Summer 2002: Matt Mulholland brings the first iteration of Baseball Franchise on a 7-day guys Baseball Vacation that saw Matt, Jim, Paul, and Kent - along with several other family members - see games at Cleveland’s Jacob’s Field, Philadelphia’s Citizen’s Bank Ballpark, and old Yankee Stadium along with a stop at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The original game has since been destroyed but it was played with real baseball cards and monopoly money and involved an unbearable amount of statistical record keeping and hand-calculated financial spreadsheets. In short, it was simultaneously fun and excruciating to play. And yet, the seeds of the current game were sewn on that trip.

Fall 2002-Spring 2003: Matt & Paul design 512 ‘baseball cards’ to be used in the game. These cards were index card size and tabulated season scores automatically for players. The monopoly money and calculators of the original game were present but the transition away from actual baseball cards to cards that used a sabermetric scoring system for each player season marks what is the most truly unique game mechanic of Baseball Franchise - one that still exists in the most current version of the game. For hitters, each season was scored as follows (AVG*1000 + HITS + HRx2 + RBIx2 + SB). For pitchers, each season was scores as follows (6.00 - ERA x 100 + WINS + K’s). NOTE: While the sabermetric scoring system for hitters has remained the same through all game revisions, the scoring system for pitchers now includes a consideration for the K/BB ratio.

Summer 2003: Matt and Paul make two copies of the game (pictured at the right). Matt, Jim, Zach, and Kent (who all live in the Indianapolis Area) play 20+ seasons together. Paul (who lives in Peoria) plays his game with a men’s group from his church. After a year or so both copies of the game are put on a shelf and forgotten about for 20 years.

The “Season Record Sheet”: The Season Record Sheet that owners use to track their spending and to record player stats has undergone several changes over the last two years. The first photo is what the SRS looked like from the original 2002 game. The second photo is what it looked like after significant revisions that took place shortly after the game was resurrected. The third photo includes a separate table to keep track of the Player Development Fund. The last photo is what it looks like now as a Digital MS Excel File.

Spring 2023: After 20 years sitting on the shelf, Matt brings the game out to show his neighbor and baseball fanatic, Bob. Together with Zach, Jim, Kent, Bob, Matt, and Matt, they play the game one crisp spring Saturday. Everyone enjoys the game enough to schedule another game session for later that spring. This version of the game used regular six-sided dice to determine which of a player’s career seasons was scored.

Summer2023: Paul joined for several summer game sessions which saw the inclusion of the “Bankruptcy” and “Financial Hardship” rules following the complete financial ruin by owner Bob as a result of spending like a drunken sailer on free agents.. Quite simply, Bob’s repeated attempts to push the rules and to “break the game” proved incredibly helpful as we realized that we needed a better way to keep owners from becoming overextended to the point of financial insolvency. This summer also saw the addition of the “Luxury Tax” and the development of a “Player Development Fund” that added the strategical element of coaching and scouting modifiers. Most significantly, the original index-style cards were replaced with baseball card-like player cards. Kent and Matt spent the better part of the summer updating the player cards to include players that had retired from the game in the years since the original version was made back in 2002.

Fall 2023: The game underwent significant rule changes with the goal of making the team ownership aspects of the game as realistic as possible while maintaining the playability of the game. This began a theme where every new rule idea was tested and analyzed to see if it could improve playability while also maintaining thematic accuracy. For example, there were several attempts to introduce a “Rookie Draft Class” where owners would see beforehand the 12 players who would make up the next year’s rookie player cards. Though more accurately reflecting the real MLB draft, this approach bogged the game down and hindered overall gameplay.

December 2023: THE FIRST PLAYTEST - WITH NON-SPORT ENTHUSIAST BOARD GAME LOVERS: An eclectic group of non-sports enthusiast gamers was gathered together to play the game with only a rudimentary instruction booklet to guide them. This was the first time anyone had seen the game outside of our original playtest group. The reviews were mixed but the general sentiment was that we had something unique and fun albeit with some major playability issues. This was also the first time that anyone suggested that much of the tedious book-keeping aspects of the game could be digitized, something that didn’t actually get added until December 2024.

Spring 2024: In response to the feedback from the December ‘23 playtest, player season scores and dollar amounts were rounded to the nearest 10’s (i.e. - 486 became 490). The goal was to simplify calculations for owners and to, hopefully, continue to reduce the number of errors that owners continued to make. Of course, the obvious solution - to move things to a digital spreadsheet - eluded the game designers for almost another year. Matt also started working on adding a Legacy Deck of 130’ish players who began their careers in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Note: Up until this point, all players in the game began their careers after 1960. This brought into the game legends like Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, and Sandy Koufax. This also allowed eight owners to be able to play a total of 50 seasons of gameplay with the 648 total player cards that now comprised the player deck. Additionally, while modifying every player card so that scores were rounded to the nearest 10, Matt also highlighted in red the clutch point earning stats on all the player cards. A new set of cards was printed and used in the Spring of 2023 that reflected these changes.

Summer 2024: This summer marked the biggest change to the game thus far. For several months Jim had wanted to try a version of the game where each player would score the season that matched their experience in the game. The realization that, while this would be thematically accurate, it would likewise remove all chance from the game led Matt to come up with a compromise that became known as “Range of Seasons”. When it came time to roll the dice to see what season your players would score, instead of every season being ‘in-play’, the seasons you would score would be restricted to a range of seasons around the player’s current experience in the game. However, before this could be tried, a complete redesign of all 600+ cards had to be done. On August 17th, 2024 the playtest team gave “Range of Season” a try using a recently printed deck of player cards that Matt had created just for this playtest. Going into this playtest there was still the feeling that ROS wouldn’t work. Surprisingly, every owner in attendance at that playtest recognized that ROS was a dramatic improvement to the game - one that was both more thematically accurate AND which improved playability. There would be no going back… “Range of Seasons” would become cannon for Baseball Franchise. The only thing we hadn’t settled on was, how big should the range of season actually be? Originally, we used a range of SIX seasons before narrowing to the FIVE seasons (-2,-1,0,+1,+2) that are now standard rules.

Financial Audits: Zach is owed a huge debt of gratitude for spending dozens of hours after the conclusion of game sessions going over every owner’s season record sheets to check for math errors. This period marked the biggest crisis for the game designers thus far as it became apparent that the outcome of several seasons could hinge on simple mistakes that owners would make while tabulating their season scores and balancing their season finances. This led to the inclusion of “Financial Audits” which, while greatly reducing the number of errors, also made the game feel even more like tax preparation than a fun baseball game.

Summer 2024: THE SECOND PLAYTEST - WITH CHILDREN: We played a three season game with six of our nephews between the ages of 10 and 15. We really had no expectations of how this would go or if they would enjoy the game. The novelty of playing a game they had seen their dads and uncles play for several years was enough to keep them interested for this play session but it was clear that, with the exception of one young man, they would not be begging to play again. Interestingly enough, the one boy (Julian) who enjoyed the game the most was also the one who knew the least about baseball. He was, however, the child who excelled at and enjoyed board games more than any of the other boys who played the game. This reinforced to us that our game is somewhat of a “Resource Management” game with rules and mechanics that can be optimized just like so many of the strategy board games on the market today.

Fall 2024: “The App” - In the Fall of 2024 Matt hired a former student to develop an app that used OCR “Optical Character Recognition” to scan each owner’s Season Record Sheet and then do all of the math calculations. The creation of the app stemmed from a reluctance to give-in to the increasing chorus of voices who were saying that we needed to have a digital spreadsheet to keep track of stats and team finances. Though the playtest team played with and tested the app throughout the Fall of 2023, it’s inconsistency in reading handwriting ultimately was it’s downfall.

RELUCTANCE TO USE COMPUTERS: Throughout the development of Baseball Franchise there has always been a reluctance to turn the game into a ‘computer game’. One of the things that makes Baseball Franchise so unique and fun is that it is a game, like so many board games, that requires people to get together in a room and play face to face without the distraction of devices or computers. The app, though digital in nature, was viewed as a compromise solution to the ever present and persistent problem that paper and pencil book-keeping of stats and finances presented to everyone who played the game.

Fall 2024 (Saturday, November 9th): THE THIRD PLAYTEST - WITH BASEBALL ENTHUSIASTS: We tested the game with a group of 8 guys (including John and Wesley who would become regulars in our game design group). The feedback was almost all positive but with many of the guys visibly struggling with the paper/pencil Season Record Sheet. This playtest, more than anything else, convinced our core group of designers - and most importantly, principal game designer Matt Mulholland - that a Digital Owner Spreadsheet needed to be created.

Fall 2024 (Friday, November 22nd): In the two weeks after the 3rd Playtest, Matt worked with neighbor and MS Excel genius, Thomas Rainey, to create a digital owner spreadsheet. Though this spreadsheet has undergone subtle improvements in the time since, the version that appears in the photo at the top of this page is strikingly similar to the original version that was created during this two week time period. The playtest of the Digital Version of the SRS was a huge success with every owner expressing a desire to never go back to the paper/pencil version ever again. Yes, the Digital Spreadsheet does require every owner to have a computer at the table, but that is a small price to pay for the dramatically improved and streamlined gameplay that results. Yes, the requirement that every player has a computer does change how the game will need to be marketed while also adding a barrier to entry that might turn off some potential buyers of the game. However, it is our strong belief that the vast improvement in playability will ultimately result in the game being more enjoyable - even if it is to a smaller audience than who might otherwise try the game. With that said, the addition of the Digital Spreadsheet, along with the inclusion of “Range of Seasons” mark the two most significant improvements to the game from a playability perspective.

December 2024: THE FOURTH PLAYTEST - WITH HIGH SCHOOL BOYS: We brought together 6 high school boys to play the game. They used the newly created Digital SRS and played a total of just three seasons. However, the reviews were all positive with every player asking to play again. And though we were never able to coordinate the schedules of everyone to play again, it was abundantly clear that this iteration of the game would be the near final version that exists today.

Spring 2025: Our playtest group of the 9 designers continued to playtest the game using the Digital SRS. We played a total of 50 seasons in the spring of 2025 with the rules remaining largely unchanged since November of 2024. This period marked the longest such stretch of seasons played without altering the rules. As such, these seasons of playtests gave us the clearest picture of what the final version of the game would look and feel like.

Summer 2025: A new 50 season game was started in July of 2025 which included the use of professionally printed cards. While not substantively different than the last 50 years played in the spring, the rollout of professionally printed cards and rules that essentially hadn’t changed in six months meant that we were playing the game that we now find ourselves bringing to the public. It is our hope that you will enjoy the game as much as we do. In fact, we hope you enjoy it so much that you will want to buy a copy and play it with your own group of friends on a regular basis.