Instant Baseball

This might be described as a minimalist baseball game. It consists of a single plastic-laminated sheet which includes a small baseball diamond, a scoring box, rules of play, and a remarkably detailed results table that aims to reflect the probabilities of a wide range of plays.

The playing mechanism is a regular pack of cards, and each batting player turns over cards and records the outcomes until reaching three outs for an inning.

The table shows a specific result for each card in the deck, including contingencies such as tagging up on a fly out. The 52 cards produce 7 singles, 2.6 doubles, 1 triple and 1.4 home runs (7 of hearts = HR in innings 3, 6, 7 and 9, otherwise a double). There are 3 walks and 2 errors, while the rest are outs of various kinds.

The special situations apply to the three double play cards along with the 7 of spades and 3 of diamonds, where the outcomes vary depending on combinations of runners on base.