Baseball (1971)

Baseball, a sports game that was created on a PDP-10 minicomputer at Pomona College in 1971 by English major Don Daglow. Baseball was the first baseball video game that allowed players to manage the game as it unfolded, rather than just picking players at the beginning of a game. The program is documented at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Baseball was continually updated through 1974, and distributed to other PDP-10 installations. The text-based game had each player control the pitcher or the batter; they would enter their intention to, for example, pitch to or walk the batter, or switch hitters. The batting player could direct on-base players to steal, and the batter to hit. The results of the play would be printed out onto paper as a verbose description, like a radio description of the game. Daglow went on to develop more sophisticated baseball games in 1983 with Intellivision World Series Baseball, and 1987 with Earl Weaver Baseball, as well as numerous other games.