Does everyone play straight pitch?

[Greg Pines]

 Guys I love the site, I check for upsdates all the time, I don't understand the straight pitch style, we refuse to play it, do you guys ever play curve style? When we play we pull teams out of the hat at random and play. The games are low scoring, but we have a good time, we have power rankings and title belts. What does everybody think is the best way to play R.B.I. ?

[Gantry]

Welcome Greg...

Actually, it appears that the majority of the people who visit the site do not play straight pitch.  We like the high scoring games, but I can definitely see why people prefer curves.  To each their own...

Don't think I can make polls, but we'll make this the unofficial straight-or-curve poll...

1 Vote Straight Pitch

[mookiewilson]

we don't have any rules on it but as a common courtesy, we usually just play strait pitch.  Except for our friend ryan, who is a little bitch, and won't pitch strait to any big time hitter.  Whenever, we play the drinking game, definitely no curves aloud.  Its more fun and people drink more with strait pitch.

[GPines]

Even the times we played drinking style we played curved-style, just changed some of the rules, for example striking out had to be changed to like 3 drinks not 10. We would have died!

[Gantry]

You definitely can't play death (aka RBI Drinking Game) with curves unless you alter the rules.  Three drinks sounds appropriate...

[Greg]

While straight pitch style has its merits, I've always thought the difficulty and finesse of the RBI curveball made the games more interesting. I love the mental games you get in as pitcher vs. batter. Plus, it's not like it's impossible to hit nasty pitches, just more challenging. The games are shorter, too, which means you can get more in during a given sitting.

[king_jason]

it's anything goes where i come from

[Dill]

When we play RBI, the greatest game of all time, we play curve style.  But, so you won't just use curves at all times, we only use 1 starting pitcher per game.  Therefore, in order to save the pitchers' endurance, there must be an abundance of batting practice fastballs.  We also play 3- to 4-game series, and using only 1 starting pitcher allows you to use the other in the ensuing game.  We found this to be the best.

[Gantry]

Welcome Dill...

A couple people have now mentioned the one-starter approach.  Dennis Kim (where are you buddy?) is a fan of that as well.  The reasoning makes sense, a good blend of skill and scoring.  If I do ever jump into curves, I think the one-starter approach would be a good fit...

[GPines]

We used to play the series with same teams, we would enforce the one starter rule, it's a good way to play.

We went away with that now that we draw teams randomly, no one wants to play more than one game straight with a bad team.

[Dill]

You have to give the lesser teams more than just one game to show their stuff.  Houston and St Louie get better the more games you play in a row with them.  They are slow starters, but it is my opinion that they have good team chemistry over time.  Plus, is there anything better than winning a 3 game series with the Astros?  

Here is a good way to play when you are too drunk to play a serious game.  Pick two teams.  The first time through the lineup, you can take out whatever hitters you want to from your opponent's lineup, and place whoever you want from their bench in their place.  The teams become almost evenly matched every time.  HO and CA become more feared teams in this situation because of the strength of their benches.  You can't take out all the good players from these teams because their benches can pick up the slack.  Another point: you pick your opponent's starting pitcher.  Have fun!

[Lips]

Dill, that idea of taking out your op's starters sounds like real fun.  I think we might have to try that this weekend.  Go Houston!!!!

[GPines]

How the hell did you come up with that idea, it does sound interesting, good way to help the underdog, I will have to try that one.

[Gantry]

I concur, that sounds like an excellent idea.  Oh the satisfaction of putting Mike Heath in for Darrell Evans....

Jeez, Minnesota might be as bad as Houston with that method.  Imaging that ass lineup with Davidson and Smalley in for Hrbek and Brunansky.  Ouch...

Actually my money is on St. Louis, Steve Lake for Jack Clark and it's all over...

[GPines]

Yeah if your playing with St. Louis or San Francisco the subs are completely worthless, it will be a tough game to win. Houston might not change at all, their basically all like Willy Mays Hayes, run like Mays, hit like shit.

[Burnzky]

          My brother greg and I pick a different way.  The other day my brother went to our local hobbie store and bought some d-10 dice.  We put little stickers with the teams names on them on each number.  We have a baby blue one for the atari and black and red for the tengen.  Every game we roll so there is no arguments over who gets which team.  So this way no team gets neglected.

[Gantry]

The dice technique ain't too shabby, though all the Gamers Paradises around here went out of business.  Sure I can find some though....

[guy49]

Hey all, just thought I would drop my op on the curve/straight debate.  Put me down for curve, we have played seasons with the curve rules and kept statistics that become very accurate with real-life stats.

Guy, //www.angelfire.com/rbibaseball

[Dill]

You're right.  Me and Stuart have kept box scores from previous RBI seasons/games.  Sometimes the stats were a bit better than the shown stats, but if you drink a lot and then play some series, you don't hit as well, so the stats become very close to the real-life stats.  

[Gantry]

Wow, it is good to know that the RBI stats are pretty close to the real stuff if you play the intended way.  Though I bet Backman wouldn't top .300