this feature. The game ran only on a room-sized mainframe computer
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...

, however, and was never offered for sale.
The first time players were offered the option of either playing in arcade mode (using eye–hand coordination
Eye–hand coordination
Eye–hand coordination is the coordinated control of eye movement with hand movement, and the processing of visual input to guide reaching and grasping along with the use of proprioception of the hands to guide the eyes. In simple terms, eye-hand coordination involves the coordinated vision and...

as well as managerial strategy) or manager mode (where users managed their teams but did not physically control the players).
Offered single pitch mode, which allowed games where players dueled as managers to be completed more quickly by not calling every pitch and displaying only the outcome of each at-bat. MicroLeague Baseball
MicroLeague Baseball
Micro League Baseball was a 1984 baseball simulation video game. It was developed by Micro League Sports Association and published by Micro League Multimedia Inc. It was released on Amiga, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and PC.-Summary:...

(1984) also had single pitch at bats however it was unable to switch to a single pitch mode.
The Amiga version featured voice synthesis, a first in a sports computer game. Players were announced at each plate appearance or substitution.
- This announcer was even editable; there was pronunciation guide at the bottom of each players' page, a feature that has never been duplicated. The Amiga version wasn't the very first use of an announcer in a home video game, though; that honor went to the aforementioned Intellivision World Series Baseball.
The first time different stadiums were shown graphically on the screen, with game play adjusted for their actual dimensions. Defunct or demolished stadiums were included, such as the Polo Grounds
Polo Grounds
The Polo Grounds was the name given to four different stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used by many professional teams in both baseball and American football from 1880 until 1963...

(New York), Griffith Stadium
Griffith Stadium
Griffith Stadium was a sports stadium that stood in Washington, D.C. from 1911 to 1965, between Georgia Avenue and 5th Street, and between W Street and Florida Avenue, NW. An earlier wooden baseball park had been built on the same site in 1891...

(Washington, D.C.), Ebbets Field
Ebbets Field
Ebbets Field was a Major League Baseball park located in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, USA, on a city block which is now considered to be part of the Crown Heights neighborhood. It was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League. It was also a venue for professional football...

(Brooklyn, New York), and Sportsmans Park (St. Louis). This also marked the debut of the Green Monster
Green Monster
The Green Monster is a popular nickname for the thirty-seven foot , two-inch high left field wall at Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox baseball team...

of Fenway Park
Fenway Park
Fenway Park is a baseball park near Kenmore Square in Boston, Massachusetts. Located at 4 Yawkey Way, it has served as the home ballpark of the Boston Red Sox baseball club since it opened in 1912, and is the oldest Major League Baseball stadium currently in use. It is one of two "classic"...

in any computer game.
Depicted a manager arguing with an umpire. On a close play, the manager would rush out to the umpire, and they would argue "Out! Safe! Out! Safe! Out! Safe!", while the manager kicked dirt a la Billy Martin
Billy Martin
Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin, Jr. was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager. He is best known as the manager of the New York Yankees, a position he held five different times...

on the umpire's shoes. (not the first time as MicroLeague Baseball
MicroLeague Baseball
Micro League Baseball was a 1984 baseball simulation video game. It was developed by Micro League Sports Association and published by Micro League Multimedia Inc. It was released on Amiga, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and PC.-Summary:...

also had this feature.)
The first time a baseball manager had worked with game designers to provide the managerial strategy and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

for a computer game. After leaving EA, Daglow would later lead the design of the Tony La Russa Baseball
Tony La Russa Baseball
Tony La Russa Baseball is a baseball computer and video game console sports game series , designed by Don Daglow, Michael Breen, Mark Buchignani, David Bunnett and Hudson Piehl and developed by Stormfront Studios. The game appeared on Commodore 64, PC, and Sega Genesis, and different versions were...

series, working with Tony La Russa
Tony La Russa
Anthony "Tony" La Russa, Jr. is a former Major League Baseball manager and infielder, best known for his tenures as manager of the Chicago White Sox, Oakland Athletics, and St. Louis Cardinals...

.
The publisher issued annual baseball statistics disks to update the rosters and stats of the major league
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...

players.
The first time third party publishers issued baseball statistics disks, such as the All-Time Great Teams and 1987 Major League disks from Patrick Mondout in late 1987.
Featured the MLBPA license and feature actual major league players. This option had been pulled from Daglow and Dombrower's 1983 Intellivision World Series Baseball at the last minute by Mattel
Mattel
Mattel, Inc. is the world's largest toy company based on revenue. The products it produces include Fisher Price, Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, and, in the early 1980s, video game consoles. The company's name is derived from...

in order to save money.
Players featured what Dombrower called "artificial ego". Players would realistically occasionally make errors in judgment, such as trying to take an extra base or attempt to catch an uncatchable ball.

Gameplay

The gameplay was unusual in certain respects. The gamer had no control over the fielders, except where to throw the ball. The pitcher/batter interface was top-down in the Amiga

Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...

version, and foreshortened in the MS-DOS

MS-DOS

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

version.

Players were rated from 1 to 10, but the editor allowed players to effectively go up to 15 (after which it reset.) Players with 15 pitching speed, for example, could reach 100+ mph on their fastballs. Players with 15 running speed were already on second on a stolen base when the catcher's throw was 2/3 of the way to second.

There was no trade AI, so all trades were made manually.

The game featured a "practice" mode, in which the gamer could practice batting, pitching and fielding. The fielding practice was involving in that the computer would put the gamer through an authentic fielding practice (throw to first, turn a double play, etc.)

Minor glitches

The game was not without a few minor problems:

During one-pitch mode, the computer never stole a base, because the AI would steal according to the count. If a gamer wanted an accurate simmed season, they would have to play full pitch count.
The pitcher never covered first on grounders to first. This would result in more infield hits than normal on the PC version. In the Amiga version, the pitcher covered first if the ball was far enough away from the bag, but would still fail to cover first on balls closer to the line, leading to unwarranted infield hits.
The computer-controlled hitter would almost never strike out swinging.
In some ballparks, especially user-created ones, the AI wouldn't get an outfielder to pursue a shot to a corner. The players would just stand around, snagged on some wall artifact, while the batter rounded the bases for an inside-the-park home run.

Commissioner's Disk

The Commissioner's Disk was released in 1988. It was an advanced player, stadium and team editor, able to make deeper changes, such as skin tone. (In the original version, one had to clone a black player in order to create a new black player.) It also featured a schedule generator as well, as well as advanced stat analysis, and so forth.

Earl Weaver Baseball II

Earl Weaver Baseball II (EWB2) was the sequel to the classic game, and featured many advances, including the first full 3D camera that would render a television-style viewing experience. This was made possible by a design decision Dombrower made at Mattel to use a 3D model of the game from the get-go in anticipation of this eventuality. However, the game was released prematurely by Electronic Arts, and Version 1.1, which fixed many of the small bugs that ruined some of its reputation, was never released. In 1992, a version of EWB2 was developed in conjunction with STATS, Inc.

STATS, Inc.

STATS LLC is a global sports statistics and information company – the company name originated as an acronym for "Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems". It was founded on April 30, 1981 by John Dewan, who became the company's CEO...

, that would play back real baseball games using the EWB II display engine and live scoring information from each ballpark, but it was never finished or released. It was only released for MS-DOS

MS-DOS

I Got It Baseball

In 2002, Dombrower released a version of EWB2 called I Got It Baseball as shareware, though in this version, the gamer can only manage, not participate. However, the managerial AI still remains, though now called "The Skipper". Also intact are the physics engine, the player AI, the fully developed team, player, and ballpark editors; stat accumulation, and a now-commonplace "QuickPlay" option. It can be downloaded at his website BangBangPlay.com

Reception

Game reviewers Hartley and Patricia Lesser complimented the game in their "The Role of Computers" column in Dragon
Dragon (magazine)
Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...

#126 (1987), calling it "the finest computer simulation for baseball we’ve ever seen" and "impressive beyond belief". The Lessers reviewed the IBM version of the game in the following issue (#127), and gave the game 4½ stars. They later reviewed the Commodore Amiga version in 1988 in Dragon #132, giving it 5 out of 5 stars.

Awards

In 1996, Computer Gaming World

Computer Gaming World

Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...

named Earl Weaver Baseball one of the 25 Best Games of All Time on the PC.

Named to the Computer Game Hall of Fame by Computer Gaming World

Computer Gaming World

and by GameSpy

GameSpy

GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...

External links

Baseball Simcentral listing
BangBangPlay.com – Dombrower's I Got It Baseball site

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