Earl Weaver Baseball II

When I first looked at Earl Weaver Baseball II, I expected some boring spreadsheet in a DOS box. Instead, I realized I was holding an obsession — a complex baseball simulator that knows the game maybe better than the average American.

It's a sports management game from 1991 where you're not a player, but the brain. You pick lineups, plan substitutions, decide on tactics — and the match plays out somewhere between a list of digits and your imagination. The computer animates basic graphics — little figures running around the diamond — but the heart of the game lies in data, statistics, and decisions. You play either individual games or an entire season.

The controls are sparse, almost unwelcoming. Text menus, a few functions at a keystroke. There's nothing here to hold your hand — you wait until you come around yourself and understand what the columns with averages and positions mean. Playing is therefore slow. It takes a while to get used to — then you realize you're going through the individual types of managerial decisions that actually get made in baseball. The simulator turns it into strategy.

Today I'd only play it from the emulator for a bit. I'd say it's a game for those who care deeply about baseball — even as reading statistics and planning. The younger generation without a connection to baseball will pass through it like a skeleton without meat. Old fans, though, will enjoy it like a little ball of rest on their desk.

You can't play it directly in a browser, but you can run it on DOSBox without trouble. A puzzle for the curious and for someone who wants to feel how baseball was thought about in the early nineties — without unnecessary effects, with pure mind and paper.