Number 22

October 3, 2024

The Variety you get From EI

As it says at the top of this thing, I've been playing EI since 1978. The game is fun to play. Sure, there is math involved,
and yep- it takes two rolls of the dice to get results. But with the formula given to rate any team you want, this game is
a bargain. There is something to be said for this. Look around at the prices for card sets for the other major game
companies. No doubt, those game engines are fun to play, and the cards are beautiful. I will not sit here and tell anyone
how to spend their money; I would buy another Strat set because of how much fun that game is to play, but I can still
use the '51 set I bought for my Retro 5Y League project and save some dinero for other stuff.

I was reading some of my old newsletters the other day, and one of them had results from an EI league I was in that
had two triple A teams, two Negro League teams, two Japan League teams, and two Mexican League teams.  Whoa!
A while back, perhaps on one of the Delphi Forums, someone rated the 2007 Japan League (or Nippon Professional
League) for EI. In some of my earlier rantings I've mentioned the twenty team Negro League ratings used in a King of
the Hill project a few years ago. The list goes on...Sitting on this hard drive is the complete EI ratings of all teams in the
three major leagues in existence in 1914 and 1915. I'm still undecided on whether I'll do something like a KOH tourney
involving all 24 teams in either year, but it's there for the playing and my cost is printer paper and ink and time. Oh yeah,
all the players are rated. I'm telling you, it's a beautiful thing. At the bottom of this page is a spreadsheet I came up with
that will rate hundreds of players at the press of a button. Look at the possibilities!!

I'm not an authority on the complete offerings of Strat, APBA or any other game out there, but if I were to take a guess,
none of them offer the variety of teams/leagues mentioned above. No company is going to offer this type of range of
leagues or seasons. Not everyone is interested. This is why EI is so appealing to me. My imagination dictates which teams
or leagues I will use. I could dig up stats from the Korean league and rate the teams. Given the stats, I can rate the 1940
South Atlantic League. I can create fictional teams, put my high school stats in the spreadsheet (.239, 1 HR). Have
stats? Then EI will take you to any ball field you want.

I guess I could go on and on, and I usually do, but what a value you get with EI. I don't want to get schmaltzy here. Not
my intent. I'm just sitting here, looking at the projects I've played with the wide variety of teams and players, and looking
ahead to future projects and thinking, "Man! That was a good call back in '78!"