“Fall Ball at the Hall”: PLAAY Baseball This Weekend in Cooperstown, NY!
It's TWO...TWO...TWO History Maker Baseball Game events in ONE, this weekend at the home of baseball's Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York!
Friday night 10.13.23, it's our Fall Classic Pre-PLAAY with History Maker Baseball Big League Baseball Game. Join us at the Cooperstown Comfort Inn and Suites as we crown our own big league baseball champion, a couple of weeks BEFORE the real thing! We'll be using the 2023 Pro In-Season cards and HMB Express to pre-PLAAY the entire league championship series AND World Series games in ONE evening!
If you watched our Divisional Pre-PLAAY YouTube Stream last week, you know that we have some Cinderella Stories in the making, with Texas, Minnesota and Philadelphia each earning surprise trips to the league championship series, joined their by post-season favorite Atlanta. PLAAY gamers on-hand will manage these four clubs head-to-head in the LCS round, and then the winners will face each other in our annual Fall Classic "Pre-PLAAY!"
The Friday night event is totally free, you can manage a team or watch, just show up in the conference room at 7pm! The Comfort Inn and Suites is located at 4470 NY Highway 28, Milford, NY 13807.
Then, Saturday 10.14.23, it's our "Timeless Diamond Tournament" get-together at the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is a limited-attendance event (but we do have a last-minute slot available, reach out and let us know if you're interested in grabbing it), inside the hall. We'll conduct the tournament with our newly-re-formatted Cooperstown Cards, each person gets to choose a team of hall-of-famers (and hall-of-fame hopefuls) and square off in an afternoon of timeless baseball fun.
For those who are already on the Hall-of-Fame guest list, plan on meeting at the hall promptly at 9am Saturday morning. We'll be admitted together as a group, and then have a couple of hours to tour the hall, soaking in some baseball history! We'll re-convene inside the hall at the Education Room at 11am, choose our teams, and begin play. We'll plan to wrap up around 4pm.
We've divided the Cooperstown cards into 23 teams of 20 all-timers. Each team has four or five players from each Cooperstown subset: Pioneers, Legends, Hopefuls and--a new category--Footnotes. (Cooperstown Footnotes are players who may not have had a full career worthy of inclusion in the Hall of Fame, but who nonetheless made a unique contribution to baseball.) So, there are players from every era of varying statures on every team—a true “Field of Dreams” tabletop experience. We’ve made every effort to make sure the teams are balanced, of roughly equal overall ability. The teams will be spread out on a table, sealed in cellophane: participants will only see ONE player's card revealed and will make their choice based on that player, or on the team's nickname. Then, a 30-minute “hot stove” period will follow, where participants can make trades if they desire, crafting their team to their own personal tastes.
Here's the list of “Timeless Diamond” teams, along with the "captain" of each...
Brutes (Josh Gibson)
Classics (Joe DiMaggio)
Clovers (Ty Cobb)
Dignitaries (Greg Maddux)
Emeralds (Tony Gwynn)
Excelsiors (Walter Johnson)
Gold Niners (Willie Mays)
Gray Sox (Bullet Joe Rogan)
Harvesters (Mickey Mantle)
Keystones (Tom Seaver)
Leathernecks (Ted Williams)
Mighty Oaks (Roberto Clemente)
Mythics (Babe Ruth)
Neptunes (Jackie Robinson)
Originals (Stan Musial)
Pachyderms (Roy Campanella)
Pastimers (Lou Gehrig)
Privateers (Pedro Martinez)
Royal Blues (Bob Gibson)
Rumble Hawks (Ichiro Suzuki)
Stevedores (Hank Aaron)
Toucans (Grover Cleveland Alexander)
Viscounts (Satchel Paige)
Good luck to all!
The Cooperstown Card Set will be available after the Hall of Fame event, watch the website for details! Cards for nearly 500 baseball players, legendary to infamous to ground-breaking to "famous-for-fifteen minutes!"
Questions? Let us know! See you this weekend in Cooperstown!