Little League Baseball: Championship Series is a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was developed by SNK as a follow-up to Baseball Stars, and released in July 1990. Unlike Baseball Stars, there are no options allowing you to create your own team or change the attributes of players. The game also features Little League style substitution rules, which allow a player to be removed from the game and then subbed back in once (the second time you remove them, they're gone for good). This creates an emphasis on in-game management and familiarity with your team's roster. I think it's this trait that led my friend Tom and I into an unhealthy obsession with the game.

       As we gained more and more familiarity with the various players in the game, we realized that the skill numbers, which rate every batter and pitcher on a 1-5 scale, were very inaccurate. At some point I got the idea of writing down the results of games so that we could track the actual ability of each player. We decided to play every possible matchup twice, so we could both play each side of every team vs. team matchup. This added up to 240 games. The first of those games was played on August 8th, 2004, and the last on June 25th, 2006. It took me until September 2007 to create a database and enter all the games, and it's taken me until now, July 2010, to get it on the internet. Let's just say it hasn't been my top priority and leave it at that.

       Tom asked me, in 2007, "If you knew when we started this that it would take this long, would you still have gone through with it?" I've been thinking about this, and the answer is probably, hell no. But I started it, and it's a ridiculous thing, and I feel that I'm obligated to finish it, so I will. I think.