Bases Loaded 3

Arrow down. A-A-A-A-A. Arrow down. Strike.

Arrow up. B tap. Arrow right. Ball, inside.

Arrow down. A-A-A. Arrow up. Strike.

Arrow down. A______hold. Arrow down tap. Swing and a miss. Strike three. Nice.

As a kid, I had never heard of Strat-O-Matic or fantasy baseball. I didn’t have a computer until 1999. I had friends who liked baseball, but before high school, I didn’t have anyone with whom to share my fanaticism. My dad didn’t really understand the game then. So, for a good chunk of my childhood, my fandom was a solitary exercise. I watched games on TV, I collected and studies baseball cards, and I played video games. Specifically, Nintendo games.

RBI Baseball was cool. RBI Baseball 2, for some reason, less cool. But my devotion was to Bases Loaded 3.

Bases Loaded 3, for a kid whose Nintendo had been lapped by superior systems several times over, was a godsend, a fluid game with Major League stadiums and no designated hitter.

There were no Major League teams in the 1991 game, just big league cities, with Washington, D.C., included. Still, I gravitated towards Boston, who seemed to have the best hitters in the game. One fictional player, “COSBY,” was good for 55 home runs and looked like an 8-bit Jose Canseco. Their best pitcher was a guy named “LEFTLY,” who was, obviously, right-handed, and had a Tom Seaver-esque drop-and-drive delivery to the plate.

Like its more popular cousin, RBI Baseball, Bases Loaded 3’s outfielders were incredibly difficult to control, with the added difficulty of not really knowing where they were positioned before it was time to move them towards fly balls. Sometimes, luck would come into play, and I could pull off a sliding catch. More often, doubles turned into triples as the left fielder was stuck running in place into the corner wall.

Still, the game play was enjoyable, if far from perfect. The TV-style camera angle made pitching fun, and tossing the ball around the infield became something of a skill. But what put Bases Loaded 3 over the top was its editable team.

Simply labelled “E” in the team selection screen, users were able to customize names by painstakingly toggling letters, batting averages and ERAs, creating a fantasy team of the NES variety. I didn’t have a Super Nintendo to play the Ken Griffey Jr. game, so if I was going to play as the Red Sox, post-1988, this is how I had to do it.

G R C P R A

AVG: .372

HR: 30

RUN: 60

B: R

And I did this constantly. 

I’d call the process of editing each name, batting average, speed, handness and ERA a labor of love, but I don’t feel that anything quite this insignificant can be deemed “labor” without insult. But it was obviously important to me — I’d spend 15 to 20 minutes before each session getting the lineup, bench, rotation and bullpen set just so, further perfecting the process and lineup over time. From there, I’d play as long as I could — the E-team retained its settings on a restart, but once the power button or the lines of death hit, it was over.

My doctoring of the team was fueled by an obsession that could only be mustered by a 14-year-old boy with few friends and no girlfriend.  After enough time, I was able to match players to their body type or batting stance. Mo Vaughn’s hunched-over frame, Tim Naehring’s even stance and, later, Pedro Martinez’s quick, elastic wind-up were all accounted for.

To quicken the process, I inserted a sheet into the back of the game’s case that tracked which spot belonged to which player, adding my own superfluous information, like positions and uniform numbers. I also updated this sheet constantly, with the last version in the case clearly serving as a hybrid of the 1997 and ’98 Red Sox.

 

Though there were no true position requirements, I held steadfast to what players were able to play and made double-switches when appropriate (though, by the end, Pedro’s batting line was obscenely good compared to reality). Players like Mike Benjamin and John Valentin, with their ability to play multiple positions, came in handy in these cases, as did someone like Steve Avery, who I’d flop between starting and relieving.

Truly, it was about enjoying the game. When NESN was still a premium channel, I only had access to half of all Red Sox games. From there, I’d have to decide between watching the Yankees (on WPIX), the Braves (TBS), listening along on the radio, or creating my own fantasy world on Nintendo. Sometimes my games were a quick relief at 2:30 from whatever school had served up, and sometimes it was the featured attraction.

I was never a great baseball player, and I couldn’t go to many games. But I could shepherd my own version of the Red Sox, pinch hitting Damon Buford for Tim Wakefield, turning the double play or, once in a great while, hitting one that flew out of the park so quickly it’d break the screen.

Inevitably, something was going to break the screen. I could only hope that the moment came with glory.

 

Nick Tavares lives by the ocean in Massachusetts, where he writes about music and sports by night and serves as an internet reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times by day. Check out his baseball blog at Shutouts.wordpress.com, or the rest of his work at www.NickTavares.com. If you want to talk about Pearl Jam or Pedro Martinez, follow him on Twitter @NickTavares.