negamco and me

My grandson just turned 8, and he never seems to run out of things to do or to think about. Part of this comes from his parents, both of whom know a lot of different things that they love to pass along to him. So he is already a bigger expert on all sorts of subjects than is his old grandpa. I tried to remember what I was like when I was 8, and what my parents passed along to me. And no wonder I don't know anything. We learned a love of music from our parents, and my dad introduced us to sports simply by being interested in them himself. Once in a while he'd come out on the front lawn to throw a ball around. But that's it. I mean, my mom taught us how to play the piano, but that didn't really stick. I'm not saying I had bad parents, but they were a lot different than my grandson's parents.

I was left to my own devices a lot of the time. One thing I looked forward to every year was the annual release of new rosters for the Negamco baseball game. I'm pretty sure I played this when I was 8.

Each year, you would get rosters with all of the players from the previous year, rated so they would perform in the game as they did in real life. While it seemed pretty complicated, once you got the hang of it, there was nothing to it. The box looked like this:

There were classier (i.e. more expensive) games ... among other things, they used dice to determine outcomes. Negamco used a spinner:

The box, the spinner, everything was pretty cheap, so after about a week, the spinner dial would get bent and the spinner board would get warped, so you'd get 17 all the time, which kinda destroyed the notion that you were using random variation.

It all seemed so real when I was 8. In 2020, games are a bit more complicated. That game I had, it had very few player ratings. A batter would be rated on how many hits he got, and how many of those hits were home runs. Pitchers were ranked from 1-7. No pitchers experienced fatigue, and there was nothing like lefty-righty matchups. So the results would resemble real life a little bit, but not too close, and of course that #17 would screw things up. Now, simulation games like this are computer games, with every possible detail built into the program. Negamco is a thing of the past. (A few of the better board games are still being made, although as I understand it, many of them have moved to computers.)

Comments

[Law koenig]

I remember those days too and I picked up some old games and other areas but they Negamco games of the AFL in the NFL of the early 60s I could really be interested in I don’t know if anybody has any of that old stuff. I really regret getting rid of it. What a dumb move.

[Hal]

I just replayed the Mets 1962 season using negamco. They came out 56-105 which is pretty terrible but not as horrific as 40-120. Anybody have a spare board and spinner as mine is getting pretty worn out. I want to complete every other teams 1962 season.

[Steven Rubio]

That spinner was the ultimate curse, the way it destroyed the illusion of random numbers. Didn't matter when I was a kid, of course. Now, I let the computer take of things behind the scene in programs like Out of the Park and Football Manager.