Sports Illustrated Baseball Strategy was first published by Avalon Hill in 1960. The game comes with two identical 25-player teams and allows all the subtleties of a baseball game such as steals, bunts, stretching hits and so on. The game revolves around a tactical matrix where the pitching player secretly chooses a type of pitch and the batter chooses a type of swing.

The pitch and swing chosen are then cross-indexed on a matrix action table and the result is read off which indicates the outcome of the at-bat.

The simple rules, complex outguessing and tactical scope of this game make it one of the best head-to-head baseball games around. Better yet, for those who enjoy this game system, you can make your own players cards based on actual statistics relatively quickly.

I would recommend the game to anyone new to baseball as it allows you to quickly learn the basic underlying strategies in baseball. Unfortunately the game is no longer in production.