Vangaurd Games: Ithaca, N.Y.

Vanguard Games (Ithaca, N.Y.) 
Purchased Pursue the Pennant Tabletop Baseball Game
Date:  August 1989

This particular trip wasn’t one to a ballpark to catch a ball game but is by far the most influential baseball trip I have ever taken in my life.  As I grew up a baseball fan my dad introduced me to different tabletop baseball and football games.  He played Avalon Hill’s Baseball Strategy and Football Strategy to name a few.  Growing up my parents bought me simpler tabletop sports games like championship baseball, half time football, etc.  Everything changed when I saw a commercial for Pursue the Pennant on television showing someone rolling dice into Fenway Park made out of cardboard.  One day I was eventually quick enough to write down the toll free number to find out where we could pickup this excellent looking game.  My mom called the number and found out the closest store that carried the game was a game store in the small town of Ithaca, N.Y.  Ithaca is roughly sixty minutes from our Binghamton home and I understood that it was a decent drive if my mom took me up there to pick up the game.  I also realized the game wasn’t cheap and she might not have that kind of money laying around.  Luckily for me my mom was a special person and would do anything for her kids.  She said, “We can go today if you want.”  “But you must promise me, you’ll play the game and have fun.”  We’ll I started a tabletop baseball league soon after that purchase and we’ll Mom, we are still playing a form of “PTP” like tabletop baseball over twenty years later.  I can remember the excitement of arriving at the store and seeing the big PTP box on the third shelf in the game store.  I was already checking it out on the ride home and asked my two long time friends Shawn Fitzpatrick and Anthony Marrongelli once I arrived back home if they wanted to give it a try.  We grabbed a pizza from a local store called “Dips” and began a journey of tabletop baseball excitement that continues today.  Mom, thank you!

1988 Season Set