What Makes A Great Game?

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What Makes A Great Game?

I’m going to do something different here. I’m going to open up comments to all readers. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

What makes a great baseball game? What criteria should I use before making a post about a game that I play? What games are truly memorable?

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See-Saw

I think the see-saw effect is probably the most obvious sign of a great game.

This would be a game like this 10-9 thriller from my 1949 replay:

Of course, not all back-and-forth games are necessarily that exciting. There are games that go back and forth in the early innings without much of an ending, for example.

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Pitcher’s Duel

What about those crazy pitcher’s duels, those games that don’t have a conclusion until the very end?

I’ve had a few of those in my 1908 replay. Here’s one:

Again, these are fun, but they’re not created equal. There are boring 1-0 games, believe it or not.

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Big Finish

There are also those big finishes, like this from 1949:

But what makes a big finish really exciting? How do we differentiate between games with late scoring? Is it exciting to read about a game in which the final comeback failed?

What do you think?