Jan 22, 2009

My World of Baseball-Part III: Clix

This is the post where we diverge from the conventional world and into a place where I sense I am isolated. I have an unhealthy fascination with Sportsclix. I would imagine that if it were popular when I was a child, Strat-o-matic would have a similar hold on me. For the uninitiated, they are approximately 3 inch high baseball figures of various players throughout the league and in history (for the 2005 series) released in three series from late 2003-2005. I first saw them in a Rob Neyer article on ESPN, I bought a couple on ebay, and then the fascination began in a few ways.

I wanted them all, I still do....they are a little difficult to find these days. At some point in the future, I'll post my want list for those who have no use for them lying around the shelves of your domicile. Also, the game itself was fun to play. You got to set up a team with a certain number of points (usually 1000) and play 9 innnings. A typical game took 1.5-2 hours and it always, always!! was very low-scoring; 1-0 and 2-1 were representative scores.

This is the reason why there was nothing more satisfying then "clicking" your player's abilities to the next level. Each player had base abilities and as you failed or succeeded at an at-bat, fielding attempt, pitch sequence, etc....based on the roll of the dice, the player would go on an individual hot or cold streak. And you could get hotter and hotter or really impossibly cold. Every "click" would bring a different set of events that could possibly occur. You have to try it to enjoy it. It fed the probabitician (now a real word) and baseball aficionado in me.

I will detail the clix in later posts aesthetically in later posts when I take some photos of them and can better describe the various poses and what the different levels of rarity meant. This, however, is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of my collecting habits....

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