More Play-By-Play
It just keeps getting better!
Diamond Mind Baseball Play-By-Play
Seeing how popular my last post on Diamond Mind Baseball’s play-by-play has been, I thought I’d share a few more examples of excellent play-by-play text that I’ve come across so far.
After just a few dozen games, my play-by-play screenshot folder is full of these great snippets – and there are many more to come.
One thing I should note is that Diamond Mind Baseball is a “blink and you missed it” kind of simulator. There’s no “undo” button (a famous forum request for the last 15 years), there’s no way to save play-by-play accounts internally, and your only option to save critical moments in your game is to take screenshots of it yourself.
That makes it pretty hard to share highlights and crucial moments in forum or blog posts. I’ve recently developed the habit of keeping track of critical moments in the game and keeping organized play-by-play highlights for future consumption. You’ll see the results of that starting tomorrow – and I think you’ll be quite impressed with how it improves the game accounts.
Having said all that, on with the highlights!
Park Specific Text
Diamond Mind Baseball has always had excellent park-specific play-by-play. The quality of these accounts seems to have only improved over time.
Here’s a basic one from Ebbets Field:
There’s really no need for the note about the famous Gem Blades sign, to be honest. It just adds a little something extra to an otherwise routine fly ball.
Some play-by-play accounts require a bit of advanced knowledge of park layouts, like this one:
You’d have to know your Philadelphia baseball trivia before realizing that this isn’t referring to the famous Ballentine Beer scoreboard that you see in so many pictures. Rather, this has to be the old scoreboard in right-center field – which can give you an idea of where this home run likely landed. Sadly, I wasn’t able to find a good picture of Shibe Park from the late 1940s – though I’m still looking.
This line was unconnected from any play at all. If you don’t know the history of the Spite Fence, you should read up on it. It’s little historical tidbits like this that often get lost in our historical narrative – and that are almost always missing from other games.
We’ll see more of these as we move along.
Announcer Imitation
As a Diamond Mind Baseball season wears on, you’ll start seeing interesting references at the beginning of each game – sort of like this:
Now, the play-by-play isn’t necessarily going to imitate Jim Britt’s style throughout the game. However, you might see something here or there reminiscent of certain famous broadcasters. For instance, check this out from a Detroit Tigers home game:
That’s unmistakably Ernie Harwell.
I do wish, though, that we could get the play-by-play to pull out the old colorful vocabulary of Dizzy Dean once in a while:
And here’s yet another:
You’d probably be hard press to find anybody who knows who Byrum Saam was these days, sadly.
Commercials
I never thought I’d see vintage radio commercials in a baseball sim. And, yet, here we are:
Now, this wasn’t just a throwaway line in an unimportant game. This was before the bottom of the 7th in a tense Giants-Dodgers game that you’ll read about soon.
This one will also take you back to the vintage radio days of lore – Ballantine Beer. And, yes, I believe this was during a Senators – Yankees game, just as you’d expect.
Miscellaneous
This is another one that simply takes you back to the era and the times. Again, it’s interesting that this was announced late in the game and not at the very beginning.
This one technically belongs in the “Announcer Imitation” category, since it’s clearly Bob Prince. It was from a Giants – Dodgers game, though, so it doesn’t quite fit in.
This one was pretty bizarre. I didn’t tell Kell to steal, nor did I call for a hit and run. He simply broke to second on his own, and was lucky to be safe – even though he wound up being nicked with that caught stealing as well.
This is actually a relatively common play-by-play example. It’s very well done, though, and helps paint an excellent picture of the play in the player’s mind.
And here’s another one. I’m not sure exactly how Diamond Mind’s internal random number generator works, though I’m assuming that this is the sort of play that most shortstops would not have been able to make. It’s always good to have Phil Rizzuto starting on your team.
Finally, this play shows excellent radio style – the phrase “the liner off the bat of Thomson” at the end reiterating what just happened. You don’t hear that kind of purposeful repetition from professionals on the radio these days; in fact, I think many of them would be wise to play a little Diamond Mind now and then to help get their chops up.
I’ve got a lot more of these, and will continue collecting and sharing them. Stay tuned!
Forum Roundup
Two more from Mark Ruckhaus – you can set your watch to it.
The Cubs gain one on St. Louis in that Mathias 1934 replay.