niffyjiffy

It is essential that any self-respecting internet poindexter have at least one 8-bit pastime. Ever since I started playing in college, I have been completely addicted to Baseball, an NES release title. While friends struggle to grasp why I even care about it, I play it any chance I can get—any friend of mine with a Nintendo online subscription has at least heard of it. Although it is technically the best-selling baseball game on the NES, Baseball has the dubious honour of being the second most popular, behind Namco’s R.B.I. Baseball. R.B.I. Baseball is actually quite an incredible game, including a team manager game-mode that was decades ahead of its time.

In contrast, Baseball was not a minute ahead of its time. It is a game that permanently burns white and green shapes into your TV screen thanks to a total lack of visual variety. Pitchers and hitters from six teams are totally fungible but for the colour of their uniforms and their left- or right-handedness. Its mechanics can be listed on a postcard: the batter can shift in the box and choose when to swing, the pitcher can choose between three speeds and steer the ball’s direction, and fielders can choose which base to throw to once they decide (completely randomly) how long they will take to get to the ball. Apart from the odd charming detail, the first ten minutes of playing the game make one wonder if it’s really a game at all.

But an experienced player can quickly demonstrate that this game has many levels. When I played in university, it was immediately apparent that the “cutter,” a fast pitch which creeps in towards the batter, was a danger. It moved subtly enough to still be called a strike, but any contact it would make with the bat was low quality, often leading to double plays. To make matters worse, Baseball does not have a hit-by-pitch mechanic, removing the real-life risk of throwing cutters. Although there is precedent for a dominant one-pitch pitcher in the remarkable career of Mariano Rivera (to wit a cutter specialist), it simply didn’t seem fair. It became clear that the only remedy was to alter the batter’s position in the box, normally something decided on well before striking the ball, in a dynamic way, even juking the pitcher with lateral moves.

It is normally at this point that the pitcher discovers how powerful he is. I said before that he can “steer” the ball as it approaches the box, but this does not communicate the full range of control. On a slower ball, he can loop about ten degrees in towards the batter then change direction halfway to return for a strike. The ball handles like a supercar. These manoeuvres match even the most astute fine-tuners with virtually unreactable 50-50 mixups and lead batters to unexplainable whiffs on pitches that seem nowhere near home plate. Although the odds favour the batter getting a hit or two, it’s not nearly enough to reliably get runs on the scorecard.

Once again, I reveal another mechanic I previously hid from the reader: base stealing. The hitter can individually command each runner to run, or return to base, at any time. An important principle of human baseball is that expert base-stealers do not choose random times to run; instead, they choose a time when the baseball’s journey will be unreasonably slow. A runner might read that a pitcher is going to throw a looping curveball, and take that opportunity to run as soon as the pitch leaves the pitcher’s hand. Even if the pitcher throws a fastball, the runner could well be saved by the batter making contact. This even privileges the runner, who now has a head start around the bases. It is this mechanic which reins in the pitcher’s arsenal[1]. If the pitcher wants any hope of throwing a runner out, they had better throw the ball fast, and it had better avoid the batter. At the start of the inning, you have no choice but to play the pitcher’s game. As soon as you find a single hit, anything can happen. Every arrangement of base-runners is slightly different, too. For instance, if first base is occupied, you have to watch out for double plays, but second base is the easiest to steal due to its distance from the catcher.

These mechanics comprise only a small fraction of what would be available in a modern baseball video game. Yet the spirit of dastardly trickery and exploitation in which they are combined reflects baseball better than any game I’ve ever played. At its heart, baseball is a Randian fever dream in which trained specialists search for tiny exploits in an ostensibly dull landscape, forging a more optimal order from destructive chaos. There is no better way to express this than a simple but deceptively broken piece of kuso.

Footnote

[1] I fondly remember overhearing the following conversation between two parents of rival high schools at a baseball game: “The game is all chaos and base-stealing at this level!” “Yeah, but at least it stops them from throwing that bullshit curveball!”