rallybird baseball board game – The RallyByrd Baseball Board Game

The #RallyBird #Baseball #BoardGame in COVID Times

The RallyBird Baseball Board Game is selling! At the moment it’s available on Amazon and on Ebay. I’ve ordered more from the USA manufacturer. People are finding it good to play when quarantined at home, and to give as gifts. Thanks to all of you!

I’m still supporting the Add On Kit: Big League Teams & Coach Rules. I’ll be selling these via other merchants in coming months.

Due to the tough times, and my thirst for the good of normality, I’m so pleased that MLB is offering any season at all right now. It’s a strange season for sure, short, with empty stadiums and artificial crowd noise. How do you feel about it?

I’m grateful and, seeing how people are suffering, not prepared to be negative about its compromises. How will it fit in with the tradition of assessment? When the season is over, I’ll add its suspect, asterisk-worthy 2020 season data to RallyBird’s Add On Kit.

To make the 2020 season possible, MLB has applied some special rules. How might this impact the Add On Kit‘s big league team approach? Most of the MLB changes don’t really fit into RallyBird Board Game’s scale. However, a couple of the rules easily do.

This includes 1) no spitting on the board game; 2) no high fives, and most importantly 3) 2020 season teams must begin extra innings with a runner on second base.

I was quite curious to see how I’d feel about the extra innings treatment in MLB this year, and I decide that given the situation, I like it. I recommend it for experimentation for RallyBird Baseball Board Game players, not just for COVID but also when you are pressed for time. I will try it, if my opponent agrees.

I’m not ready in general to give up the tradition of the pre-COVID, standard extra inning rules for normal times. But I like it as an option when we need it. If MLB some day adopts it as a regular rule to promote the long term interest of the sport, I’ll roll with it. Still, baseball’s tradition is part of the panorama of the game.

Finally, please note that the RallyBird Baseball Board Game is also going by the spelling RallyByrd Baseball. It’s the same game.

Peace and health to all! Play Ball! On your table!

Board Gaming with a Pandemic Sense of Time

Snow falling on pear blossoms, pic March 14, 2020 from my home office.

This morning I’ve been weighting and boxing up The RallyBird Baseball board game for shipment. Times are almost normal, but like the rowers in Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” we’re braced for impact. This painting is a kind of talisman of my mother. Since childhood, I’ve always wondered if the rowers made it through the crash of water with their sleek craft still afloat. Those craft look so sleek and nimble, the sailors so steadfast, I’ve tended to think that they will.

The threat of the virus is impacting my family, as yours, in more than one way. So far, it’s all indirect, but still serious. One elderly relative has postponed her cancer surgery. Another is has had to postpone the difficult and volatile transition from living normally at his house to the acceptance of the facts of old age and moving to an elder care home. I need to fly to assist them–does flying to them mean I would be likely to bring the virus to their home? What can I do? At least three relatives have had their work suspended for weeks. Younger relatives are out of school. How will they make up the needed learning? You have experiences like this, I’m sure.

It’s serious, a historic scale event that will bring changes afterward that we can’t anticipate. Now team sports are suspended… What does that mean? Baseball fever was high a few weeks ago, and with it, sales of my board game rose. Now we have that damned other kind of fever, and no baseball at all. How strange, and how awful. It’s not important, but I continue to try to sell my game.

For board gaming, gatherings in public places are temporarily in decline. I wonder if, during our home quarentines, as we wait for the curve to roll forward and wash past us, board games will find more time on tables in people’s homes. They certainly could, if the need for social distancing, school closings, and work changes means couples and families are together under one roof in ways that seem like a strange, ominous holiday. We wait for it to be over. And while we wait, what should we do?

As in many market niches, for years now, there’s been economic pressure to move board gaming manufacturer to Ch1na. Will that continue? RallyBird is made in the USA, but as I look for ways to bring cost savings to you, I’ve seen how overseas manufacture makes a difference. Will we reassess the feasibility of a far away supply chain? Well, once things return to normal, why would we? Change is difficult. The one constant is that things change, but we can’t anticipate all the consequences. As I get older I remind myself to cherish the many good things in normal life and not take them for granted. I wonder if the eventual relief we share from the threats and harm of this pandemic will help us feel a re-enchantment will all that we have which is already so wonderful.

My work continues. I received word that one of my trademark applications passed a legal hurdle, and moves forward. I’m continuing as before, shipping my game to amazon in the hopes that it makes it easier for you to pick up at lower costs and possibly free shipping. Thanks for reading.

The RallyBird Baseball Board Game is available on amazon.com here.

Here’s a link to the most recent rules PDF.

Spring is Coming! and #RallyBird Baseball Rules PDF Link

Spring is coming. Where I live there are no new leaves, but aye, buds on some of the trees. The quince bulbs are insistently pink even as it rains and glooms. Soon there will appear a little white orb in the sky, one scored by the looping helix of red stitching. Take a moment from your snow shoveling to think of the accidental genius of that stitching, providing just enough irritation against air travel for the gangly pitcher to impart sensible “english”…

I’ve started another phase of my enterprise, and another and another. Imagine a rolled-up sleeves guy with a magazine-proletarian wrench pulling all he can muster against the nut of a phantasmagorical wheel. Everything takes time, but the plan is to offer you a quicker, easier, and cheaper way to purchase RallyBird Baseball. What a mogul I am! I could grow a twirl-able mustache, but then I’d be just another posturing hipster instead of Truly Special (which is now plain).

Click here to download the current rules PDF –including the friendly setup guide.

While I wait I’m investigating the further steps for the RallyBird Baseball Board Game. Fear not! That horrible process lies safely below the horizon (flat or round?–Controversial). Spring is coming. I reloaded the bird feeder and immediately fat, round birds started whacking at it with their ax-beaks. Whack, whack!

Thanks for your patience.

Update: Click here to see the game for sale on Amazon.com (and eligible for free shipping for Amazon Prime members).