Всезвездный бейсбол: История легендарной настольной игры.

Board game

All Star Baseball is a 1941 baseball board game designed by baseball player Ethan Allen. The game, manufactured by Cadaco Ellis, was the best selling baseball board game of all time. It has been honored as one of the fifty most influential American board games of all time.

Ethan Allen had formulated the idea for a baseball themed board game while playing for the Chicago Cubs, and brought the idea to Charles Mazer, head of Cadaco Ellis. The first edition of All Star Baseball was released in 1941 and sold for $1.25. The initial target audience was boys 9–12 years old. It simulates batters' performance well, but makes no attempt to model the performance of individual pitchers. It was the only such game to have been distributed through mass market channels and toy stores for any extended period of time. The annual versions of the game were discontinued in the mid 1990s due to the loss of market share to video games and greatly increased player licensing costs, but a commemorative version was issued in 2003. Nevertheless, many fans passionately bought each year's cards and collected statistics from neighborhood leagues, some amassing as many as 2,500 games worth of paper box scores and comparing those totals with the actual players' statistics.

Until about 1980 ASB had a mix of current Major League stars and Hall of Fame players. As more athletes (and their estates) asserted licensing rights over the use of their names the old time players were dropped from the game, although a handful of individuals were included occasionally in an annual set. Each of the then current players were asked to sign off on a release form granting permission to include their batting statistics in the game. This practice continued for almost 50 years after the introduction of the game. Although a few declined, most agreed despite the fact that they were not compensated for being included. In 1995 the game came under the MLBPA license, which made the design of the game cards more sophisticated but also added significantly to the cost of production. Since the change in its business model to absorb the MLBPA royalties Cadaco has stopped issuing regular annual updates to the game, and its publishing future remains unclear. Although numbers have varied, the typical ASB boxed set contained 40 player cards for early sets, and 63 player cards for later sets.

The published 1941 game was considered only a first draft. In 1975, Cadaco did try a version with 8 categories instead of 14, but the cards were already collected by dedicated players and the re design was abandoned by Cadaco. Despite the increases in complexity, the game was intended for boys, not adults.