What I have been doing besides customs lately

I thought I would use this post to let you readers know what I have been mostly doing during my off days besides making custom cards.

Around age 6 or 7, my Dad got a Commodore 64 computer. My Uncle Tom was a big computer geek, and I think he encouraged my dad to get it. Whenever we would see my uncle, he would give us floppy disks with games on them. One of these games was Hardball, which came out in the mid '80's, and is one of the all-time best baseball games in my opinion. I played Hardball for hours on end as a kid. Somewhere between middle school and college, the Commodore disappeared (I think my Mom threw it out). Around 2002, I downloaded a C64 emulator, and I was back to playing Hardball again.

I have always played with the Champs (Blue team), and have always wanted to know what kind of stats the team would put up in a 162 game season. I had incorporated the Champs into many baseball simulation programs, but never had got stats from playing 162 games and keeping them. In 2011, I came across a post on a C64 forum where the author, Doomtints, actually played 162 games with the Champs and kept stats. He played the game with the DH rule in effect. If you know anything about Hardball, you know that the hitter's skills depend not on who they are, but on where they are in the batting order. I always played without a DH (contrary to my beliefs about MLB), so I wanted to get the stats without it. So, sometime this year, I started playing the games and keeping stats. I just finished game #142, and with 20 games left, Doomtint's stats are pretty spot-on. I am a tad better Win-Loss wise, but that could change at any time. My pitchers have better W/L records, and better ERAs, but I have been walking many of the All-Star hitters, so my Walks are WAAAAAAY worse, and my Strikeouts are below his. The hitters are probably going to be a little weaker stat-wise that his, but I think many of them will end up posting similar stats. I am hoping to get game 162 played by the end of the year, and if not by December 31, then maybe have all the stats sorted out and posted on the C64 forum (my screenname is Jeremya1um).

So that is basically what I have been up to outside of making customs. How about any of you? Have you ever played Hardball? Do you even know what a Commodore 64 is?