2021 marks the fifth anniversary of the "re-launch" of SherCo Grand Slam Baseball, and it has been a fun and wild ride! Not only have we reached new customers, we've reconnected with long-time customers who found us on the internet and have shared their new stories of playing SherCo in the 21st Century.
And I've made a new friend in Steve LeShay. Until 2016, Steve was merely the "Maestro of Malaga", a reference to the long-time mailing address of SherCo Games. I'd corresponded with Steve just a couple times as a customer, generally with a testimonial letter about how much I enjoyed the game. But a letter I sent in 1988 received an unexpected, handwritten reply of considerable length.
I was going through a 26-week chemotherapy regimen as I battled cancer, and I wrote Steve to let him know that his SLOBS (SherCo Leagues Of Baseball Simulation) system had provided me with hours of distraction and enjoyment in spite of how lousy I felt most of the time. I just wanted him to know that his game, at times and for some people, was more than just a game -- it was much-needed therapy.
To my surprise, Steve replied with a very long, handwritten letter, not only thanking me for my letter and for the compliment, but also had some personal words of wisdom and a bit of spiritual advice for getting through the rough stuff. The letter meant a lot to me, and I was happy to know that he'd read it, and that hopefully, it made him feel good about providing a release valve for his customers.
That was in 1988. By 2015, that letter had gone missing through a series of moves from apartment to apartment, then into a house we rented, and finally into our own home. But I still played SherCo, and had just finished by 64th SLOBS season (you read that right). I'd mentioned SLOBS on another sports board, and folks asked if I could share it as it had been out of print for over 20 years.
So, I searched the internet for one Steve LeShay, figuring there probably weren't as many "LeShays" in the US as there are Martins. And I found him, teaching at a university in Delaware. So, I e-mailed, introduced myself, and asked if he were, in fact, THE Steve LeShay of SherCo fame. And, indeed, he was.
I asked permission to reproduce SLOBS to post on the internet. We exchanged a few e-mails, and I don't recall how the subject came up, but pretty soon, Steve was discussing working with me to bring SherCo back! I have my own design company, Hot Stove Games, and we've done about a half-dozen sports games on subjects not usually covered such as indoor soccer, volleyball, billiards, arena football ... so I know about game design and game graphics and presentation.
Finally, we agreed to work together. But I didn't want to take the easy way out. We could have scanned existing materials, put them in PDFs, and brought the game "back". I wanted to go the full route ... redesign the look and feel of the game, re-create every chart and table, and re-design not only the ballpark charts in existence, but to design every ballpark we could find a diagram for.
The result was a re-launch of SherCo with a clean, 21st Century look featuring the blue you see on the pages here, and including a complete re-design of the SherCo logo. Seven season sets to start. Sixty-three ballpark charts. Re-productions of the Teams of Yesteryear sets. A website (the old website).
But we weren't done. I e-mailed Steve in 2017 with an idea. I had reverse-engineered the "math" of the game and discovered a couple of things I though we could expand on to make the game more "accurate" in terms of replicating player performances. I wanted to take advantage of the stats now available to us to do this. And I made some suggestions on how the pitching system could be re-vamped.
Steve took those ideas and ran with them, and what resulted was SherCo PLUS. We changed the "base" system (from a 21-result system in Classic to a 36-result system in PLUS), which allowed us to open up the game engine and possible results on the charts to give the game greater variety and include special plays not possible in the base-21 system. And now, batters have the same BB-K ratings for themselves as hitters as pitchers do, just part of the new pitching control system.
Though we have never met in person, Steve and I have shared a precious few phone calls in the five years we've worked together; he is Penn to my Teller (though my quirk is invisibility, not silence ... as Steve can attest). And, of a sort, we've become friends through a shared love of baseball, gaming, and, of course, SherCo.
It's been a great five years, leading to the re-launch of this new website. Here's hoping for many, many more to come ...