It's about time to get a decent manager for your home team -- you! As the name indicates, this is a home-computer conversion of Avalon Hill's perennially popular, baseball board game Statis Pro Baseball. Players put on the manager's uniform, arrange line-ups and call the plays. At their fingertips are season-based statistical compilations of major league baseball players, team-by-team. Historic teams and seasons are even available on expansion disks, allowing you to manage Roger Maris or the 1919 "Black Sox.". Play puts both managers at the keyboard, turns passing with each hitter. Commands are entered single-key from a menu of choices. The game screen is as crowded as a manager's head: batting orders, player abilities, pitcher status, score board, and a little space for what's happening out on the field. You don't see each pitch, but there are ample opportunities to bury your face in your hat and say, "I knew I should have...." Infielders can come in, batters can be walked, and, of course, pitchers can be pulled. Most of the choices, however, lie with team at bat. Do you sacrifice just to get something on the board, chance a steal, bunt, or lead that runner off the bag to set up the score? Pinch hitters and runners are available. Players' abilities are condensed from actual season statistics into seven attributes, pitchers with an additional score for stamina, which will rise with a string of good innings and crash when things start to go bad. The computer handles all the calculations consigned to charts and card draws in the board game, and even bookkeeping for overall season statistics. Errors can happen, likelihood calculated from the actual stats, injuries will happen, and weather occasionally intrudes. All that's missing from the manager's experience is sand, a chaw of tobacco, and those screaming, second-guessing fans.
The second edition of the game adds a main menu to create and edit team files, as well as to convert first edition team files. It'll also prevent you from making truly dumb calls, like a squeeze play with two outs.