games to play with baseball cards?

February 24, 2007 10:44 AM

Do you know any games I can play with my 7 year old son that revolve around baseball cards?

He's just getting interested and I want to encourage it. I'm NOT looking for flipping games, or "war" style games. I'm hoping for some kind of game simulation that uses the actual information on the cards -- position/stats/teams etc. with some simple strategy that a 7 year old can deal with.

We've also done a lot of "trading" back and forth based on teams he likes, players he's heard of, etc. I'm not looking for that either, more like some kind of simuation/strategy game.

posted by luser to sports, hobbies, & recreation (7 comments total)

Sign up for a fantasy league (maybe online, yahoo?), figure out which stats or other pieces of info would be relevant, pertinent or interesting to a 7-yo kid and let him take charge of those stats?

(Dunno just thinking off the top of my head ... and speaking as a 29-yo fantasy baseball fan and sometime manager.)
posted by LilBucner at 10:53 AM on February 24, 2007

Strat-o-matic I spent hours as a child playing against my brothers. I still play. I also have my kids playing too. There is a basic game and a more sophisticated game. A 7 year old with a good attention span can play the basic game. YMMV
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:00 AM on February 24, 2007

Statis Pro Baseball also has rules for using the stats on baseball cards. It's been years since I've played it, but the basic procedure was pretty straightforward.

Also, it might be good to go into a fantasy league and work together with him on that.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 11:09 AM on February 24, 2007

Statis Pro used special cards that came with the game, plus it's been out of print for at least 10-15 years. There was a guy in GA that had reverse engineered the formulas and was creating PDF sets of the cards each year. I bought a set as recently as a 3 or 4 years ago.

I see to remember Topps having a game rules that were printed on the back of the cards. My Google Fu is turning up nothing though, so maybe I don't remember what I think I remember.

My son and I played APBA baseball when he was 8 or 9. If you son gets the rules I'll bet he will understand APBA. Although that doesn't use his baseball card collection...
posted by COD at 11:36 AM on February 24, 2007

I second Johnny. Strat-o-matic is amazing. I used to play the hockey and baseball versions all the time as a kid. I even had a Strat-o-matic Fanatic t-shirt ;)
posted by dropkick at 11:44 AM on February 24, 2007

I just found this via Google - only $5.
http://www.abcgame.com/facts.htm
posted by COD at 11:46 AM on February 24, 2007

APBA! It takes a little while to get used to the rules (like two games or so) but after that - many, many, many hours of enjoyment. If I could find a league near me, I'd start playing again right now. Tonight. (anyone in lower bucks, pa?)
posted by qldaddy at 2:35 PM on February 24, 2007