Matthew & Garrett return! E396

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Sports Car Nation the Hobby Is the People Weekly news and interviews. It's your number one source. Sports Carnation the Hobby Is the People Sports Car Nation what is up everybody? Welcome to episode 396 of Sports Card Nation. As we approach episode 400, we're gonna do a giveaway for 400. I don't know yet exactly, but it will be decent. Gotta, you know, get a prize pack together. Probably use listening to the podcast as a way to win. Why not reward someone putting in the time and effort? So look forward to that. I want to thank our great sponsors that make 400 episodes potentially possible. In no particular order, SGC Iron Sports Cards, Sports Collectors Digest, Hobby Hotline, Upper Deck Card Ladder. Any certified trading card association. Check out all those great sponsors and what they do. You can find them on our sponsors page on our website with direct links to them as well. All right, part two of our interesting conversation with Matthew and Garrett Weaver of the Baseball Card General Manager game. And they invented the game that you play with your own baseball cards of any sort. Could be, you know, pre war po. Long as there's stats on the back, you can use them and you can build your own teams, you can create your own matchups and just really cool. And I really do believe most baseball card collectors played some sort of baseball game. Whether it be Straight O Matic or the show on, you know, PlayStation or you know, Nintendo or wherever. I think a lot of us are collectors because we're baseball fans. Sure that's not a hundred percent I know it's not 100%, but I think that percentage is high. And so Matt and Garrett are back this week, part two of that conversation about how they came up with this great game that can be played by anyone with any cards with stats on it. So we're about to start for part two. If you didn't catch part one, you're only a week behind. Just go back a week and check that out as well. 2, 1, 0. You know, I, I get it. I'm, I'm teaching at the high school level and you know, we got Nintendo switches and all these other systems, but I love a great board game, right? They never, A really great board game never goes out of style, right? Monopoly comes to mind. But then when you factor in like sports or in this case baseball in a board game, and the fact that you, you cared enough guys, right, to, to do 20, like go through 20 versions till you were like satisfied with like, hey, this gives the best realistic feel to the game. That. I mean that to me, that just shows how much you care about that, how much pride you put into that final product. You know, with 20 versions, like from going from one to the next, is it like a day or. It depends on what you're tweaking. Well, sometimes it might be that one of that versions may last in a week, because it all depends how many times we got to test it. Sometimes we print out the next day. So I mean, it really was. That was six months of the journey. Literally just a piece of paper with that grid. More than six. More than six months. And that was it. And that was just us rolling dice and putting it on the table. We didn't have anything else because we didn't think we needed it. And you know, I didn't play stratomatic as a kid or I don't. And you know, Garrett doesn't obviously, but that's sort of. We did want to be. I felt like it was important enough that the stats were replicating it enough that those kinds of folks could be okay, could appreciate it, right? Like, it's not a perfect simulator, but yeah, we like, there's enough ever put in, they go, look, that's true enough to the game that makes me feel like I'm get. It's not just a made up game. This. There really is something there, you know, and, and you say about board games, it's, you know, you're right with so much of Nintendo and majorly the show and all this other stuff going on, like, we call this sort of like an analog, analog fantasy game. You know, like it's good old fashioned family time. We play it in the morning, we go to school because what do you do between 6 o' clock when he wakes up and 7:30? We had to get out the door. Oh, let's play a game of baseball card gm. It's not watching tv, it's not playing a video game. But you're learning and about baseball, you're using all the baseball stats. So it is, it's like fantasy baseball meets learning fantasy baseball meets, meets video games meets actual baseball cards in history. Right. Like, and you're looking apart from the person and they hit a home run and he rolls a home run roll and you walk it off in the ninth and you go, oh my God, I can't believe that happens. But that's the fun. It's the like, oh, you just stole a base to, you know, get out of a double play. Ah, like, you know, that's those moments. It's just like real baseball. It's like that. So speaking you, you mentioned stolen bases. So how does that. I don't want to give away all the secrets. Secrets but do you have to declare like I want him to steal and then you roll to find out the outcome of the attempt. Like I want to attempt to steal with. Who do I have here? Don't worry about it. Let's say. So you'll say I want to, I want to stay with steal with Ricky Henderson and instead of Reigns. Tim Reigns. Rock Reigns. There you go. You were. You still with Rock Reigns and you're playing when Rock Reigns, you were playing with 1983, 1983 rock race and he had how many stolen bases? 90. He had 90 stolen bases. So we have on the board is, look, if you steal, if you stole zero to 10 bases, say you're gonna be. You have to roll a one and a two to be safe, otherwise you're out. So the odds of roll for him, if you roll a six, you're out and that's it. Right. So for Rock Range, because he had so many stolen bases, his cutoff means he's going to be safe five out of six times he's going to be. So it sort of progresses down so you can seal with someone who doesn't see a lot of bases. Just the odds are you're probably more likely to get out than not. Yeah. So in other words, where I'm g. If John Cru's on first base, you're probably not sending. He's out, he's probably gonna Be out more, More likely than not, he's gonna be out. You're not. You want to send Lenny Dykes. You don't want to send John Crook. I use CR because I still play men's competitive softball and that's like my softball nickname. Like, like, so when I'm playing, you know, when I'm in full uniform and the whole night. But he was. You listen. I know he still does some broadcasting and he's a, he's a Phillies legend. Just, just his antic. He was a heck of a header. He's a 300. But you know, everyone remembers like the Randy Johnson at bad and like all that funny and he is a hilarious guy. But the guy was. He didn't look like me. He didn't have that body type that makes you think baseball player. But he, he could hit. So. Yeah, you know, we love. I mean first, you know, he was, he was. The guy came up with the expression, you know, like, I'm not a, I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player. Right? That was the joke. The joke was that because he doesn't. He's not, he's not a baseball. He's not an athletes baseball player. But you know, all of the stuff that goes into. When you look at cars, Garrett opens up those old cards from the 80s, 90s, even from the set, you know those 70s guys and they got the big old mustaches and the mutton chops and the afros and, and the, you know, the, and the mullets and they go. And you look at them go. This is just. That was just the Ace team in the 70s. That easy. Yeah. Hair was disgusting. Or the rolly fingers, you know, mustaches, like those are all part of the suit. There's so much in a baseball card. And you learn, right, you learn all that fun stuff, not even beyond the stats, right? From using the cards. You get to know what these guys look like or their styles and. And some of those styles no longer exist. Some of them do. Or some of them are tweaked. Tweaked a little bit. If you see Raleigh today, he's still got the mustache. Yeah. So he's not giving it. He's not giving it up. That's like his, that's like his trademark. So. Yeah. And I actually met him a few years back at Cooperstown, by the way, so a really nice guy. But I, I love that about the game because there's so much, there's so much positive to it, right? The educational part, the, the learning what these Guys did what they look like and then. And then it's your own game. Right. You're bringing your card. So it's promoting the hobby too. Because you can bring. If you want to go new school and use today's baseball players or you want to go old school and use yesteryears or a combination of both. Right. You've got so many. You can go in whatever direction you want to go with it. And. And again, when we talk about some of those previous games. Right. You didn't have that option. You only could play with what they gave you. And in those parameters we're sort of in. Yeah, yeah. Is part of. I think what kids really appreciate about it is that fantasy freedom of being really to mix it up, do whatever you want, how you want to do. And what I like about it so far is making use of cards is, you know, it's not. It's not about chasing signatures and autos and 101 because those cars don't have stats. It's the bulk common. Yeah. It's the base cards, these cards, the core set. You know, the thing that people used just love and collect the core set. Basic common cards. Career. The rookie. A rookie card doesn't have the stats. I don't want that card. Useless. I don't need the 700 card. I need the 70 cent card sometime. Sometimes they're a couple months. But when we go to card. When we go to a card show or a card shop, what we like to. We. We're hitting those 50 cent racks. Yeah. Because I only sold one of them. We want those. We want those. We want to find that like Lou Gehrig recreation card because. Yeah, it's worth nothing to you. But it had the 27 stats on. And 27 stats are great for the game. You know, best. He's the best player in the game. Right. Lou Gary 1927 so far in that. Because he. In that year he maxed out one off walks. One off walks. But yeah. Yeah. That was one of the greatest seasons in baseball history. That's right. Yeah. We actually have that in The Conley Collection. 27 Yankees. Yeah. And the 16 Braves. I mean Red Sox. Whis. So I don't know. Sort of that. That idea that you're re. You're finding new value and those sort of cards that a lot of people just think are. Yeah. No, I love that. I love that aspect. I think there's just so many positives from again, education, making those base cards matter. The fun of it. Right. You can bring your own cards. You're not. You're not like in that box where you're at the mercy of the game manufacturer. You can bring your own lineup. I love it. Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. When you're dealing with sports cards, guessing isn't a strategy. A strategy requires relying on accurate data that you can trust. That's why the hobby uses Card Ladder. Card Ladder provides hundreds of millions of historical prizes going back over 20 years. Plus real time tracking of comps from across the hobby as they happen. We track sales from every major platform while working together with marketplaces and grading companies to provide the most reliable data in the industry. Cardladder's research team carefully vets millions of transactions. We provide dozens of category indexes and thousands of player indexes to help you get a big picture view of the market. With Card Ladder, you can look up prices for any card in any grade, track and manage your collection in real time and study industry wide metrics, all to enhance your collecting experience. Ready to level up your Hobby? Go to CardLadder.com right now, tap try it for free or get started today. We have the tech to get food delivered in 15 minutes. But we all have horror stories about buying tickets. The GameTime app gives fans the advantage. Get amazing tickets in just a few taps. Fees are included, so what you see is what you pay. And the gametime guarantee means authentic tickets at the best price every time. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets to concerts, sports, comedy and more with GameTime. Download the GameTime app and create an account for $20 off your first purchase term supply. With the American Express Platinum card, you can access over $3,500 in annual value with benefits and eligible purchases across travel, entertainment and more. There's nothing like Platinum. Learn more@americanexpress.com Explore Platinum Enrollment Requirements monthly and other limits in terms apply. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's return to the show. So Garrett, are you a baseball player yourself? Yeah. Yeah. So is this. Is this something like teammates and. And you have played or not or not yet? Like where. We've played it a few times. We've played it at some tournaments mid games. We're not. Yeah, not in the middle of the game. Not gonna give it a game, Right? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if the coach would be a big fan. Probably not. Not. Not a good thing for the coach. Yeah. If you're doing for coaching. Yeah. Hey Garrett, you're up. You gotta put this. What do you mean? I gotta roll. I Got. Yeah, I got Jimmy. It's, it's, it's. Oh, it's great for, for tournament baseball kids or you know, baseball kids. You got the long days and you, and you say three hours in between a game. We've had, we've had kids roll out the game. They bring their cards everywhere. Kids bring their cards everywhere. You roll them out. Six hour break. There's another perk just from this com. From this conversation too, right. That builds chemistry anytime you do like if, listen, I'm a baseball kid. I still play men's softball and I play travel back in my day, in my heyday. Right. And you build natural chemistry from, from playing a season with your teammates, right? But I think you even build more chemistry when you're doing like non baseball playing stuff besides like the games on the field are, are what they are. You. That just builds natural chemistry. I think you, you get cut, you become tighter knit when you're doing stuff other than, you know, baseball on the field. Like even in the big leagues, right in the clubhouse they're playing poker or card games or what have you, right. And they're building that sort of rapport with each other and, and chemistry. Right. So I think this is another thing, right. You mentioned like families playing this together. Right. It doesn't have to just be little league baseball teams or high school, but that's great. I love that aspect. So there's just so many different positives to it, guy, that guys that you probably weren't thinking about all of them at the time when you were, when you were designing this. Yeah. Naturally occur. Right? That's exactly what happened, you know. That's exactly right. We were just trying to have, we had a very simple question. How do I play my baseball cards? And we, and we solved it. And what's happened now is people have taken onto it and realized these other things, right. The nostalgia element and opening old packs and rediscovering. Or man, I'm spending time with my kids again and I'm getting them off TV and off video games and I'm playing games with them again. Or man, I'm doing this as a unity thing for teammates. Or I'm taking them to schools. A school right here in our, in our area. Bought a few games. Tps. They bought it. They bought a few games and they're doing, they're for middle school and they're doing, they're doing a little class on it because they're learning, learning statistics. It just, it fits into so many different worlds. And any joy is like, any joy we can give is great. You know, whatever that. Check. Go for it. Yeah, checks a lot of boxes, guys. It just has so many positives and, and really zero negatives as far as I'm, I'm concerned. And like you mentioned, statistics are like, you can go to college and get a PhD in statistics. You know, the hobby has someone who's very famous for that and Dr. James Becket. So, you know, so there's. There's just so many different great things with it, right? And so kudos to you guys for, again, you know, it's easy. Like, I don't want to say it's not easy, but you could have made one version and said, hey, here's our, here's our game, right? Which you cared enough to say, hey, we wanna, we wanna make the best game we can make, and if it takes 20 versions or 20 drafts, then so be it. And then here, here it is, right? And you know, you're at a little league game and the rains come. You gotta get underneath the, you know, the awning, right? Break out the. Break out the game. And until the rain delay is over, the rain won't stop that game unless it's really windy. But so, like, how's it. I mean, I can even see this, like, you know, you see like some of the, you know, we talked about Pokemon earlier or Magic together. They have like, tournaments. Is that something maybe you hope to see with this game is maybe have some, like, tournament level? Yeah, I think I would love to see it. I. I would, but, like, competitively, not in our area. There's. I wouldn't say enough. No. You don't know yet, I think, what it. Because it does feel so much like a TCG because you are on a Playmat and you're playing out your cards and you're bringing your collections or you're cracking new packs, you're drafting. It's really right for that kind of competitive environment where people really do, you know, you pay in and you grab some packs and maybe you ante up your best card. You know, whoever wins gets that card. But it would be great to have that world where you own. You owned a card shop maybe not, you know, back in your day. Maybe Pokemon and magic gathering work, like coming on now, but now you go to a card shop, it's always the sports card folks in the front counters and then all the people in the back are playing Magic or Pokemon, and you sort of look over, go. I don't know what they're into. I have no idea what Their world is like what's going on with them? But the world's good collide because card shops now they have them both and they want to have both. And how about if you have the room. If you're a card shop and you have the room to make both sides of the aisle happy. Happy. Right. Have a. Have a whatever, you know, non sports trading card game tournament and have the, you know, the general manager baseball tournament. Have them at the same time. Right. Yeah. And. And it really shows both sides like hey, there's room for everybody that builds that sort of of camaraderie. Well, listen, well, let me ask you that one more question before we kind of. You know. And I know you guys are. Baseball at heart has. Has doing this has a light bulb. Come on. Maybe to make a football version a basketball, hockey or something. You know, it has came up but it's. The stats are not physically. Well, it's possible. It's like really difficult to. Yeah. Them do actions right. Yeah. Out of them baseball. So literal. The stat is literal. It's like I. Oh, I hit a triple. Yeah, I know what happens. He goes the third and that guy moves it over. Whereas basketball cars. It's like you shot a shot or you, you shot a shot and yeah. How do you work like passing in there? You don't really know what or how. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. It's, you know, it's like it does not cond of it's not conducive to how you would do how physically how the game works. Like maybe it makes baseball so unique. It's like all those stats on the card earlier telling you very specific things that you can almost picture in your head. And believe me, people ask all the time. You're not the first people to say oh man, you should make this for hockey cards. And maybe we do. I don't know the way I, I think it's just sort of that the. You know, you don't really. It's just like doesn't. It's not the way those sports work. You know where you lay up a the lineup and you have sort of that one on one nature of it. Yeah. Baseball really is more designed for this kind of game than some of the other sports. I'd probably put football as probably the. The next thing. If you were to do another one, football maybe could be done because you. If you're the quarterback, if you're. You could say hey, I'm going to hand it off to this running back and then see what the outcome is. Or I'm going to pass and then know that sort of thing and you see how many. Right. How far it goes. Yeah. And baseball. But baseball, even though it's. It's 9v9, it's really one versus one in the moment. That pitcher in the batter and then what. Depending on what. What the ball's in play. That's when everyone else comes into focus. So it makes more sense to. You know what I mean, to do it with baseball play. It plays a lot easier, smoother and that sort. I. I get it. But something to think about maybe a football. I would. If I'm ranking them in terms of like what would be a different sport that could be possible. I probably would football as. As number two after that because you, you are as the quarterback or the coach in the sense you determine like hey, we're gonna pass on this place. Second and nine. We're passing. It's third and one. We're running. You know, and that sort of thing. So. But again, you know, to. To come up with it. Come up with that guys and to do it to that level with that attention details. Kudos to you guys for, for putting in the work and love to see it. Love the fact that you know, in this digital age, right. Where every, you know and I get it but that kids are on their, their game systems a lot or their phones. Yeah, right. That we can still have things like this and, and keep our attention and then again, you know, be educational at the same time as fun. Right. A lot of times we always think education and fun are like two separate things. But they can, they can be both. And I think this game will checks off both boxes. So congrats guys. As always. I give out. I give the guest sort of the final word where people can pick up the game. Websites, social media, anything you want. You want to direct people to take your time and get that information to buy. To get to our website. It's www.baseballcardgm.com. that simple. That's where you can buy it online. And we ship. We've shipped all over America. Literally Intercontinental. Yes. We've sold to not only every state in the United States. We've also sold online. We've also sold to Australia, Canada, England. We're on where. Yeah. And you know, I guess there's baseball fans in Australia. I know there's some because they baseball class. They got the World Baseball Classic team. So I think baseball is becoming an already is a national game. We got the wbc. But as we see more of these players. Right. Make an impact here and become hall of Famers or all Stars. I think it's becoming even more so. Right. Even in countries like you said, obviously Dominican Republic, Cuba, Latin America, but even in there's been many, there's been double digit pros from Australia and other countries. Right. So I think it's growing, right? And as, as baseball grows, I think the, the demand for your game will, will grow right along with it. So if for anyone that missed where you can get the game, it'll be in the episode notes as well. So if you missed that, just click, click there and it'll take you to, to the game site and it sounds like a, a great game guys. And again, kudos to you and, and thanks for making some time for us here. And uh, you know it, it's, it's, you know, it's part of the hobby because we're using real baseball cards. So you're, it's. The game is, is a, a hopefully becomes a hobby staple and part of the hobby. I that would be such a delight for us to think that we made some sort of impact on it. And if just in a little way being you know, taking a new joy out of something you already own and, and a little extra something out of it would be awesome like that, that would really bring a lot of joy to our hearts that people could use baseball cards in a new joyous way. You know, it gives them a second life like we talk about some of those junk. It gives them a second life, right? And that's always, always good. Well, thanks guys. Thank you. All right, once again, thank you to Matthew and Garrett Weaver, creators of Baseball Card General Manager. 35 bucks. The website's in the show notes. If you want to grab yourself a game, it can be played, you know, at a, on the road, at home, you know, at a card show doesn't take up a ton of space, just a small table and you know, if you're a baseball fan or card collector, you can use your cards. It's. How cool is that? So check out what they're doing. The game's already won a few awards already and I think it's great. So check out their creation which I think will provide some family entertainment time for our hobby is the people Announcer of the week. This is Rob Petrozo from Rally reminding you that the hobby is the people. It's not any corporations or breaks. It's not even fractional companies. It's not any of that. It's people and the people that make collecting great and make it what it is. If you'd like to be the hobbyist, the people announcer of the week, do a wav or mp3 file and send it to sportscardnationpcmail.com say good night, Kane from taco night in Tulum to sushi in Tokyo, every bite is rewarding and Postworthy with MX Gold's 4X Membership Rewards points at restaurants worldwide. Wherever you dine, points are piling up, so bring your friends along for your next course. Because it's not all about the posts, it's about the company and the memories. How can Gold from Amex sweeten your next food moment? Learn more@americanexpress.com Explore Gold terms and Points Cap Apply when you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place, so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.